Police salary sufficient for an ordinary everyday life

A senior constable earns around EUR 2,400 - 2,600 a month

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By Annakaisa Pirilä-Mänttäri
     
      Amidst all the articles about options millionaires falling on harder times or CEOs who have seen their incomes soar in the past twelve months, it is perhaps necessary to turn to something and someone closer to real life.
      Senior Constable Satu Mäkinen has wanted to be a police officer ever since she was a girl.
      The 30-year-old Mäkinen knew full well when she sought to get into the profession that she was not about to get overly rich on a law enforcement officer’s salary. Before she joined, money was not a subject she gave much consideration. After the event, it was not something that was much worth thinking about.
     
By way of example, Makinen - who works in traffic surveillance and on call-out duties (uniformed "blue-light" work) - earned EUR 32,000 before deductions last year, with an annual take-home pay after taxes of around EUR 24,000.
      For a basic police officer’s salary this is on the higher side, since it includes not only holiday pay and various add-on allowances, but also an exceptional amount of overtime.
      A senior constable doing the same sort of tasks will expect to earn from EUR 2,400 to EUR 2,600 a month on average.
      "Anyone can do the maths and think whether they would go into this line of work for this money."
     
Given the risks involved in police duties, Satu Mäkinen regards her salary as modest at best. When you are called out on an emergency, officers never really know what might be waiting for them, for example on a late-night "domestic" in a private home.
      Police officers are often left with lingering unpleasant thoughts about the nature of their work, particularly cases that involve children.
      "But when you are at work it is easier to take it than when you are off-duty", Mäkinen says.
     
The thick layer of butter on the bread of the options millionaires does not leave Mäkinen feeling embittered. She respects the work she does and she senses that others have respect for the profession.
      "Some just get more at the end of the month than others. It’s a cold, hard fact."
      Mäkinen would also not be prepared to change professions in the hope of a bigger pay-packet. She stresses that she does not belittle the work done by anyone, but appreciates in her own chosen field the fact that her days are not spent sitting in front of a computer display unit.
     
The basic starting salary for a police constable is EUR 1,597 a month. In Mäkinen’s case, this basic salary is swelled with a Helsinki allowance, a uniform-branch allowance for public order work, a personal supplement, and a supplement based on her experience on the job.
      These combine to push the figure up to EUR 1,750, on top of which come shift bonuses for night work and weekends.
      "When the payslip comes, everyone laughs and says they don’t know what they are going to do with all the money", snorts Mäkinen.
     
A policewoman living on her own, Mäkinen has got used to living according to her means. She is paying off the bank loan on her apartment (two rooms, plus kitchen and sauna/bathroom/wc), and she pays for her keep-fit hobbies, and still does not need to keep a meticulous watch on her spending on foodstuffs.
      If there is any money left over at the end of the month, she deposits it in a long-term interest-bearing account, where it serves a dual role as a travel fund and something in case of a rainy day.
      "One of these days I’d like to take off for Africa for several weeks. I don’t know when that might become a reality", muses the Helsinki policewoman.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.11.2004
     
Note: On average, Finns earned EUR 2,322 a month in 2003. The mean male salary was EUR 2,581, and the mean female salary was almost exactly 80% of this, at EUR 2,065. The mean monthly figure for the CEOs of the 20 largest Finnish companies by turnover was EUR 69,091. This falls to EUR 58,155 if the top earner, Nokia Chairman and CEO Jorma Ollila, is removed from the equation. Without Ollila, who actually saw his earnings decline sharply through reduced options income, the mean monthly earnings of these executives rose by 8.7% from 2002 to 2003.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Additional income sources add considerably to wages of civil servants (5.11.2004)
  Taxation of highest incomes has decreased more than national average (2.11.2004)

ANNAKAISA PIRILÄ-MÄNTTÄRI / Helsingin Sanomat
annakaisa.pirila-manttari@hs.fi