COMMENTARY The political memory is hard to measure

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By Jaakko Hautamäki
     
      There is no precise information on the length of the public's political memory.
      According to the ballpark estimates of many politicians it is around three months.
      Well, drink-driving convictions for MPs and ministers - and other upheavals in their personal life - will probably linger in the public mind a while longer, but not even these things have eternal life.
     
Right now it is being remembered that the National Coalition Party spoke about an “equality incomes agreement” in the run-up to parliamentary elections in March.
      We recall that party chairman Jyrki Katainen, then in opposition but now the Minister of Finance, commented at the time that hitherto the male-dominated industrial trade unions had determined what would be suitable salaries for women.
      He has talked again about this recently, after a short intermission.
     
So far the National Coalition Party has not really dared to make a big song and dance about women’s salaries, but a year from now things could be very different when the political memory of the details of the recent nurses' labour dispute have become a little blurry around the edges.
      The Swedish People’s Party pledged before those same elections that it would put more hands on the health care deck.
      Now we have seen the impending resignations by the nurses of TEHY averted by a productivity arrangement that is built on better rewarding a small number of hands.
      Nobody will remember that promise, either.
      At least not unless someone actually goes around counting the number of hands engaged in looking after the elderly.
     
Just a week or so ago, the opposition in Parliament attempted to refresh the voters’ memories of the National Coalition Party’s promises, at the point when everything appeared to be going pear-shaped. This was at the passing of new “patient protection” legislation that would permit local authorities to order nurses taking part in a stoppage to do jobs seen as necessary for the survival of patients.
      As things are at the moment, the National Coalition Party leaders are hoping and praying that everything will turn out alright in the end on the premise that people will see the NCP as the ones having raised the nurses’ salaries.
      Then again, the victory won by TEHY after their bold action seems to be shrinking day by day.
      The deal cut in last-minute panic is still going to be interpreted and pored over years from now. As are the clauses on productivity.
     
Will the National Coalition Party also be keen to prick our collective political memory when the selfishness of the TEHY nurses spreads to other groups?
      Will it be remembered that the NCP’s efficiency-driven thinking in labour disputes is that not even human lives matter very much?
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 22.11.2007


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Nurses: contract accepted, resignations cancelled, disagreement on implementation (20.11.2007)
  Parliament passes text of patient protection bill (13.11.2007)
  Health care workers threaten mass resignation in labour dispute (10.10.2007)
  Vanhanen lashes out at Tehy and political opposition (22.11.2007)

JAAKKO HAUTAMÄKI / Helsingin Sanomat
jaakko.hautamaki@hs.fi