Teachers laid off in municipalities

As a result of the bad economic situation in Finland's municipalities, teachers are being temporarily laid off in spring 1998. The OAJ teachers' trade union is placing the blame for the lay-offs on the municipalities, which in turn are blaming the OAJ, because it has not accepted agreements on cost savings, and the state, because of cuts in government subsidies.

Following the recession, Finland's municipal authorities have ended up in a difficult economic situation. At the same time as their tax income has decreased due to unemployment, government subsidies have been reduced, leading to a need to economise. The health sector has been subject to a drastic programme of cuts, and now it is the turn of education (FI9711141N). The municipalities will lay off many teachers for one to four weeks during the spring of 1998. The problem of lay-offs has worsened rapidly and they now concern 45 municipalities, 11,600 teachers and 125,000 comprehensive school and college pupils (20% of the total).

According to the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (Suomen Kuntaliitto, SKL), alternatives were offered to the lay-offs, such as agreements providing for a partial exchange of holiday pay for free time. SKL considers that the national policy of the Trade Union of Education in Finland (Opettajien Ammattijärjestö, OAJ) has hindered such agreements, and that teachers would have been willing to accept the economy measures unanimously in order to prevent disruptions in teaching. For its part, OAJ declares that the reason behind the lay-offs is the reduction in governmental subsidies. The lay-offs could have been implemented during the summer vacation, but OAJ would have interpreted this as a cut in pay. The head of education at SKL, Matti Rasila, takes another view of the matter: "If cost-saving agreements are used, then the number of free days accumulating will mean 75% less lay-offs. The cost-saving agreements will concern only a small proportion of the teachers at a time, so agreements can be timed without rendering work in schools more difficult" (quoted in the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper on 19 April).

According to the law, the municipalities are obliged to provide teaching, and the Minister of Education, Olli-Pekka Heinonen, considers that pupils are not receiving their statutory education (Helsingin Sanomat, 1 April). The municipalities are defending themselves by saying that they have drifted into economic difficulties because of cuts in taxes and governmental subsidies. At the same time, the demand for municipal services has risen, while expenditure on education has risen drastically during the past decade. Furthermore, the Government has cut its subsidies to the municipalities by one-third. The Government, on the other hand, is accusing municipalities of artificially improving their economic situation by laying off personnel.

The cuts in government subsidies to education arise from the reduction in public expenditure in general. A partial reason behind the cuts lies in the tight criteria for EU Economic and Monetary Union.