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Disagreement on pay rises brings to an end confederation level collective
bargaining
Helsinki (05.10.2011 - Juhani Artto) Negotiations for a comprehensive
income policy agreement ended on Tuesday after failure to reach agreement on
pay rises. The
two employer confederations (Confederation of Finnish Industries EK and
Local Government Employers KT) offered 2.4 per cent for the first 13 months
and 1.9 per cent for the following 12 months.
The union confederations SAK and STTK turned down the proposal as too low.
The third union confederation Akava would have liked to continue the
bargaining process and wait and see what kind of tax cuts Prime Minister
Jyrki Katainen
would promise to smoothen the path towards a confederation level agreement.
After SAK's and STTK's rejection EK's Director General Mikko Pukkinen stated
that EK will not make any new offer and that the confederation level
negotiations are now over. In practice, this means that collective
bargaining will go on between the sector-based labour market parties i.e.
between individual trade
unions and the employer organizations in various industries.
And indeed this has been the bargaining model in recent years. The expiry
dates of
hundreds of collective agreement vary. Just now the most important
bargaining is taking place in the technology industry. In that particular
sector agreements covering
some 250,000 wage and salaried employees expired on 30 September, and on
Tuesday unions
warned of strike action against 44 companies, covering 32,000 wage and
salaried employees. An overtime ban for the whole technology industry has
been
in force since Tuesday afternoon.
The collapse of the confederation level negotiations means that the common
understanding on the so called qualitative issues will not lead to any
concrete changes. According to Akava, the negotiators had agreed on small
improvements in paternal leave and unemployment compensation. Agreement on
improvements in regards to regulations on temporary employment and agency
labour
had also been reached, Akava adds.
"The pay rises and the qualitative issues did not constitute a satisfying
entirety", was the way STTK's President Mikko Mäenpää summed things up.
SAK's board came to similar conclusions. The quality package included
several good measures but with the low level of pay on offer the employers'
proposal could not be accepted, SAK said in its brief statement.
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