Poll: municipal workers would like at least the same pay hikes as others

Day care employees get plenty of sympathy, but how far will it go?

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Pay negotiations in the municipal sector are in trouble. On Sunday, unions representing Finland’s municipal employees unanimously rejected a proposal for a new labour contract, and there is currently no indication when the talks might resume.
      A survey commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat and conducted by Suomen Gallup finds that although their pay is acknowledged to be at the low end of the scale, municipal employees generally have fairly modest expectations for the upcoming round of talks.
      A majority of municipal employees say that they would be happy with pay increases that are at the same level as those of other sectors this spring.
     
“Our pay has never increased very much. We often get praise and good feedback from parents. Basking in that glow, we just push forward”, says Pirjo Elomaa, a worker at the Särki day care centre in the Helsinki district of Lauttasaari.
      A majority of employees in the municipal sector feel that pay levels among nurses, and those in social services are too low. Nearly half of respondents say that teachers are underpaid.
     
In the autumn of 2008, the average pay for kindergarten teachers, with extras, was EUR 2,275 a month.
      Kindergarten teachers get plenty of sympathy from other municipal workers, the families of children, and from the public at large, but the sympathy is not reflected in their pay.
      “I don’t think that it is fair. In this sector, pay has not risen in the way that it has in many other sectors”, says kindergarten teacher Tuija Pasanen.
     
In the ongoing contract talks, the Association of Kindergarten Teachers in Finland (LTOL) wants to raise the earnings of its members to the same level as that of other municipal employees with equivalent levels of education.
      Employees in the day care sector have a fairly high threshold to strike action. The last time that kindergarten teachers went on strike in Finland was in the 1980s.
      One of the staff members at Särki, Johanna Veistinen, remembers the situation. “I don’t remember what good the strike might have brought. There were no radical changes”, Vestinen says.
     
Industrial workers can easily calculate how much their action costs an employer. The costs and benefits of child day care are not that easy to quantify in monetary terms, as the results of their work is often not seen until decades later.
      For instance, the guiding principles at Särki are supporting a child’s emotional life and social growth, awakening a desire to learn, growth partnership, and a secure growth environment. It is not very easy to convert the benefits of this work into pay demands in collective bargaining.
      Does this mean that it is easy to shrug off pay demands of day care personnel?
      “That’s just it. We are so terribly nice”, Elomaa says.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Municipal employees reject contract offer (1.2.2010)

Helsingin Sanomat