Trade unions have few means to increase employment

Only head of academic confederation has concrete proposals

Lauri Ihalainen

Mikko Mäenpää

Risto Piekka

Leif Fagernäs

Jussi Järventaus

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By Marjo Ollikainen
     
      "The employment rate is a huge cause for concern", frets President Lauri Ihalainen from the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK).
      The bosses of other trade union confederations share the same worry: Finland will suffer if the employment rate does not improve.
      Despite this fact, the actual measures to improve employment that trade unions can produce seem to be very scarce.
     
When trade union leaders are asked how they would raise the employment rate, the answers are full of familiar jargon.
      By investing in top-flight know-how as well as in research and development, answers the choir of key trade union Presidents: blue-collar boss Lauri Ihalainen, Risto Piekka from the Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals (AKAVA), and Mikko Mäenpää from the Confederation of Salaried Employees (STTK).
      The people have been numbed with the unemployment jargon years ago. Nevertheless, it is difficult to squeeze clear Finnish from union bosses when demanding concrete proposals on how to create more jobs in Finland.
     
"Jobs cannot be devised with any special measures", Mikko Mäenpää points out.
      According to Mäenpää, Finland will see more jobs if it has products that meet with demand.
      "We need to be competitive in product know-how, manufacturing, marketing, and sales, as well as in research and product development", he explains.
      Lauri Ihalainen also believes in high-quality products and services: "We need to know how to specialise in a smart way, because a small country cannot excel at everything."
     
Let us pop into the Pasila district. Even though Risto Piekka starts out with the know-how babble, he can also immediately propose "three central measures" for the employment question.
      "The cutting of income taxes must be continued further. That will maintain consumption demand, which creates jobs. Mandatory employer contributions must be lowered, and the tax deductions of households as employers must be developed."
      Piekka points out that the baby-boom generation that grew up in post-war Finland will have more assets when it retires than previous generations. They have money to spend on health care services, among others. "In this sense, expanding the range of households’ tax deductions is significant."
      A new class of heirs is also being created in Finland as only children begin to inherit both parents.
      "It is possible to create jobs in the service sector in particular. At present, our private service sector is underdeveloped", Piekka says.
     
In addition to know-how, Mäenpää and Ihalainen would also focus on the training of employees.
      "I think it is great that there is qualified staff in Finnish restaurants, compared to the U.S. where there are people working part-time with small wages who do not know at all how to do the job", Mäenpää muses.
      To him, the continuing education and training of adults is also a moral issue. "A good living environment, welfare, and quality are linked with aiming to develop and respect a person’s work and skills in all sectors."
      In other words, if investments and made in training, employees can produce competitive, high-productivity services.
     
We have not come up with a magic trick either, admits Director General Leif Fagernäs from the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK). However, this does not mean that EK would not have its familiar, but clear proposals.
      "Let us start with taxation. Make it so that a person always gains from working rather than living off social security. Income tax progression must be decreased so that expertise, education, and personal development is always worthwhile."
      Fagernäs feels that the labour market should allow for flexibility – at least in times of crisis.
      "That would mean company-specific flexibility in working hours and other employment conditions. This does not mean abandoning the minimum wage, except in the case of unskilled labour that is employed short-term."
     
Because Finland now needs to import welders even from as far away as Kazakhstan, Fagernäs says that measures must be taken so that fewer Finns fall through the cracks after ninth grade.
      "The respect for vocational education must be increased. That should not pose a problem, as professional craftsmen earn reasonably well. Training in adulthood must be developed, and our universities no longer rank at the top either", he lists.
      Managing Director Jussi Järventaus from the Federation of Finnish Enterprises would again like to strengthen apprenticeship training, concrete learning that happens at a workplace.
     
All find one culprit for the low employment rate in the country. Those companies that do not seek growth strongly enough do not invest domestically, nor do they develop or market their good ideas themselves, but sell them abroad.
      "If we do not get growth-oriented firms to proliferate and invest, we may be in trouble", Ihalainen predicts.
      Fagernäs and Järventaus agree.
      The five bosses blame the lack of entrepreneurship on a company-negative atmosphere as well as on excessive bureaucracy.
      Järventaus maintains that the risks of entrepreneurship should be decreased.
      "Personal bankruptcies should be made less severe. In addition, the corporate tax reform was left halfway, there are not enough incentives for entrepreneurship compared with earning a wage", he explains.
     
The quintet assures me nevertheless that Finland is not at all in a desperate situation.
      "Our success is mostly linked to the decisions we make ourselves", Järventaus observes.
      Finland cannot succeed if the EU does not succeed, Piekka and Mäenpää point out. "The development of the EU must become a project with which all of Europe answers globalisation. The EU must be raised again, and it should be the top priority in Finnish politics. Without it we cannot manage", Mäenpää remarks.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 26.3.2005

More on this subject:
 COMMENT: Familiar answers
 FACTFILE: Finland threatened by economic tsunami

MARJO OLLIKAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
marjo.ollikainen@hs.fi