The government has finalised its bill on expanding localised labour negotiations and will submit it to Parliament.
The right-wing government aims to extend local negotiations to companies that are not under the umbrella of the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK).
The main employers’ group includes 19 employers’ unions. They in turn represent more than 15,000 companies with some 900,000 employees.
"Local negotiations will expand to tens of thousands of unorganised companies, which in the future will be able to take advantage of the same opportunities for local negotiations as organised companies within the collective agreement framework," Employment Minister Arto Satonen (NCP) said at a press conference on Thursday.
The law will enter into force at the beginning of next year, assuming it is approved by Parliament, where the four government parties have a solid majority.
Another key change is related to who on the employees’ side can enter into a local agreement with an employer. Under the bill, local agreements can be reached even in companies where there is no shop steward.
According to Satonen, unorganised companies are now attaining an equal status as organised ones.
"This is a historic reform that several governments have tried to accomplish. Now it will come true, as the government approved the proposal today, on Entrepreneurs’ Day," said Satonen, a millionaire real estate developer.
Unions slam proposal
The employees’ side has strongly criticised the proposal, which some see as an effort to help companies to ‘divide and conquer’ workers. According to the employees’ side, the law will undermine employers’ desire to join employers’ associations and threaten the general binding nature of collective agreements.
Traditionally in Finland, such broad contracts have been hammered out between large unions and employers’ groups, with mediation and incentives provided by the government if needed.
According to Nico Steiner, a senior ministerial adviser at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, the law may decrease companies’ desire to leave organisations, when it becomes possible to negotiate locally as well.
Satonen said he did not expect any significant impact on employers’ organisations.
Labour market analysts have expressed concerns that employee unions will be less willing to participate in local negotiations in the future if the bill is approved. Finland’s biggest trade union, the Industrial Union, has even suggested it might refuse to take part in localised labour negotiations if the changes are pushed through.
The bill is being sent for parliamentary consideration just before the next round of collective agreement negotiations. Talks start in the technology and chemical industries later this month and in October.
The draft law was originally prepared in a tripartite working group, which disagreed over the final wording. Changes have been made to the draft since it was sent out for a comment round.
Last autumn and winter, labour unions staged waves of political strikes to protest what they saw as the pro-business government's moves to curtail the rights of workers and unions.
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