Policy|Government actions
The impact of the restrictions planned by the government on the number of strike days, employment and GDP is minimal, according to the preliminary impact assessment of the Ministry of Labor and Economy seen by HS.
The government the planned restrictions on employees’ right to strike will have little economic impact, the Ministry of Labor and Economy estimates.
The assessment made by the officials is not yet public, but Helsingin Sanomat has seen it. The impact assessment is preliminary, which means it can still be refined in further preparation.
“The employment impact of the law change will probably be a few hundred person-years of employment as a whole, as the national economic impact of the proposal is estimated to be quite small,” the impact assessment says.
The government intends to limit the maximum duration of political demonstrations to one day, prohibit disproportionate support strikes and tighten the fines imposed for illegal strikes.
“A conservative estimate is that the number of working days spent on strikes would decrease by 5-10 percent with the change in the law.”
Roughly the Ministry of Labor and Economic Affairs estimates that the planned restrictions on the right to strike can increase Finland’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 10–40 million euros annually. Last year, the gross domestic product was around 266,679 million euros.
However, from the point of view of individual companies, the benefits of a reduction in strikes can be significant, the impact assessment states.
“The changes improve the predictability of the working conditions system and reduce the employer’s risk that an important task will be prevented due to a surprise and unforeseen strike.”
Employees from this point of view, according to the Ministry of Labor and Economic Affairs, the key thing is that the right to industrial action “is not restricted at all to the extent that the dispute concerns the wage conditions related to the employee’s own work”.
For example, limiting subsidized strikes may, however, weaken the position of wage earners in some sectors.
“The consequence can in some cases be weaker working conditions from the point of view of wage earners, especially in weakly organized sectors or sectors where the pressure value of one’s own labor struggle is not sufficient.”
In the impact assessment it is stated that in Sweden, an important competitor country, there are fewer labor market disturbances than in Finland. According to the assessment, restrictions on the right to strike can improve companies’ “investment security”.
“However, overall, the effect will probably be quite limited due to the fact that the estimated effect of the proposal on the number of strike days is quite moderate.”
The right to strike limitation has been discussed by the Minister of Labour Arto Satonen (kok) in the tripartite working group appointed since the summer. According to the legislative plan, the government’s proposal is to be submitted to the parliament at the beginning of the year.
The wage earner side strongly opposes the planned changes.
For the government, improving labor peace is one of the means mentioned in the government program to improve employment by 100,000 people.
Based on the impact assessment of the Ministry of Labor and the Economy, the role of restricting the right to strike in achieving the goal remains minor.
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