Pensions/retirement, Work-life balance, Finland

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 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.

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