Week 2, Trade Unions and Employment Laws
Let’s imagine that John Silver is 16 years old teen, who desires
small rowing boat for himself. To pursue his desires, he decides to start
working in local store. His daily chores are to clean store, organize shelfs
and other errands appointed to him. Now he doesn’t know much about labour laws,
so he is satisfied with whatever salary he is getting. Of course, not knowing
labour laws, he is assuming he doesn’t need to join union because of his young
age, besides he has known store owner for couple years already. Together with
agreement, they decided to pay-out salary in cash every two week, thus there is
no official document of employment. First couple weeks, was alright for John,
he worked 8 hours a day, and was happily
counting days to get his new rowing boat. First problem was encountered when it
was time for his first salary, employer complained there isn’t much work now,
so he will pay in couple days when he gets more money. A week past, before
employer paid John’s fist salary in cash. Within a month work load increased
day by day. Also, all the breaks started to disappear slowly. And it took
longer for employer to pay John’s salary. By the time summer vacation was over,
employer owed John salary worth of 2 month, and was paying small amounts a week
at a time. Eventually it took employer 6 month to pay rest of John’s salary,
leaving John’ without rowing boat he wished for. Without legal employment
documents, or membership of union, there was no one to help him out. He had to
contend with his fate. Learning from his mistake, next summer he joined union,
and for every job opportunity, he handed contract first to union lawyers to see
if there is anything shady or not.
This might be exaggerated to you, but this is based on true story
that happened to close friend of mine(name is obviously changed, and he wanted
car not rowing boat.). It is true that many people think, union is waste of
money, especially in Finland, because unemployment money received from government
is almost as much as money received from Trade Union, if you include other
benefits, such as housing support etc. But one need to keep in mind, that Trade
unions are not only to pay you in time of unemployment, but also to help you
out when you are mistreated in work, get fired without valid reasoning, or are
not compensated enough per trade union laws. In trade union, mass is organized
to help one each other. Mass can bring your voice to employers and government
better than one voice. One of the greatest examples in history is generally is
all slave rebellions. Slaves rebelling for better treatment by “owners”. If we
compare past slave rebellions into the present time. Slave owners would be
“employers” getting richer by hard work slaves “employees” do. Unsatisfied
people together have brought down kings and queens of great empires.
Very “first labour” strike recorded in history is in 1619, by
Polish craftsmen, which occurred in settlement of Jamestown in the Virginia
colony. (1) Denying Polish craftsmens voting right in first election of colony,
led to strike. Soon after strike, colonial leaders had to bow to the pressure,
because of the importance of these craftmens. Leaders were afraid of loosing
income and labor. In Europe, Labour movement started during Industrial
revolution(1760-1840). (2.) At the time forming labour unions was forbidden,
leading punishment of several groups
Human Resources Management is tool, new field to bring
satisfaction to both side, Employers and Employees together. Humans have come a
long way since age of slavery, and Employers realize by satisfying employee’s
needs, there will be less strikes affecting production lines. However, Trade
unions is widely practised and campaigning on behalf of employees only in
western countries i.e developed countries. In many eastern countries,
especially in middle-east and far-east (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, China) Trade
unions are not visible or not actively fighting for employees right, or because
of strict regulations and media coverage for certain topics, they are not as
visible. ALL-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) which is nationalised
organisation is the largest trade union in the world with 134 million members.
Trade Unions & FINLAND
Not founding official figures, I expect there to be over ten of
thousands of Trade unions worldwide. Generally, the intention of these unions
are to unify workers of specific field to secure their employment rights
through strength in numbers method. In Finland, there is three Trade union
“federation”;
-
SAK (Suomen ammattiliittojen keskusjärjestö)
-
STTK
(Toimihenkilökeskusjärjestö)
-
AKAVA
(Korkeakoulutettujen työmarkkinajärjestö)
Correspondingly there is
four employer unions;
-
EK
(the confederation of Finnish Industries EK)
-
KT
(Local Government Employees)
-
VTML
(The office for the government)
-
KiT
(The Labour market organisation of the Church)
Trade Unions negotiate collective labour agreement with employer’s
association. For example, those working in restaurants and other service
industries, PAM from employee’s side and MARA from employer’s side will
negotiate for collective agreement for their field together, which includes
negotiation of salary raises and working conditions. Not only negotiating
collective agreement, trade unions responsibility is to control interests of
employees and follow that collective agreement. In return Trade unions are
offering to their member’s protection against unemployment and against
mistreatment in work life. Also, providing lawyer services for usage of their
members. To sum it up, main function of unions is to not only support common
interest of its members, but also to protect and defend them by being mediator
between workers and employers, also result of ideals of fairness and equality
on most cases of people rebelling against central government and big companies.
Employees in Finland are very actively joining to
trade unions as soon as they enter work life. From this pie-chart(figure 1) I
made you can spot three federation which are coalition of several trade unions.
Biggest federation is SAK with 992 716 members, second is STTK with 608 000
members and last one is AKAVA with 596 947 members. Together they have 2 197
663 members in whole of Finland. For comparison population of Finland is 5 509
329 people. That is almost 40% of whole population of Finland. (3,4,5,6) For
comparison there was around 6,5million trade union members in the UK in 2015. Population
of UK is approximately 65million people. Amount of trade union members is only
10% of whole population. (7,8)
Figure 1 - members of trade unions
Trade union Lawsuits
Trade Unions are in many countries slowly loosing grip and
members. Lately trade unions have been more active by filing several lawsuits. This
could be seeing as one way to grow trust towards unions once again. They are
suing not only private sector employers but also public sector and governments
for mistreat of employees. In 2016 Union of Croatian Education Workers filed 4
lawsuits against government on behalf of teachers whose salary was not
increased as in agreement. (9) In another case trade union PAM in Finland have
filed lawsuit against government owned Alko for salary of additional working
hours of their employees. (10)
Sources;
2.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement
7.https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/525938/Trade_Union_Membership_2015_-_Statistical_Bulletin.pdf
(trade union members, page 3)
10. http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-8011933
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