Saturday guests Tehyn Rytkönen: If there is no money from the state to increase the salaries of caregivers, the agreement will not be or will be short

RäväkäN Tehy, chairman of the trade union reputation Millariikka Rytkönen has fought hard for better pay and working conditions for carers.

The reason for the leader of Finland’s largest social, health and education trade union is clear: “This mound is so deep.”

The negotiations on the new collective agreement, which officially began on 11 January, have not yet set precise percentages for the table.

The current agreement expires at the end of February.

Municipal sector The six contract sectors together have more than 425,000 employees, of whom about 40 per cent work in nursing.

The new area of ​​contract is the social and health care collective agreement, which covers 177,000 employees.

There is a consensus on both sides of the table that the industry has not agreed so far Increases of 1.8-2.0% visits municipalities and associations of municipalities.

A couple of percent increase in wages is far too little for employees and far too much for employers.

“Always they say there is no money, but at least based on last year’s municipal tax revenue growth, it looks like there is money. The year 2021 is already the second surplus in a row, ”Rytkönen reads preliminary data.

The other party to the negotiations, the Employers of Municipalities and Welfare Areas, on the other hand, often presents calculations, according to which, for example, increases of EUR 100 in the monthly salaries of municipal employees would have a cost impact of almost EUR 1 billion.

The municipal wage bill, including ancillary costs, is more than 22 billion euros.

Negotiations the starting point is thus already familiar, but the corona pandemic has now brought a huge amount of support to carers’ wage demands from both the people and politicians.

Admittedly, the same pandemic melted in its early stages, in the spring of 2020, the wage demands and strike weapons tuned by the organizations.

In 2019, Tehy and Super suggested that the gaps should be closed with a pay program that would raise caregiver salaries by 1.8 percentage points annually beyond the male-dominated wage increases in the male-dominated sectors for ten years.

The cost of the program would be € 100-150 million per year.

But where would the money for payroll programs and extra increases come from?

“The solution is quite simple,” says Rytkönen.

“At the negotiating table, the result is negotiated, and money is received from society, ie from tax funds.”

According to Rytkönen, the tax increases are still unreasonable to intimidate.

“No society-funded activity is granulated with tax increases. Destroyers are also procured without eartags, ”says Rytkönen.

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“We’re not going to make a long and bad deal, we’d rather negotiate a new one in the fall.”

I do the chairman is downright provocative about the other municipal sector views of employees’ organizations, according to which there is no realism that caregivers should come to negotiations now more than others.

“Yes, it is quite possible and it would not be out of the reach of others. After all, we are not bitter for doctors, but we work with them side by side in everyday life, ”Rytkönen dispels the envy that drives organizations to compete with each other.

“It feels wild that if an instance represents caregivers, it should not speak for them,” Rytkönen says.

Rytkönen also reveals a contingency plan if Tehy and its sister organization, the Finnish Association of Nurses and Primary Nurses, do not succeed in their goal now.

“If there is no extra money in the payroll program from the state now, there will be no new contract or it will remain a really short piece of contract. We are not going to make a long and bad agreement, but we will rather negotiate a new one in the autumn, ”Rytkönen says.

Most commonly, collective agreements are agreed for about two years, although the second year in the agreements now concluded with industry is also the so-called option year, the terms of which can be negotiated separately.

KT is seeking an agreement of at least two years.

One The reason for the possible fragmentation agreement is, from Tehy’s point of view, the SOTE reform, which will create new welfare areas at the beginning of next year.

The reform will transfer more than 170,000 employees and officials from municipalities, associations of municipalities and hospital districts.

Before the regional elections, the equalization of wages demanded by the reform came up for discussion. Wages are to be harmonized within welfare areas so that no one’s pay goes down. In practice, salaries would be adjusted to the highest salaries.

The adjustment must be made within a “reasonable time”, ie within a few years.

Read more: “The most important thing is that salaries and bills are paid and no one dies” – This is the cost of the change

Employer links the TES negotiations with those required for wage harmonization in welfare areas additional costs, accruing at least hundreds of millions of euros.

Employers fear a permanent rise in wage levels, even if the state comes to the rescue.

Rytkönen rejects the connection.

“KT is now trying to shuffle the soup. After all, harmonization does not even affect everyone and does not really increase the salaries of carers other than a few euros. For example, a monthly salary of EUR 2,500 can be increased by five euros, ”Rytkönen gives an example.

The differences between the availability and other supplements currently paid by doctors from different employers can be several hundred euros a month.

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“How will the situation be improved by chartering even lower paid workers from developing countries into the low-wage sector?”

Worsening labor shortages have forced municipalities and care companies also attract caregivers especially for the outermost regions with various cash bonuses and better working conditions.

Even in the regional elections, the issue was the pull and holding force of the social and health care sector, which is also being tried to improve in a working group set up by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.

Their first suggestions on education, international recruitment and well-being at work, the group presented in mid-January. The actual proposals are due to be discussed in the government’s framework debate in early April.

Rytkönen, who is part of the working group, says that he is “slightly amused” about his work, because wages are limited to a matter belonging to the labor market organizations.

“Salaries are very important, but we can’t talk about them!” Rytkönen wonders about the strict demarcation.

Read more: More training and investment in well-being at work would help the team ease the shortage of nursing staff

“True I guess there are other measures to alleviate the labor shortage in the care sector and save costs, such as digitalisation in appointments and renewal of prescriptions, ”Rytkönen admits.

Workers’ organizations do not completely knock out work-related immigration either, but they also see financial and ethical problems in it.

“How will the situation be improved by chartering even lower paid workers from developing countries into the low-wage sector?”

Rytkönen points out that people from the Philippines, for example, come to Finland who have received nursing training, but they have to work as a nursing assistant or institutional caregiver here or they are trained as local nurses.

The Social and Health Care Licensing and Supervision Agency, Valvira, has also recently said that it is important that graduates of nursing in the Philippines are recognized as nurses in Finland, rather than being recruited as nursing assistants.

In the care industry According to Rytkönen, the attractiveness in Finland would be increased not only by pay but also by improving working conditions, and this is also the case in collective bargaining.

“The issue of working time is important to us. Most have three-week shift lists, but today an employer can announce that they will change them suddenly and unilaterally, ”says Rytkönen.

“A caregiver can practically never have a holiday in peace, and even public holidays are split up so that there are no full days off.”

Shift planning as the creation of shift lists is close management.

“However, one ward manager, ie the immediate manager, can have 160 subordinates, which is too much,” says Rytkönen.

According to Rytkönen, poor management has already increased the ethical burden of caregivers to be unsustainable.

“Yes, this area must be saved now,” Rytkönen says resolutely, but also finds joy in the regional election results.

Nearly a hundred artisans were elected to regional councils to decide on future social issues in welfare areas.

“I am extremely proud of our members, whose professionalism and expertise Finns trust.”