This spring marks 70 years since TEK’s first elections. At the time, however, no one talked about “TEK’s elections,” because in 1956 the elections were organised by the Suomen Teknillinen Seura ('Finnish Technical Society') and Korkeakouluinsinöörien ja Arkkitehtien Keskusliitto ('The Central Association of Polytechnic Engineers and Architects'). These two organisations later merged in 1993 to form the TEK we know today.
What differences and similarities have elections had over the decades? TEK’s history describes the first elections like this: “The council elections held in 1956, 1958 and 1962 do not appear to have aroused much interest or passion among the organisation's members. The elections were mainly personal elections, and the voter turnout was apparently low. -- Electoral alliances were formed for the first time in the 1964 elections, mainly based on professional fields or on current issues related to the organisation's activities.”
In slightly more recent history, electoral alliances were already an established practice. In the early 2000s, electoral alliances' electoral officers (vaaliasiamies in Finnish) played an important role in recruiting candidates, even though they themselves were not allowed to run.
“If the electoral officer worked at, say, Neste or Fortum, quite a few candidates came from Neste and Fortum,” Matti Hirvikallio recalls. Hirvikallio served as secretary of the election committee in the 2005 and 2008 elections and retired from TEK in 2010.
The committee’s tasks were the same as today: to implement the council elections. Its agenda included electoral areas, the election compass, choosing the voting method and approving candidates.
“In February 2008 a few candidates were disqualified. One had quit their TEK membership even though they were standing as a candidate, one had never been a member at all. One candidate was listed twice on different lists; they were accepted on only one. Things like this happened when electoral officers enthusiastically recruited candidates.”
Coffee for voters and the election compass
There was plenty of enthusiasm and innovative ideas about how to raise voter turnout.
“Traditional methods were considered, like giving coffee packets to voting members. One parliamentary candidate had done this in national elections,” Hirvikallio says with a wink.
“In the 1978 elections the turnout was 50.2%. In the 2008 elections it was 24.7%. We discussed a lot about how to get it up.”
One method was the election compass, where candidates could create profiles and answer election compass questions.
“The committee was very eager about the questions. I drafted the first version, but the office representative hadn’t fully grasped the issues, so the committee refined them. Eventually we had ten questions.”
But the impact of the election compass remains a mystery.
“I saw in my notes that only a little over 1,000 voters used the compass, even though tens of thousands were eligible to vote.”
Setting the lines
In 2008 the election committee renewed the division of electoral areas into the current southern, western, eastern and northern districts. Members may vote only for candidates from their own area.
One proposal was two areas: Uusimaa and the rest of Finland.
“Looking at member numbers, that would have been almost equal. We discussed this actively but ended up with four.”
Women and retirees were active
At the time, the law did not allow purely electronic elections. The Associations Act changed in 2011.
“There were proper paper forms, ballots were sent to members and they sent them back, then they were counted. Finnish Posti handled the process.”
A separate counting meeting was held at the Posti premises, where the votes had arrived. The election committee reviewed the counts, noted invalid votes and approved the result.
“I wrote down that in the 2008 elections over 40% of 65–85-year-olds voted, while among 25–50-year-olds the figure was only 20%. The number of women elected to council seats was much higher than their share of the membership: 41% of those elected were women, while only 19% of eligible voters were women.”
A “megalomaniac process” that didn’t end with the election
In the 2000s, council groups prepared a joint programme after the elections, outlining priorities for the coming council term — similar to today’s council agreement.
The process stirred passion, as each group wanted its own ideas included.
“I was pulled into that work. In my notes I wrote: ‘a rather megalomaniac process.’”
“For example, compensation for overtime and promoting university education in engineering were typical priorities, and once they were written into the programme, they were reflected in budgets. That’s why the programme was important.”
Source of the opening quote: Aunesluoma, Juhana 2004: Nykyaikaa rakentamassa – Tekniikan Akateemisten Liitto TEK edeltäjineen 1896–1996. Otavan Kirjapaino Oy, Keuruu.
An "Organisation Engineer" across three decades
“I came to work at the Suomen Teknillinen Seura in 1975. The office was then at Yrjönkatu 30, from where we moved to Itä-Pasila to Huhtamäki’s office building together with Insinööriliitto and Ekonomit at the end of the 1970s.”
During his 35-year TEK career, Hirvikallio took part in many things: leading TEK’s research, handling European organisational relations, and serving as interim executive director for six months. He describes having done “everything except heavy-onthe-liver advocacy work.”
“Labour market research was already done back then. We also made a pocket-sized statistics booklet — ‘every member’s statistic’ — that fit neatly between calendar pages. We also conducted international comparisons; once we calculated how many months of work it took in different countries to buy a Ford Mondeo.”
“We also developed the concept of the ‘hidden engineer’, when we calculated how much indispensable unpaid overtime the engineering community was doing. According to our research, 5,500 hidden engineers worked tirelessly for the society's benefit in 2008.”