Legislation and collective agreements happily mix in the discussion, writes HS’s politics editor Robert Sundman.
Technical A few years ago, the industry’s trade unions investigated the labor market knowledge of their young members.
It was completely unclear to several engineers or graduate engineers in their 20s and 30s what kind of issues have been agreed upon in the collective agreement of their field and what the law says.
Many respondents mistakenly believed that, for example, the conditions of paid parental leave or the care of a sick child and the salary for sick leave are determined by the law, not by the collective agreement.
The notion that the law would have stipulated some kind of minimum wage was also persistently repeated. Salary amounts are not found in Finnish legislation.
The wrong ones perceptions are not surprising.
Collective agreements apply to such a wide group of Finns that they are in a way taken for granted in working life. And when something is self-evident, you rarely think about it terribly.
Ministry of Labor and Economy the report made at the end of 2019 89 percent of wage earners were covered by collective agreements.
In the public sector, i.e. the state, welfare regions and municipalities, collective agreements apply to everyone.
In the private sector, 65 percent of wage earners worked for organized companies, but due to general commitment, the coverage rose to approximately 84 percent.
Bridge at the moment it seems that Petteri Orpon The (kok) government is implementing several labor law reforms.
It is the labor market registrations that have come up in the public debate at the beginning of the government election. In particular, the government’s intention to make the first day of sick leave unpaid has been talked about.
In this discussion as well, legislation and collective agreements have been happily mixed: changing the law precisely because of the entries negotiated in the collective agreements would hardly apply to the vast majority of Finns – at least not immediately.
Instead, it is possible that the matter would come to the negotiation tables of the unions as a pawn: something for which the cost impact would be calculated and trade would be conducted.
Of course, the situation will also be affected by how much the essence of the entire collective bargaining system will change if Orpo’s government is able to carry through the reforms it has planned.
Politicians are also capable of obscuring the discussion on the matter themselves.
Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Sari Essayah (kd) regretted at the government’s first joint information conference that there is incorrect information in circulation: the registration of sick leave would not affect the care of a sick child.
“We have a separate temporary childcare leave if the child gets sick,” Essayah said.
Essayah is right that “temporary care leave” is found in the law, and instead of sick leave, this leave is used in such a situation.
On the other hand, the law does not guarantee a salary for temporary care leavers at all – neither for the first nor for the second day. Instead, the salary for that period is stipulated in several collective agreements.
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