Finnish government attacks the Nordic Model!

Nordic Public Service Unions (NOFS) follows the situation in Finland with great concern. Last week the Finnish government launched an austerity package on the labour market. The package includes a number of measures to be imposed on workers by law when the collective agreements expire. This marks a shift from the existing tradition of negotiations, well established in Finland and the other Nordic countries. Negotiations between independent partners in the labour market is the core of the Nordic collective bargaining model and a foundation for the Nordic social model. This system is now under attack by the Finnish government.
By enforcing these measures on working people and ignoring collective bargaining between the social partners restricts their freedom of negotiation. This can be questioned in relation to both the Constitution and international conventions Finland has commited to. ILO conventions 87 and 98 are two of these just to mention a few. The Nordic Public Service Unions fears the consequences of such ignoring of collective bargaining rights in a longer term. We therefore fully support the entire Finnish trade union movement in their demonstrations on Friday September 18. We also urge the Finnish government to respect basic trade union rights and withdraw the proposed measures and leave negotiations to the social partners.

Kjartan Lund
General Secretary
Nordic Public Service Unions (NOFS)

Nordic Public Service Unions (NOFS) is a federation of the Nordic Publlic Service Unions that are affiliated to the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU). NOFS brings together 39 unions from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, representing 2 282 000 members.