In short
- Collective agreements are negotiated between employee and employer representatives and are field or company specific.
- Conditions such as holiday bonuses, longer sick leave benefits and paid parental leave are covered by collective agreements. They also require the election of workplace shop stewards.
- Union lawyers can pre-check your working contract or support you in workplace legal disputes without cost, if you're a member.
When working in Finland, there are three levels of protection underneath you. On the bottom level is the law, which governs the most basic of rights and conditions, setting minimum baselines for every employee in Finland. On the top level is your employment contract, which is specific to yourself and in a high level of detail.
In between these two levels are collective agreements. Just as your contract cannot contain anything against the law, it also cannot break the relevant collective agreement. The agreement contains information such as the lengths of paid sick or parental leave, entitled holiday benefits, and what compensations for travel are owed. Together these are of huge importance, both to the finances and to the wellbeing of workers. The collective agreement also includes the length of a workday, and hence when extra pay must be rewarded for overtime. In law, this is set to 40 hours per week.
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Perhaps most crucially, the collective agreement contains the only guaranteed salary rise for workers. Read more on page How can I ensure a good salary?
These agreements are negotiated between employer and employee union negotiators (for TEK, this means YTN for the private sector and JUKO for the public sector). Negotiators are typically union employees, and multiple unions therefore work together in collective bargaining. The agreements negotiated also benefit non-union members.
Increasingly, agreements may instead be negotiated at company level (company specific agreements). Ideally, these should build on the collective agreement conditions in a way that better suits the workplace.
For most employees, it is hard to notice this system happening, because strikes are incredibly rare, especially for unions with highly educated members such as TEK. Negotiations generally lead to successful results because of the high unionization in Finland.
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Shop stewards act as the eyes and ears for the collective agreement negotiators within workplaces. They also represent the senior salaried employees ('ylempi toimihenkilö') of the workplace in all matters related to the employment relationship and in issues relating to the application of the collective labour agreement. For employees, they are a vital point of contact about workplace concerns.
When no collective agreement is in place, an elected representative instead is elected. Find out more from YTN here.
Read more about work life in Finland
TEK's lawyers are also here for you
You are not expected to be an expert on work life law – for that there are union lawyers to contact.
Our lawyers can be contacted for free by members, for example to pre-check your employment contract, helping to make sure it is both legal and fair to you. They also advise on work-related legal matters, such as what to do when laid off and what rights and compensations you are owed.
Owain Hopeaketo
