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15 January, 2007
Finland’s national trade union centre, SAK, has given the issue of contract and agency labour top priority in the nation’s parliamentary elections, and promises it will be a primary topic in parliamentary discussions on the opening of labour markets following the 18 March elections.
A SAK task force has already worked out proposals to protect workers employed under fixed-term contracts or by agencies, a phenomenon that has increased dramatically in the Nordic nation in recent years. Finland legalised agency labour over a decade ago. Legislation, however, has not kept pace and offers little in the way of protections for contract workers.
One proposal by SAK would be to make agency workers regular employees of the job agencies, a remedy which would guarantee them certain salaries even during periods when their agencies are unable to find them work. SAK believes adoption of such a proposal would limit redundancies of regular workers in favour of contract workers.
Another proposition by the task force is to give shop stewards the right to represent contract workers or agency labourers at their worksites. This would also include the right of shop stewards to have full information on the pay, benefits, and working terms of contract or agency labour.
SAK’s agenda is not one to eliminate the use of contract or agency labour. “For some people, such as students, fixed-term employment and agency labour may be proper,” states SAK’s Nikolas Elomaa, the confederation’s expert on working conditions. “However, the rapid growth of agency-hired work and its expansion to industries it was not meant to be applied to is worrying.”
SAK estimates that 2005 revenues of labour agencies doing business in Finland topped €650 million.