Archive

Tekijä (20.03.2024 - Heikki Jokinen) The Orpo-Purra Government’s drastic cuts in Finnish unemployment security endanger the existing system of temporary lay-offs. In international comparison, this system is seen as something positive and working well.

The employer can lay off an employee temporarily, based on the rules stipulated in the Finnish law, either for a fixed-term period or until further notice. This can happen by reducing working hours or interrupting the work completely.

Even when payment of wage or salary is stopped, the employment relationship remains in effect in other respects. For the loss in pay, an employee can get earnings-related allowance for the period of the lay-off. For Industrial Union members, this is paid by the A-kassa unemployment fund.

Tekijä (20.03.2024 - Heikki Jokinen) The Orpo-Purra Government is introducing deep cuts to earnings-related unemployment security.

It will cut the earnings-related unemployment allowance, make it more difficult to get it and freeze the index increases. The changes will concern the unemployed, those temporarily laid-off and part-time workers.

Some of the cuts are already in place. From the beginning of this year, the waiting period for unemployment benefits has been raised from five to seven days.

Tekijä (14.02.2024 - Heikki Jokinen) Unemployment security will undergo several changes this year. Unfortunately, not for the better, as the Orpo-Purra right-wing Government is determined to cut benefits and tighten conditions for receiving these.

One of the harshest changes doubles the time in work needed to get earnings-related unemployment allowance. For now, one needs to have 26 weeks (about six months) employment during the 28 months preceding unemployment.

From September this year, this employment condition will be extended from 6 to 12 months during these same 28 months. This means it will be much harder to be eligible for earnings-related unemployment benefits, just like the government parties intend it to be.

Tekijä (14.02.2024 - Heikki Jokinen) The changes in unemployment security means that seasonal workers must find other work outside their employment periods. Moreover, these changes make seasonal work even more unattractive.

- Even now the employers have problems finding employees. These branches do not attract too many Finns due to the seasonal nature of the work, generally heavy work and quite low pay, says Riikka Vasama, the Bargaining Specialist at the Industrial Union in her interview in Finnish for this magazine.

For example, in the agriculture and horticulture sector the share of foreign employees is high. The Industrial Union and the Federation of Agricultural Employers estimate that half of the people working in these branches have a foreign background.

Tekijä (17.01.2024 - Heikki Jokinen) The Orpo-Purra Government plans to cut 1.5 billion euros from social security.

Soste, the umbrella organisation of the Finnish social affairs and health NGO's, calculated what does it mean in practise. The number of poor people will grow 9.2 per cent and children in poverty 13.2 per cent. Finland will get 68,000 new poor people.

These concerns were heard, in a way. For 2024, Soste state aid will be cut with 60 per cent.

What are the planned Government social security cuts? Here are some examples.

Tekijä (17.01.2024 - Heikki Jokinen) The new Finnish right-wing Government’s austerity measures are designed to make life more difficult, in particular, for those who have become unemployed or being laid off temporarily. According to the Industrial Union research unit, people who find themselves in this predicament may lose thousands of euros a year.

To understand what these austerity measures mean, in real terms, the Union research unit calculated how the cuts would affect five different families. The fictional families are created to correspond to various typical real life situations.

For a majority of these families, the austerity measures would mean a weakening of their purchasing power, which could amount to hundreds of euros a month. Two families benefit from the tax cuts planned. Details concerning these calculations can be read, in Finnish, in this magazine.

Tekijä (13.12.2023 - Heikki Jokinen) The Government Programme of Finland's right-wing government is a barter-like arrangement between the two major Government parties, the National Coalition Party and the Finns Party.

The Coalition Party got major changes favouring employers in the labour laws, like limiting the right to strike, and radical cuts in welfare. The Finns Party got a long list of changes to make life more difficult for foreign people living in Finland.

Proposals for such new legislation have not been formulated yet. However, the Government Programme lists several pages of measures that would negatively affect foreign born people living in Finland or planning to move here.

Tekijä (13.12.2023 - Heikki Jokinen) The Orpo-Purra Government plan to expel those with work-based residence permits who are out of work for three months comes in for a lot of criticism. Not only from trade unions, but also from employers and the public sector.

This is right, as the rule would be not only cruel but also stupid. In many cases, we are speaking of people who have been here for a long time and do work that is very much in demand.

When a job suddenly comes to an end, three months is quite a short time to find a new job. The employment process with applications, interviews and decision-making easily takes that long. At the same time, many companies and public services complain of a shortage of labour.

Tekijä (15.11.2023 - Heikki Jokinen) The new Finnish right-wing Government plans radical changes to labour legislation. Their grand plan is clearly designed to tip the balance of power in workplaces to unilaterally favour employers.

Arto Satonen, Minister of Employment, claims the new unjust laws are just minor changes in step with other Nordic countries. To put it mildly, this is simply not true. On the contrary.

The Orpo-Purra Government is simply cherry-picking labour laws from other countries. They only selected a handful of such changes that clearly benefit employers and company owners. In many cases, they modified these changes to be even be more disadvantageous to employees.

Tekijä (15.11.2023 - Heikki Jokinen) One of the most draconian changes the Finnish right-wing Government is planning is to make dismissals easier. At present, our law requires “relevant and serious grounds” for a dismissal. The Orpo-Purra Government will drop the serious grounds and allow relevant grounds as sufficient reason for dismissal .

This is clearly designed to make dismissal easier. In law, even a simple word can make a difference and is not dropped without serious grounds.

The German economy has been doing well for decades. Yet, dismissal is much more difficult there than here, and no Government has attempted to challenge that.