Health and Safety, Working Time, Finland

Following the article on Iceland, the latest in the series of articles on working time commissioned by EPSU from the Labour Research Department focuses on developments in the other Nordic countries. While several unions in Sweden have put shorter working time on the bargaining agenda (see also article on Sweden in this newsletter), there are only a few cases in social care where a shorter working week has been implemented. In Norway and Denmark the priority has been more to ensure that workers in health and care and other services have the right to full-time working although there are some

Five firefighters are set to receive a total of almost half a million euros in compensation following a victory in a legal case on working time supported by their union, JHL. The city of Jyväskylä will have to pay the unpaid wages and the costs incurred by the union. The Labour Court ruled unanimously that the firefighters should have been paid in full for working time for periods on standby. In a system in force between January 2004 and the end of March 2016, the firefighters were required to arrive at the fire station within five minutes of the alarm being sounded. The court ruled that five

The new collective agreement covering 420000 local government workers, including health care was finally agreed at the end of May and runs from 1.4.2020 to 28.2.2022. There will be a pay rise of 1.22% or at least 26 Euro on 1 August this year, followed by a further 1% on 1 April 2021. There is also a sum of 0.8% to be agreed at local level, valid from 1 April 2021. The annual 24 unpaid extra working hours agreed as part of a "competitiveness" pact with the then government in 2016 will end on 30 August this year. From September 2021 there will be a separate agreement covering healthcare workers

The JHL public services union says that it will aim to negotiate pay increases for lower paid workers that are higher than those in industry as a step towards reducing the pay gap between the sectors. It says this is essential to tackle low pay in sectors dominated by women. It also wants the 24 hours of extra unpaid work introduced in the Competitiveness Pact to be paid or cut while measures on carers' and paternity leave will also feature in the next bargaining round. The union carried out a survey of 8000 members to help it plan its priorities and gauge support for industrial action.

In 2016 unions reluctantly negotiated a competitiveness pact that involved an additional 24 hours' work a year with no extra pay, a 30% cut in holiday pay for public sector workers and a transfer of pension contributions from employers to employees. In anticipation of the next bargaining round some unions have already confirmed that they want the additional hours to be cut. Unions are particularly unhappy that while workers saw an increase in working time and an effective cut in take-home pay to deliver the pact, the employers failed to deliver on their side of the bargaining with more

The JHL public services union is developing its bargaining claims across 55 national, sectoral agreements and 40 at agency and other levels. Negotiations are already underway in private social services where the union says the priority issues are pay rates and holiday entitlement that fall below public sector levels and excessive use of zero-hours contracts. This is despite the fact that the big private sector employers are making large profits.

The JHL public services union says that it will aim for a flat-rate rather than a percentage pay rise in the upcoming bargaining round as a step towards closing the pay gap between the low and high paid. Another priority for the union is more control for workers over working time and shift work, seen as crucial to improve well-being at work. JHL will also be looking at initiatives to address the cut in holiday bonus in the public sector and action on zero-hours contracts.

The government is going ahead with proposals for new working time legislation despite widespread criticism from the trade unions and even doubts expressed by employer organisations. The government wants to allow more flexibility in working time, including longer night and shift work and more local agreements on working time. The unions are worried that this is all about more worker flexibility and are concerned about the lack of provisions to ensure workers are protected. The unions also point out that this is a missed opportunity to tackle the spread of precarious work.

The JHL public services union and the SAK confederation have raised concerns about the government's approach to working time and possible changes to working time legislation. A government working group has come up with proposals that would allow for more local flexibility on working time while failing to put forward any concrete plans to regulate zero-hours contracts which currently affect 80000 workers in Finland. The unions argue that the proposals are more about flexibiity for employers than workers and that all workers should have a guaranteed minimum number of hours in their contracts.

(January 2017) Public services JHL has drawn attention to the evidence showing the benefits of improved well-being at work. The union cites research estimating that sickness absence, accidents at work and occupational diseases cost the economy cost the economy EUR 2 billion a month. Effective measures to deal with these will reduce these costs and boost productivity. The union argues that this is particularly important at a time when health and social service staff are already facing excessive workloads and now also have to deal with a major restructuring of the sector.