In March 2016 Finland’s employers took an historic decision to put an end to the country’s system of top down cascading negotiation. Thus no longer will collective agreement negotiations start at national level with an agreement that sets the limits on salary changes but instead negotiations will be held on a sector basis and on a trade union basis. This autumn Finland is heading towards its collective negotiation cycle with current collective agreements starting to expire as the summer comes to a close. The whole process is under pressure due to the tensions that are running between the unions, the employers, and the government.
Combative unions. Given the fact that over recent years unions have accepted either very low or even sometimes zero salary rises this time round they announced their intention for relatively generous increases in pay. Furthermore in 2016 they had accepted the ‘competitiveness pact’ which translated into increases in working time without increases in pay and a transfer of the social contributions burden from employers to workers, the upshot being that workers experienced a drop in pay of between 2.5% and 5.0%.
Unions intend to be all the more insistent given that the domestic economy appears to be showing signs of a turnaround.
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