Archive

Helsinki (08.04.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) Short strikes are on the increase in the public municipal services sector. Negotiations to reach collective agreements for the municipal sector have failed as of yet. The agreements cover some 425,000 local government employees.

JHL, the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors had already earlier instituted overtime and shift swap bans. At the beginning of April, it declared a two-day municipal service strike in six selected cities like Tampere and Oulu.

Should negotiations not yield a result, JHL, JUKO and Jyty unions will start on 19 April a seven-day strike in the Helsinki metropolitan area, covering Helsinki, Vantaa, Espoo and Kauniainen.

Helsinki (29.03.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) A major strike of 25,000 nurses is beginning on 1 April, unless a last-minute agreement can be reached.

Tehy - The Union of Health and Social Care Professionals in Finland and Super - the Finnish Union of Practical Nurses, are concerned about the urgent need to do something about the shortage of social and health care professionals.

To this end, the unions have proposed there should be an extra 3.6 per cent increase over the next 5 years on top of the standard pay increase. This would be separate from the branch collective agreements and financed directly by the state, the unions say.

Helsinki (25.03.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) Collective bargaining at UPM paper mills have not yet yielded any results. The forestry giant UPM still stubbornly demands that an extra 70 - 100 annual working hours be done by its employees without any additional pay.
The UPM strike, which began on 1 January, will continue till at least 16 April, if there is not an agreement before then.
The situation is extremely expensive for UPM. According to analysts, the company is suffering a loss in profits of 2 - 3 million euro a day. But as their goal is ideological, the cost seems not to mean anything.

Helsinki (08.03.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) The shortage of printing paper becomes more critical due to the strike at the UPM Finnish paper mills. The printing industry around the world has been highlighting their urgent need for paper, which UPM is unable to deliver.

UPM claims that the strike is a force majeure, a situation over which UPM has no control. According to the forestry giant, they are not breaking their contracts when not delivering paper. Some paper buyers are not accepting this argument automatically.

The Paper Workers’ Union and the Trade Union Pro issued in February an open letter stressing that there is no force majeure. The unions say that it is fully up to UPM to end the strike any day they wish.

Helsinki (25.02.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) Negotiations with regard to local government social and health care collective agreements have not yet yielded any results. The pay rise demands of the unions and what employers are prepared to offer are markedly at odds this time round.

The two collective agreements in this sector expire at the end of February. The employees concerned are represented by Tehy - The Union of Health and Social Care Professionals in Finland and Super - the Finnish Union of Practical Nurses.

Tehy and Super have a clear goal, called the rescue programme of social and health care. The unions stress that there is an urgent need for more professionals in the branch.

Helsinki (15.02.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) Intergraf, the European printing industry association, representing employers in this sector has sent a letter to UPM CEO Jussi Pesonen calling for an end to the strike at UPM paper mills.

The Brussels-based industry association says that while during the past two years graphic products have clearly witnessed a decline, demand is now almost back to pre-pandemic levels.

According to Intergraf, during the Covid pandemic many customers were forced to reduce print advertising and switch to electronic means in their communications. Now, customers are turning back to print, but the price of paper is going up and supply is uncertain right now.

Helsinki (14.02.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) After a long bout of shadow-boxing, negotiations for the forestry company UPM workers' collective agreement have begun. The National Conciliator has invited the parties to meet on 14 February.

The paper industry collective agreement expired at the end of December, but UPM did not want to begin to draft a new one unless its preconditions as to the form of the agreement are fully met.

The Finnish Electrical Workers' Union and the Paper Workers' Union had no other choice but to begin a strike at UPM mills and plants. The strike has now been going on since 1 January.

Helsinki (04.02.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) On 2 February, Service Union United PAM and the Finnish Commerce Federation adopted a new collective agreement for the commerce sector.

It will mean an increase in wages, working hour bonuses and shop stewards’ compensation by 2 per cent as of 1 May 2022.

The collective agreement is valid from 1 February 2022 to 31 January 2024 and the pay rise for the second year will be negotiated before 15 December this year.

In collective agreements made earlier during this current round of negotiations other sectors have seen pay rises of between 1.8 and 2.0 per cent for this year. The PAM agreement thus hits the upper ceiling reached so far this year.

Helsinki (02.02.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) This round of collective agreements has shown that collective bargaining is still the best way to advance the goals of both sides, says the SAK Board. However, in the case of forestry giant UPM, we have a sad example of how ideology has been put before all other goals.

A large number of collective agreements were due to expire around the end of the year 2021. This round of collective bargaining is different than before, as the forest industry terminated all national level agreements and the technology industry handed over collective bargaining to a new national organisation.

In spite of widely expected major difficulties in the labour market, the negotiation round has been running better than expected. The Board of SAK, the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions, is happy about this.

Helsinki (28.01.2022 - Heikki Jokinen) The number of employed people was 128,000 higher in December 2021 than one year before, according to the Labour Force Survey by Statistics Finland. And the number of unemployed persons was 16,000 fewer in December than a year ago.

The Government of PM Sanna Marin has a goal to reach a 75 per cent employment rate by the end of 2023. This goal is getting closer to being realised, as the trend of the employment rate was 73.5 per cent in December and the trend of the unemployment rate was 7.0 per cent.

The number of unemployed went down by 7.9 per cent in a year but as at the same time the number of inactive population went down 8.1 per cent, the unemployment rate did not fall very much.