After a chaotic start to the year that saw the announcement of new strikes following those in December 2019, which threatened to completely paralyse the country, as well as trade unions calling into question the national conciliator Vuokko Piekkala, February began with strike warnings in many sectors and was rounded off with collective agreements in some important sectors being concluded and ratified.
Strike warnings in many sectors (chemical, forestry, paper, retail, white-collar workers in industry) were tabled for action at the end of January and the beginning of February. The strike action concerned hundreds of thousands of workers and followed an overtime strike launched in January in most of the sectors affected.
The main difficulty encountered in negotiations was the unions’ push for the so-called ‘competitiveness pact’ introduced by the previous government and transcribed into most collective agreements in 2016, which at the time brought in a yearly unpaid 24-hour increase in working time (see article n°9603), to be reconsidered.
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