Labor market | The Ministry of Finance’s Majanen wants to meet the trade unions as the labor market knot tightens – Flashes tax cuts if wage increases fall short of predicted inflation

Ministry of Finance (VM) head of office Juha Majanen plans to meet the leaders of the trade unions to discuss with them the situation of the autumn collective bargaining negotiations. According to him, the different parties should now be able to look in the same direction when it comes to salary solutions.

“Based on the publicity, the preconceived notions are pretty wild,” he tells STT.

The labor market situation is difficult, because the nurses’ salary increases are still not agreed upon and the negotiations on the private side are about to start in the fall. The trade unions have negotiated with each other and alternately announced that they want at least the same as the other unions.

Due to the rise in prices, the salary increase pressure on wage earners will be felt in the autumn negotiations. Majanen understands the wage earners, but still hopes that a very moderate wage solution will emerge at the labor market tables.

Majanen has assessed for STT that salary increases should not exceed the estimated inflation for next year. According to him, the estimate of inflation is currently around three percent.

Super and Tehy have demanded a five-year salary program in connection with salary increases, which would bring an additional 3.6 percent increase every year for five years on top of the general salary increase line. According to Majanen, wage increases higher than inflation would trigger a difficult and long-term cycle.

Majanen wants to find out about the caregivers’ situation.

“What’s there Milla-Riikka Rytkönen and Silja Paavola do you really think that how do we proceed from this now?”

Rytkönen is the chairman of Tehy and the chairman of Paavola Super.

The government various ministers have emphasized along the way that they do not want to intervene in salary issues and have insisted that it is a negotiation issue between labor market organizations.

In the summer, the government’s top two, the prime minister Sanna Marin (sd.) and the Minister of Finance Annika Saarikko (middle), however, guided the nurses more and more directly. Marin said in June during the prime minister’s interview session that the nurses could very well have taken the other public sector’s solution. Saarikko said in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat that he wonders the same as the prime minister.

Read more: Minister Saarikko: We can’t necessarily afford significant tax reductions

On Wednesday, Saarikko said that the reduction of earned income taxation is a possibility only if we can be sure that the labor market organizations will agree on a reasonable salary solution in the fall. However, he also emphasized that they should only be implemented if the threat of a recession in Finland increases.

Both Majanen and VM’s budget manager Mika Niemelä in an interview with STT on Tuesday, they linked the tax cut to the wage rate and the prospect that the Finnish economy would enter a recession next year.

Super’s Paavola has taken a critical approach to reducing salary increases with tax cuts, as tax cuts would weaken the public finances, from which nurses receive their salaries. Industrial union Riku Aalto has struck down the combination of tax cuts and wage increases. On Wednesday, STT also reached out to Rytkö to comment on the offer, but he was on vacation.

The government and it is difficult for the Ministry of Finance to follow salary negotiations from the sidelines, because next year the welfare regions will pay the nurses’ salaries. The state, on the other hand, finances welfare areas.

A solution to the difficult dispute in the municipal sector was sought throughout the spring. In June, an agreement was reached on working conditions in the municipal sector for the next three years. In addition to salary increases according to the general line, a five-year salary program was agreed upon for employees in the municipal sector such as teachers, librarians, bus drivers and doctors, with which salaries will increase over five years by a total of 5.1 percent in addition to normal contractual increases.

The nursing organizations Super and Tehy first rejected the conciliation board’s proposal earlier in the spring, and they were not involved in the public sector solution made in early summer, but are continuing their own negotiations for an even better salary increase.

The Conciliation Board, which was chaired by the Undersecretary of State of the Ministry of Labor and Economy Elina Pylkkänen, was set by the government. The board was reportedly also well informed about the work of the conciliation board.