Fundamental rights related to social partners

Participants considered that social partners benefited from a solid framework and a long tradition of tripartite dialogue. The Finnish system provided for the adequate involvement of social partners and CSOs in the legislative process from the upstream phase, in the form of participation in governmental working groups. Participants felt that compared to some other countries, there was no topic which was too sensitive to be discussed in these frameworks. The government always involved the social partners in questions concerning wages or labour and social legislations, but also in position papers on EU matters. In addition to structured consultations, ministries were also quite accessible for more informal exchanges.

Participants explained that the practice of social dialogue had evolved over the past few years – drifting away from collective bargaining at national level – and social partners were still looking for a new negotiation model. Participants explained that employers, in particular in the forestry and technological sectors, withheld from negotiations at national or sectoral level, preferring negotiations at company level to better face global competition. The Finnish authorities explained that a tripartite working group was discussing the future of collective bargaining in the country, but that no significant steps can be expected before social partners agree on such a model. 

Participants explained that a package to support employment in the context of COVID-19 was negotiated at the beginning of the crisis, covering aspects such as employment, social benefits and company operations. Healthcare workers had been put under intense pressure by the pandemic. Exceptional measures imposed overtime work and forced vacationsto be postponed. After the crisis, nurses went on strike to demand better working conditions.

Social partners had sought to learn lessons from the crisis to prepare tools to act against possible new crises in order to maintain the resilience of companies and workers in such situations. Their reflection also extended to challenges posed by technological changes such as artificial intelligence, for example. The objective was to make the most of such changes for lifelong learning, upskilling and reskilling, 
rather than letting social partners be victimsto societal changes.

One participant explained that the right to strike was well protected and recently used by groups including nurses and teachers to demand better working conditions. The participant however also evoked the case of the Finnish postal service's attempt to prevent postal union action by threatening to resort to temporary workers during the strike. Several workers lost their pay for refusing to train these temporary workers, which led to a case at the European Court of Human Rights.

Participants explained that the labour market in Finland was strongly segregated along gender lines compared to other Nordic neighbours. Only a very small minority of sectors boasted a near-equal repartition between male and female workers. The persistent gender pay gap in the country resulted from this uneven repartition throughout the sectors more than from individual differences within companies. Young professionals' career choices were still strongly influenced by traditional models, with men rarely seeking careers in areas seen as female sectors. The Finnish authorities informed about the existence of a tripartite programme on equal pay and a tripartite working group on pay transparency, and about ongoing research and evaluations on these questions.