HS Analysis | Nurse unions fell far short of their goals: this is how wages rise

Nurses the long labor dispute was resolved on Monday, when the parties accepted a national mediator Anu Sajavaara settlement proposal. Both the employer side and the employee side feel that they have won, and they are quite divided on the content of their agreement.

Tehy and Super consider that they succeeded in negotiating their own salary program for the social security sector. According to the employers’ side, the Municipal and Welfare Area Employers (KT), on the other hand, nursing unions have to settle for the same salary program as the rest of the municipal sector.

Read more: An agreement was reached in the nurses’ salary dispute, the threat of mass layoffs recedes

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On the surface, the result may look good to the nursing unions.

Differences in interpretation despite this, it is clear that the nurses’ unions fell far short of their goals. They are demanding a five-year wage program that would increase wages in the industry by a total of 18 percent in addition to the normal general wage increases.

Now the nurses’ unions have reached an agreement in which salaries will be increased by a total of 11 percent over the course of five years on top of the normal increases. When normal increases are included, salaries will increase by at least more than 17 percent in five years.

That means increases of at least three percent every year. Increases are distributed locally, which means that not all employees in the industry receive the same amount of increases.

On the surface, the result may look good to the nursing unions. The rest of the municipal sector agreed on a salary program in the summer, in which additional salary increases will come in five years for a total of 5 percent. The nurses’ unions say that they have received 6 percentage points more, i.e. more than twice the salary program.

However, this is not the case.

The employer’s side According to KT and the national conciliator, the nurses’ unions did not succeed in negotiating a salary program better than any other municipal sector.

According to them, the additional increases of six percent come from the so-called wage harmonization money, which will be used to increase wages in the social security reform in any case.

Wage harmonization means harmonizing the wages of employees in new welfare areas. According to the law, the salaries of persons working in the same positions must be equalized so that other lower salaries are increased. KT had previously calculated that the price of statutory coordination is about six percent of labor costs.

According to KT and the mediator, the “own salary program” marketed by the nurses’ unions as a profit is actually money that the nurses and other workers in welfare areas would have received anyway by law.

I agree at the press conference after the announcement, Tehy’s chairman Millariikka Rytkönen and chairman of Super Silja Paavola denied that they agreed on salary harmonization at all.

According to them, the additional increases of six percent were a negotiation win.

However, the differing interpretations of KT and the national mediator are supported by the wording of the settlement proposal. According to the proposal, the six percent increases will be used “for harmonizing salaries, developing salaries and/or introducing salary systems”.

Regarding the first year’s increase batch, it is said separately that “the batch will be allocated locally in each valid pricing point to other than the top job-specific salaries of the level groups”. When salary increases are aimed at salaries other than the highest, the later need to coordinate salaries is reduced.

Text based on this, the parties have expressly agreed that the money will be used to coordinate salaries.

The employer’s side therefore considers that it did not have to make much additional concessions to the nursing unions, but rather that the agreed wage increases seem to eat away the statutory need for harmonization.

Those who led the conciliation board in the spring Elina Pylkkänen and Martti Hetemäki presented already in August the use of salary harmonization money as a solution to a labor dispute. The nurses’ unions rejected the proposal because, according to them, statutory salary harmonization cannot be agreed upon in salary negotiations.

Wage harmonization due to the complexity, it is difficult to get full clarity on how good or bad the agreement is for the nursing unions in the end. It’s still clear that they didn’t get the big negotiation win they’ve been longing for for years.

In 2007, Tehy pushed his labor dispute to the end, and applied for salary increases with the threat of mass layoffs. This time, the nursing unions said they were preparing mass layoffs, but the threat never materialized. For one reason or another, Tehy and Super left their strongest cannons unused.