Local
government jobs score poorly on working life barometer 2006
Helsinki (10.12.2006 - Juhani Artto) Almost 80 per cent of
municipal employees experience their work as being mentally stressful. Concerning overall
wage and salary earners the rate is much lower with around 50 per cent reporting the same
problem.
Municipal jobs are also physically more burdensome than the national average. Half of
municipal employees report their work as being physically burdensome, while a third of all
wage and salary earners share the same experience.
The data originates from the latest annual survey on working life. The respondents were
sampled from among 18 to 64 year old Finnish speaking wage and salary earners whose
regular weekly working time is at least 10 hours. Last week, preliminary results of the
survey were made public.
One of the most important factors, explaining the high stress rates in the local
government sector, is violence, experienced at the work place. In 2006, in the municipal
sector, 39 per cent of employees have witnessed violence at their work places. In the
industrial sector the corresponding rate is only 3 per cent. This year, in the municipal
sector, 12 per cent of the employees have been victims of violence or threats of violence
at their place of work. For example, in the municipal health care units violence,
committed by patients, is a common problem.
The average number of sick days has decreased slightly to 8.9 days per annum. This trend
also includes municipal employees but they still have on average 13.1 sick days per annum.
The discrepancy can be partly explained by the relatively high proportion of older
employees in the local government sector.
The competitiveness of municipal sector is also poor in terms of pay. In the municipal
sector the proportion of employees who find their wages and salaries "fair" and
"motivating" is much smaller than in the industrial sector, in private and civil
service jobs.
JHL (www.jhl.fi) and other local
government trade unions have long insisted
that pay and other working conditions in the municipal sector must be improved. Otherwise
the municipalities will have growing difficulties in recruiting the personnel they need.
In the next five to ten years a large proportion of municipal employees will retire.
Presently, in Finland, there are 431 municipalities and they have over 420 000 employees. A
sixth of all jobs are in the municipal sector.
Read the English language summary of the 2005 survey:
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