Trade unions fighting for the rights of Lidl workers
The Finnish trade union movement, even though it is strong with around 80 per cent of the working population belonging to trade unions, faces challenges in recruiting new members. Untypical forms of employment are becoming the norm in many sectors and the workforce is getting increasingly multicultural. Have trade unions been able to transform their practices to fit this new situation or do unions still live in the past where people had a job for life and all workers were Finnish?
Fighting for rights
The Finnish trade union movement was born in the late 19th century. Trade unions were formed to fight for workers’ basic rights. “The aim of the Finnish trade unions in the beginning really was to achieve acceptable basic working conditions, such as reasonable working hours, the right to paid yearly leave, parental leave and equality. For example, the eight-hour working day was achieved in 1917, the right to yearly leave in 1922 and the 40-hour working week in 1966,” says Sari Aalto-Matturi, the communications manager of SAK (Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions).
The achievements of the trade union movement are impressive but as times are changing the unions also need to change. “The role of unions is still to act as a force that pushes for continuous improvements in working conditions but there are huge new challenges, such as globalisation, more individual-centred thinking, untypical forms of employment and immigrants,” Aalto-Matturi explains.
“ In the old model of production, people worked in the same place from nine to five on a permanent contract. Now it is getting more common that you don’t know where and for how many hours you are going to work the next day.”
According to her, the trade union movement can’t just rest on its laurels of past achievements but needs to actively seek for solutions to these new challenges. “The trade union movement has been able to renew itself and will continue to do so if it can address new groups of worker’s, such as young people, people in precarious forms of employment and immigrants,” Aalto-Matturi says.
Work is changing
One group that feels that the trade unions haven’t been able to address their needs are people in precarious forms of employment. Precarity has been one of the hot topics of 2005, the Finnish word prekariaatti being familiarised by a new internet based network Prekariaatti.org. The aim of the network is to increase awareness of what it is like to live without a stable income and with continuously changing working hours and places; the reality of a growing number of young people in part-time, temporary, freelancer, agency and other kinds of precarious forms of employment.
“The Finnish word prekariaatti comes from the Latin word ‘precarity’, which means ‘being at someone else’s mercy, being uncertain, unsafe and temporary’. It means not being able to control your own life,” explains student and freelancer Anna-Reetta Korhonen from Prekariaatti.org. The activists of this network criticise trade unions on basing their work on outdated assumptions. “The trade union agenda is still based on the old model of production where people worked in the same place every weekday from nine to five on a permanent contract. Now it is getting more common that you don’t know where and for how many hours you are going to work the next day,” says Miika Saukkonen, student and Prekariaatti.org activist.
Many young people making their living from doing various different jobs and whose income is insecure don’t see trade unions as relevant organisations for them and regard them as serving the interests of permanent workers. Sari Aalto-Matturi doesn’t agree with this argument, “During the past ten years precarious forms of employment have been a central issue in SAK and a lot of work has been made to enhance the situation.”
“ Whereas the situation of precarious workers 10-20 years ago reminded me of the Wild West, now there are rules; these workers have a right to pension and to yearly leave.”
According to her, there were not many rules a decade ago governing precarious forms of employment but the situation is different now. “A lot has been achieved. Whereas the situation of precarious workers 10-20 years ago reminded me of the Wild West, now there are rules. These workers have a right to a pension and to yearly leave; a lot still needs to be done,” Aalto-Matturi explains.
Share experiences!
Miika believes that Finnish unions are doing a good job in defending the rights of those in permanent contract employment. “In situations, for example when the contract of employment is being violated, we encourage people to turn to trade unions. The problem however is that many people, for example freelancers and trainees, do not have contracts and unions can’t help them,” Miika says.
“ The short-sighted profit making mentality of firms has led to a situation where work is planned on weekly, not yearly basis.”
“What we need is a force outside the official trade union structures coming from the civil society that will defend the rights of these people. We do not claim to present all the people in precarious employment but we aim to offer a forum for people to share their experiences and problems with precarious forms of employment, to learn from each other and share strategies of resistance,” suggests Miika.
Aalto-Matturi sees the birth of Prekariaatti.org as a positive development but still thinks that trade unions have the best means to defend the rights of precarious workers. The problem, according to her, is that young people in general don’t know that unions can help them or even what unions stand for - there is a lack of information. “When I grew up in the sixties, children learnt from their parents about unions, now these issues are not discussed at home so much. At school, pupils maybe have one lesson where they hear something about unions, also the unions haven’t been able to reach out to young people well enough,” Aalto-Matturi says.
Not only for the privileged
The issue of precarity and the challenges this phenomenon poses has been noticed in PAM (Service Union United). According to Juha Ojala, the Chief Secretary of Bargaining at PAM, the term untypical form of employment is misleading as in many sectors untypical forms of employment are not the exception but the rule. Around 50% of the PAM members are in some form of precarious employment.
“The short-sighted profit making mentality of firms has led to a situation where work is planned on a weekly, not yearly basis. This means that people are hired on a weekly-basis and workers have to be willing to be flexible,” Ojala says. Ojala thinks that Prekariaatti.org has been successful in bringing attention to the issue of precarious employment. “The fact that Prekariaatti.org has been created is a symptom of the fact that so-called untypical forms of employment are getting more common. It is also a challenge for trade unions, a challenge to develop our practices,” Ojala says.
Ojala believes that even though there is always room for improvement, PAM is able to serve the needs of precarious workers well. Like Aalto-Matturi, he also thinks that the problem is that often part-time, temporary and agency workers don’t know that unions can help them. “I believe that many employers have managed to make their workers believe that unions are not for part-time or hourly workers, that these people would somehow be outside the labour regulations, but they are not. People who think that unions are only for people in permanent employment are wrong. It is precisely those in most danger of being exploited who should join unions,” Ojala says. Even though lack of knowledge is a problem, PAM does not yet have a special programme to inform precarious workers of their rights.
Can flexibility be positive?
Anna-Reetta Korhonen emphasizes that she does not want to get rid of flexibility in work altogether. “I am not against flexibility but against one-sided flexibility where only the employee has to flex. Flexibility in work should occur more at the terms of the worker; it is not right that only the employer collects the benefits it. Not everyone wants to stay in a same job for 40 years, flexibility could be a positive thing if employees would pay properly and people were guaranteed a basic income during the gaps between jobs.”
For Juha Ojala, it is difficult to accept part-time or temporary employment as a permanent solution. He believes that employment as a norm should be permanent and full-time and that other forms of employment should be the exception. “Our goal is to get rid of unnecessary part-time and temporary contracts, but we know that the reality is that these kinds of contracts are very common and we must do our best to ensure that people in precarious employment are treated as well as possible. But still I believe that it is in the best interest of part-time workers to help them get into permanent employment.”
The Lidl way
Lidl, the German retail store that opened its first store in Finland in 2002, symbolises for many the new type of employer that requires maximum flexibility from its workers. Lidl offers cheap prices but its employment practices have been widely criticised as in the MOT-programme Kallis halpahalli (Expensive Discount store) aired on Yle1 in February this year. Ojala also views Lidl’s way as problematic, “The company attitude of Lidl is very secretive, controlling and authoritative. For us, as a trade union, it is very difficult to change the Lidl attitude which is dictated from the Lidl head-office.”
Ojala is worried that Lidl’s model of offering cheap goods at the cost of employing very few permanent workers and strict worker control will be copied by other employers in Finland. The majority of Lidl workers have a part-time contract on top of which they might be offered extra hours to guarantee maximum flexibility to the company. But how does Lidl think about all this criticism?
“Daily and seasonal demand changes are considerable. We aim to serve our customers well and the use of part-time workers is inevitable. It is the normal practice of the sector to use part-time workers,” comments Antti Tiitola, the Managing Director of Lidl Finland. As shown in the MOT programme, the workers at Lidl have to submit to strict discipline. The managers routinely check workers’ bags, lockers and even cars for stolen goods. If workers bring their own food to the store, whether bought from Lidl or another shop, they need to have a receipt taped to the product with the manager’s signature.
According to Tiitola, Lidl is no exception with these practices. “We carry out the same check-ups as other Finnish retail store chains,” Tiitola asserts. Despite criticism from trade unions, Tiitola sees the relations between Lidl and PAM as good. “Co-operation between Lidl and PAM works well. Both sides have learnt to know each other better during these three years. I see trade unions as part of normal Nordic work culture,” Tiitola says.
Unions ignoring immigrants
Another challenge the Finnish trade unions have to face is the growing number of immigrants in the labour market. Until the early 1990s, the workforce in Finland consisted of mainly Finns. This was reflected in the legislation which, until early the 1990s, granted unemployment benefits only to Finnish citizens and only a Finnish national could be chosen as a trade union shop steward. Now there are more than 47,000 immigrants on the labour market and out of them almost 30% are unemployed; the unemployment rate being three times higher than among native Finns.
Many immigrants face discrimination in employment and are employed under conditions that do not always fill the legal requirements. Willie Essandor, originally from Ghana, came to Finland in 1989 and holds a Master’s Degree in Political Sciences from Helsinki University. Willie is working as a postal sorter in Pasila having worked for over two years as a regional coordinator in the ETMO project, a project to combat racism and promote multiculturalism at workplaces.
Willie joined the Postal Workers Union once he started working in Posti but says that it is not common among immigrants in Finland to join the union. “Unions need to put in a lot more effort to recruit immigrants into unions. They need to have special outreach programmes for them. These people don’t often know their rights and are desperate to get any job and so can be easily exploited by employers. Unions should tell immigrants why it is important to join the union, that the union can protect your rights at work, if you have problems with the employer the shop steward will step in,” Willie says.
The problem is often that immigrants don’t know what Finnish unions do and stand for. In numerous countries unions are either government controlled bodies or joining a union means risking your life. “In many countries union leaders and members are persecuted. Immigrants who come from these kinds of countries see unions as something they want to avoid. They might even think that being member of a union is illegal. Someone needs to tell them that the situation in Finland is very different,” Willie explains.
Illegal conditions
The problems immigrants encounter at work are familiar to trade union official Esko Auvinen, from the Finnish Construction Trade Union, since a large number of builders on Finnish construction sites come from Russia and Estonia. “Immigrants have to accept working conditions that wouldn’t ever be asked from a Finn. Russian and Estonian builders are frequently paid less than the minimum wage, have to work very long hours without being paid for extra work and are charged very high rent from shared accommodation. In many cases, the employer tells the workers not to join the union or to talk to the union or they lose their job. They would never treat Finnish workers like this,” Auvinen says.
Immigrants are often too scared to join the union in the fear of the consequences, especially workers who come to Finland through agencies controlled by the Estonian and Russian mafia. “I know cases where an Estonian agency hired worker has shown an interest in the union in Finland and after few days his wife back at home gets a visitor telling her to remind her husband not to talk about his small wage or other issues to union people,” Auvinen tells.
The traditional principle in trade unions is that only members are helped but the Construction Trade Union has at times offered its help to immigrant workers in trouble even if they are not members. “In the beginning it was difficult to explain to our members why we are using their membership fees to help non-member immigrants but now many people have understood that by helping them we are also helping the Finnish workers by trying to put a stop to the spread of unfair work practices on building sites,” Auvinen says.
More officials needed
Only few Finnish unions have taken the special needs of immigrants into account in their work. Out of the 23 unions that belong to SAK only three, KTV, PAM and the Construction Trade Union, have special campaigns to recruit immigrants. If unions fail to recruit more immigrant members there is a danger that a separate labour market for immigrants will be created in Finland, which consists of jobs that no one else wants and in which workers are extensively exploited.
Esko Auvinen believes that in addition to special programmes to recruit immigrants and having material available in various languages, unions should hire immigrant officials. “By having an immigrant official you win the trust of immigrant workers better than any campaign and, by hiring immigrants, trade unions could also be an example to other employers”.
In 2003, the Construction Trade Union became the first Finnish union to hire an immigrant official, Russian Valeri Niemenmaa who primarily serves the immigrant members of the union. “I think it is extremely important to have immigrants working in Finnish unions. It is much easier for a Russian worker to contact a trade union in often difficult matters if he knows that the he can talk to an official who speaks the same language and comes from the same culture, for example,” Valeri says.
Willie hopes that in the future there will also be more immigrant shop stewards. “There are only a very few non-Finnish shop stewards. I wouldn’t say that the reason for this is racism but many people still think that immigrants don’t understand the Finnish system and work culture and wouldn’t make good shop stewards. I hope this attitude will change soon.”
FACTS: Historical trends:
The trade union movement was born in the 19th century industrialising Europe alongside the worker’s political uprisings The first Finnish trade unions were established in the 1880s. The collective labour agreement system started to evolve in 1940s
The golden era of the trade unions was in the 1970s when the basis for the “contract society” and corporatism was established and the amount of trade union memberships increased The trend in the 21st century is to move from binding contracts to more “flexible” negotiations. Some of the Employer’s Unions have made efforts to erode the binding contract system
Trade unions and their membership:
There are 75 trade unions in Finland and three central trade unions organisations for employees: SAK (Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions), STTK (Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees) and AKAVA (Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals in Finland)
The amount of membership has been decreasing in the last few years. 85% of working Finns aged over-35 are union members and 40% of under-25s hold a membership card. Around 50% of part-time workers belong to a trade union, while 20% of working women and 13% of men are in part-time employment.
Out of the one million SAK members around 10,000 are immigrants from one hundred different countries Multicultural Board within SAK keeps in touch with organizations of multicultural field and spreads information on immigrants and working in Finland
The Finnish trade union movement, even though it is strong with around 80 per cent of the working population belonging to trade unions, faces challenges in recruiting new members. Untypical forms of employment are becoming the norm in many sectors and the workforce is getting increasingly multicultural. Have trade unions been able to transform their practices to fit this new situation or do unions still live in the past where people had a job for life and all workers were Finnish?
Fighting for rights
The Finnish trade union movement was born in the late 19th century. Trade unions were formed to fight for workers’ basic rights. “The aim of the Finnish trade unions in the beginning really was to achieve acceptable basic working conditions, such as reasonable working hours, the right to paid yearly leave, parental leave and equality. For example, the eight-hour working day was achieved in 1917, the right to yearly leave in 1922 and the 40-hour working week in 1966,” says Sari Aalto-Matturi, the communications manager of SAK (Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions).
The achievements of the trade union movement are impressive but as times are changing the unions also need to change. “The role of unions is still to act as a force that pushes for continuous improvements in working conditions but there are huge new challenges, such as globalisation, more individual-centred thinking, untypical forms of employment and immigrants,” Aalto-Matturi explains.
“ In the old model of production, people worked in the same place from nine to five on a permanent contract. Now it is getting more common that you don’t know where and for how many hours you are going to work the next day.”
According to her, the trade union movement can’t just rest on its laurels of past achievements but needs to actively seek for solutions to these new challenges. “The trade union movement has been able to renew itself and will continue to do so if it can address new groups of worker’s, such as young people, people in precarious forms of employment and immigrants,” Aalto-Matturi says.
Work is changing
One group that feels that the trade unions haven’t been able to address their needs are people in precarious forms of employment. Precarity has been one of the hot topics of 2005, the Finnish word prekariaatti being familiarised by a new internet based network Prekariaatti.org. The aim of the network is to increase awareness of what it is like to live without a stable income and with continuously changing working hours and places; the reality of a growing number of young people in part-time, temporary, freelancer, agency and other kinds of precarious forms of employment.
“The Finnish word prekariaatti comes from the Latin word ‘precarity’, which means ‘being at someone else’s mercy, being uncertain, unsafe and temporary’. It means not being able to control your own life,” explains student and freelancer Anna-Reetta Korhonen from Prekariaatti.org. The activists of this network criticise trade unions on basing their work on outdated assumptions. “The trade union agenda is still based on the old model of production where people worked in the same place every weekday from nine to five on a permanent contract. Now it is getting more common that you don’t know where and for how many hours you are going to work the next day,” says Miika Saukkonen, student and Prekariaatti.org activist.
Many young people making their living from doing various different jobs and whose income is insecure don’t see trade unions as relevant organisations for them and regard them as serving the interests of permanent workers. Sari Aalto-Matturi doesn’t agree with this argument, “During the past ten years precarious forms of employment have been a central issue in SAK and a lot of work has been made to enhance the situation.”
“ Whereas the situation of precarious workers 10-20 years ago reminded me of the Wild West, now there are rules; these workers have a right to pension and to yearly leave.”
According to her, there were not many rules a decade ago governing precarious forms of employment but the situation is different now. “A lot has been achieved. Whereas the situation of precarious workers 10-20 years ago reminded me of the Wild West, now there are rules. These workers have a right to a pension and to yearly leave; a lot still needs to be done,” Aalto-Matturi explains.
Share experiences!
Miika believes that Finnish unions are doing a good job in defending the rights of those in permanent contract employment. “In situations, for example when the contract of employment is being violated, we encourage people to turn to trade unions. The problem however is that many people, for example freelancers and trainees, do not have contracts and unions can’t help them,” Miika says.
“ The short-sighted profit making mentality of firms has led to a situation where work is planned on weekly, not yearly basis.”
“What we need is a force outside the official trade union structures coming from the civil society that will defend the rights of these people. We do not claim to present all the people in precarious employment but we aim to offer a forum for people to share their experiences and problems with precarious forms of employment, to learn from each other and share strategies of resistance,” suggests Miika.
Aalto-Matturi sees the birth of Prekariaatti.org as a positive development but still thinks that trade unions have the best means to defend the rights of precarious workers. The problem, according to her, is that young people in general don’t know that unions can help them or even what unions stand for - there is a lack of information. “When I grew up in the sixties, children learnt from their parents about unions, now these issues are not discussed at home so much. At school, pupils maybe have one lesson where they hear something about unions, also the unions haven’t been able to reach out to young people well enough,” Aalto-Matturi says.
Not only for the privileged
The issue of precarity and the challenges this phenomenon poses has been noticed in PAM (Service Union United). According to Juha Ojala, the Chief Secretary of Bargaining at PAM, the term untypical form of employment is misleading as in many sectors untypical forms of employment are not the exception but the rule. Around 50% of the PAM members are in some form of precarious employment.
“The short-sighted profit making mentality of firms has led to a situation where work is planned on a weekly, not yearly basis. This means that people are hired on a weekly-basis and workers have to be willing to be flexible,” Ojala says. Ojala thinks that Prekariaatti.org has been successful in bringing attention to the issue of precarious employment. “The fact that Prekariaatti.org has been created is a symptom of the fact that so-called untypical forms of employment are getting more common. It is also a challenge for trade unions, a challenge to develop our practices,” Ojala says.
Ojala believes that even though there is always room for improvement, PAM is able to serve the needs of precarious workers well. Like Aalto-Matturi, he also thinks that the problem is that often part-time, temporary and agency workers don’t know that unions can help them. “I believe that many employers have managed to make their workers believe that unions are not for part-time or hourly workers, that these people would somehow be outside the labour regulations, but they are not. People who think that unions are only for people in permanent employment are wrong. It is precisely those in most danger of being exploited who should join unions,” Ojala says. Even though lack of knowledge is a problem, PAM does not yet have a special programme to inform precarious workers of their rights.
Can flexibility be positive?
Anna-Reetta Korhonen emphasizes that she does not want to get rid of flexibility in work altogether. “I am not against flexibility but against one-sided flexibility where only the employee has to flex. Flexibility in work should occur more at the terms of the worker; it is not right that only the employer collects the benefits it. Not everyone wants to stay in a same job for 40 years, flexibility could be a positive thing if employees would pay properly and people were guaranteed a basic income during the gaps between jobs.”
For Juha Ojala, it is difficult to accept part-time or temporary employment as a permanent solution. He believes that employment as a norm should be permanent and full-time and that other forms of employment should be the exception. “Our goal is to get rid of unnecessary part-time and temporary contracts, but we know that the reality is that these kinds of contracts are very common and we must do our best to ensure that people in precarious employment are treated as well as possible. But still I believe that it is in the best interest of part-time workers to help them get into permanent employment.”
The Lidl way
Lidl, the German retail store that opened its first store in Finland in 2002, symbolises for many the new type of employer that requires maximum flexibility from its workers. Lidl offers cheap prices but its employment practices have been widely criticised as in the MOT-programme Kallis halpahalli (Expensive Discount store) aired on Yle1 in February this year. Ojala also views Lidl’s way as problematic, “The company attitude of Lidl is very secretive, controlling and authoritative. For us, as a trade union, it is very difficult to change the Lidl attitude which is dictated from the Lidl head-office.”
Ojala is worried that Lidl’s model of offering cheap goods at the cost of employing very few permanent workers and strict worker control will be copied by other employers in Finland. The majority of Lidl workers have a part-time contract on top of which they might be offered extra hours to guarantee maximum flexibility to the company. But how does Lidl think about all this criticism?
“Daily and seasonal demand changes are considerable. We aim to serve our customers well and the use of part-time workers is inevitable. It is the normal practice of the sector to use part-time workers,” comments Antti Tiitola, the Managing Director of Lidl Finland. As shown in the MOT programme, the workers at Lidl have to submit to strict discipline. The managers routinely check workers’ bags, lockers and even cars for stolen goods. If workers bring their own food to the store, whether bought from Lidl or another shop, they need to have a receipt taped to the product with the manager’s signature.
According to Tiitola, Lidl is no exception with these practices. “We carry out the same check-ups as other Finnish retail store chains,” Tiitola asserts. Despite criticism from trade unions, Tiitola sees the relations between Lidl and PAM as good. “Co-operation between Lidl and PAM works well. Both sides have learnt to know each other better during these three years. I see trade unions as part of normal Nordic work culture,” Tiitola says.
Unions ignoring immigrants
Another challenge the Finnish trade unions have to face is the growing number of immigrants in the labour market. Until the early 1990s, the workforce in Finland consisted of mainly Finns. This was reflected in the legislation which, until early the 1990s, granted unemployment benefits only to Finnish citizens and only a Finnish national could be chosen as a trade union shop steward. Now there are more than 47,000 immigrants on the labour market and out of them almost 30% are unemployed; the unemployment rate being three times higher than among native Finns.
Many immigrants face discrimination in employment and are employed under conditions that do not always fill the legal requirements. Willie Essandor, originally from Ghana, came to Finland in 1989 and holds a Master’s Degree in Political Sciences from Helsinki University. Willie is working as a postal sorter in Pasila having worked for over two years as a regional coordinator in the ETMO project, a project to combat racism and promote multiculturalism at workplaces.
Willie joined the Postal Workers Union once he started working in Posti but says that it is not common among immigrants in Finland to join the union. “Unions need to put in a lot more effort to recruit immigrants into unions. They need to have special outreach programmes for them. These people don’t often know their rights and are desperate to get any job and so can be easily exploited by employers. Unions should tell immigrants why it is important to join the union, that the union can protect your rights at work, if you have problems with the employer the shop steward will step in,” Willie says.
The problem is often that immigrants don’t know what Finnish unions do and stand for. In numerous countries unions are either government controlled bodies or joining a union means risking your life. “In many countries union leaders and members are persecuted. Immigrants who come from these kinds of countries see unions as something they want to avoid. They might even think that being member of a union is illegal. Someone needs to tell them that the situation in Finland is very different,” Willie explains.
Illegal conditions
The problems immigrants encounter at work are familiar to trade union official Esko Auvinen, from the Finnish Construction Trade Union, since a large number of builders on Finnish construction sites come from Russia and Estonia. “Immigrants have to accept working conditions that wouldn’t ever be asked from a Finn. Russian and Estonian builders are frequently paid less than the minimum wage, have to work very long hours without being paid for extra work and are charged very high rent from shared accommodation. In many cases, the employer tells the workers not to join the union or to talk to the union or they lose their job. They would never treat Finnish workers like this,” Auvinen says.
Immigrants are often too scared to join the union in the fear of the consequences, especially workers who come to Finland through agencies controlled by the Estonian and Russian mafia. “I know cases where an Estonian agency hired worker has shown an interest in the union in Finland and after few days his wife back at home gets a visitor telling her to remind her husband not to talk about his small wage or other issues to union people,” Auvinen tells.
The traditional principle in trade unions is that only members are helped but the Construction Trade Union has at times offered its help to immigrant workers in trouble even if they are not members. “In the beginning it was difficult to explain to our members why we are using their membership fees to help non-member immigrants but now many people have understood that by helping them we are also helping the Finnish workers by trying to put a stop to the spread of unfair work practices on building sites,” Auvinen says.
More officials needed
Only few Finnish unions have taken the special needs of immigrants into account in their work. Out of the 23 unions that belong to SAK only three, KTV, PAM and the Construction Trade Union, have special campaigns to recruit immigrants. If unions fail to recruit more immigrant members there is a danger that a separate labour market for immigrants will be created in Finland, which consists of jobs that no one else wants and in which workers are extensively exploited.
Esko Auvinen believes that in addition to special programmes to recruit immigrants and having material available in various languages, unions should hire immigrant officials. “By having an immigrant official you win the trust of immigrant workers better than any campaign and, by hiring immigrants, trade unions could also be an example to other employers”.
In 2003, the Construction Trade Union became the first Finnish union to hire an immigrant official, Russian Valeri Niemenmaa who primarily serves the immigrant members of the union. “I think it is extremely important to have immigrants working in Finnish unions. It is much easier for a Russian worker to contact a trade union in often difficult matters if he knows that the he can talk to an official who speaks the same language and comes from the same culture, for example,” Valeri says.
Willie hopes that in the future there will also be more immigrant shop stewards. “There are only a very few non-Finnish shop stewards. I wouldn’t say that the reason for this is racism but many people still think that immigrants don’t understand the Finnish system and work culture and wouldn’t make good shop stewards. I hope this attitude will change soon.”
FACTS: Historical trends:
The trade union movement was born in the 19th century industrialising Europe alongside the worker’s political uprisings The first Finnish trade unions were established in the 1880s. The collective labour agreement system started to evolve in 1940s
The golden era of the trade unions was in the 1970s when the basis for the “contract society” and corporatism was established and the amount of trade union memberships increased The trend in the 21st century is to move from binding contracts to more “flexible” negotiations. Some of the Employer’s Unions have made efforts to erode the binding contract system
Trade unions and their membership:
There are 75 trade unions in Finland and three central trade unions organisations for employees: SAK (Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions), STTK (Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees) and AKAVA (Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals in Finland)
The amount of membership has been decreasing in the last few years. 85% of working Finns aged over-35 are union members and 40% of under-25s hold a membership card. Around 50% of part-time workers belong to a trade union, while 20% of working women and 13% of men are in part-time employment.
Out of the one million SAK members around 10,000 are immigrants from one hundred different countries Multicultural Board within SAK keeps in touch with organizations of multicultural field and spreads information on immigrants and working in Finland
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