Archive

Helsinki (04.11.2002 - Juhani Artto) Questions of ethical production and consumption have received increasing attention in the Finnish trade union movement over the last few years.

Recently a new phrase "corporate responsibility" has been added to the vocabulary of union leaders, activists and some leaders of the business community. However, ethical issues still play only a marginal role in the trade union movement at large.

The campaign against child labour has focused on awareness raising. This has involved publishing articles and reports in the trade union press and supplying the other media with materials on child labour.

Helsinki (18.10.2002 - Juhani Artto) The world’s largest mobile telephone manufacturer Nokia, which is based in Finland, has a factory in the Manaus Duty Free Zone in Brazil with a staff of more than 1,300.

In September the Union Solidarity Center of Finland SASK published a study* on how Nokia treats its labour force in Brazil. On learning of the favourable outcome of the study, the Finnish public breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of continued satisfaction with this Flagship of Finnish industry.

Even though some 90 per cent of the company is nowadays owned by foreigners, Finns still regard Nokia as a Finnish enterprise. And there are good reasons for doing so: Nokia has its roots and Head Office in Finland, and in 2001 roughly half of its 54,000 employees worked in Finland.

Helsinki (04.10.2002 - Juhani Artto) Finnish President Tarja Halonen and the President of Tanzania jointly chair a World Commission tackling the social dimensions of globalisation. The decision to establish the organ was made in November 2001 by the International Labour Organisation – ILO. The Commission began its work in February 2002.

ILO Executive Director Kari Tapiola, who served between 1972 and 1996 twelve years as International Secretary of the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions – SAK, spoke at the end of August in Helsinki about the background to the founding of the Commission and the functions that it will perform.

"We are fairly clear about the social problems involved in globalisation. We know what is going wrong. Now we must find answers and build bridges to solve these problems," Tapiola observed. "Globalisation also incorporates features that can accelerate solutions to these social problems."

Helsinki (13.09.2002 - Juhani Artto) Alarm bells are ringing in the construction industry, where the safety record has been deteriorating annually since 1996. Last year the accident rate increased by a further 6 per cent, as the number of accidents rose by 2 per cent, while the total number of working hours fell by 4 per cent.

More than 18,000 accidents were registered for compensation. The number of fatal accidents has also increased. Last year 13 construction workers died at work. In the 1990s the average was 11 fatalities in a year.

The risk of accident in construction is now three times higher than in other industries. Indeed these other industries are characterised by a general downward trend in the accident rate.

Helsinki (06.09.2002 - Juhani Artto) Since the 1980s the favoured mantra of employers in Finland, as in many other countries, has been flexibility. Employer representatives have criticised labour and the trade unions for defending "overly rigid" working hours, pay scales, social security norms and other "inflexibilities" in collective agreements and legislation. This, they say, undermines the international competitiveness of enterprises based in Finland.

A new study prepared by several reputable researchers has now refuted the main contention of this approach. The authors claim that labour flexibility was one of the key factors, if not the principal factor - that turned the deep recession of the early 1990s into a sustained period of rapid economic growth.

Helsinki (30.08.2002 - Hilkka Kotkamaa) According to a new study**, an unfair boss at the workplace poses a clear risk to employee health. Male employees who considered themselves to have been treated well had a 52 per cent lower risk of taking sick leave than those complaining of unfair treatment.

A similar disparity was also found for female employees. In respect of minor psychiatric disorders the gap was even wider, at 73 per cent. Women led by poor supervisors took one third more days in sick leave than those with better supervision. The corresponding disparity for men was 20 per cent.

The researchers noted that their findings bring an unfair boss up to the more familiar health risk levels caused by unhealthy lifestyles.

Helsinki (23.08.2002 - Juhani Artto) In October 2001 the European Commission published a draft Directive to govern carbon dioxide emission trading between enterprises within the European Union. The trade unions representing industrial workers in Finland and the country’s largest central trade union organisation SAK see major flaws in the draft.

The organisations are unable to accept the idea of not rewarding enterprises that have already voluntarily reduced their carbon dioxide emissions, or alternatively of failing to penalise enterprises that lag badly behind in their emission solutions. As Finnish enterprises have invested more than the European Union average in emission reduction, failure to recognise this achievement would distort competition conditions and be unfair to top performers.

Helsinki (16.08.2002 - Daryl Taylor) Although Trunf (Trade Union News from Finland) remains a web-based publication, many articles have also been reprinted in hard copy materials used by migrant workers in Finland, especially those organised in PAM-Lingua, the foreign language professionals section of Service Unions United.

The articles have also provided materials for English language training courses for the officials of trade unions and employers’ federations, and have been used in both public and private sector migrant worker integration and induction programmes.

Helsinki (16.08.2002 - Juhani Artto) Trade Union News from Finland (Trunf) yesterday celebrated its fifth anniversary. The existence of this unique information service is based on the firm belief that working life in Finland and the Finnish trade union movement have several features of interest to many people working and living in other countries. These include trade unionists, journalists, researchers and people in many other occupations and walks of life.

Trunf not only promotes information exchange, but also conveys research findings and new ideas. This is essential, for example, when seeking to narrow the gender disparity in working life. No country has been able to eliminate this gap, and so nobody can claim to have managed the problem and to have no need to work with others aiming to resolve or reduce the scale of this challenge.

Helsinki (08.07.2002 - Juhani Artto) The European trade union movement should have a European level collective bargaining strategy. This recent proposal was made by Lauri Ihalainen, President of SAK, the largest central trade union organisation in Finland. Ihalainen also presently leads the Council of Nordic Trade Unions. "The strategy would clarify the goals and division of labour in European level agreements made for individual industries and for several industries."

Ihalainen considers that national agreements will continue to have the main role in the immediate future, and that European bargaining will supplement national bargaining. However, he envisages that cross-border bargaining will undoubtedly increase. Progress will be made especially within multinational enterprises to unify the principles of their staff and salary policies. Common recommendations and positions by European level labour market organisations will also increase.