Flexible working time agreements rare for blue-collar workers

Pay and working hours are largely determined by national agreements in Finland, but employers have increasingly argued the case for more localised deals in recent years. A recent study carried out by the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions has shown that while locally negotiated agreements on flexible working hours and the use of working time banks are uncommon in blue-collar sectors, they do markedly increase job satisfaction and make workers happier.

Background

In recent decades there has been tension in Finland between centralised and decentralised models of wage and working hours bargaining. The role of local, company-level agreements within Finland’s traditionally centralised bargaining system has been a source of controversy in the country’s industrial relations.

For some time, the employers’ Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK) has argued that pay increases should be based on the increase in productivity in each sector, rather than on the ‘pay norm’ in which the overall average rate of productivity growth determines wage rises in all sectors (FI0806029I).

EK has also strongly supported flexible working time arrangements as a way of helping companies respond to fluctuations in demand.

Conflict between the centralised and decentralised bargaining models has led to continuing national pay settlements (FI1110011I) and, in recent years, an increasing number of decentralised local and company-level agreements.

Traditionally, unions have backed centralised bargaining and the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK) in particular has been sceptical about a greater role for local bargaining.

However, SAK has recently conducted a comprehensive study of local bargaining that shows local-level agreements on working hours and different kinds of flexible working time arrangements have been quite popular where they offer workers the possibility of determining how and when they will work, and the opportunity to bank hours worked to add to annual leave.

Flexible working time unusual among blue-collar workers

The SAK Working Conditions Survey 2012 was carried out in February and March 2012 through interviews with 1,207 SAK-affiliated trade union members in employment. It shows that local agreements on working hours, including flexible working time, have been popular.

These types of local agreements cover a wide range of working time issues such as flexible working days and the timing of working hours, breaks and vacations. Often these arrangements have been put in place through local applications of collective agreements.

However, they are less widespread among blue collar workers in the sectors represented by SAK than among those in clerical occupations.

The survey suggested that Finland’s reputation for having the most flexible working hours in Europe largely reflected the demands of employers and production processes for night work and shift work rather than a widespread access of all types of workers to flexible hours. Few blue collar workers in the sectors covered by SAK have any choice about the hours they work.

Only 16% of workplaces in sectors covered by SAK offer any kind of working time bank (where workers can save time worked to take as time off later), and only 15% offered flexible working hours.

Explaining the findings, Juha Antila, Head of SAK’s Development of Working Life Unit, said:

The members of SAK-affiliated trade unions have considerably less say in arranging their own working hours than employees in clerical occupations. Indeed our much-discussed most flexible working time in Europe has largely been dictated by the needs of production and employers. Shift work and night work, for example, are more common in Finland than elsewhere in the European Union, and are also strongly concentrated in sectors organised by SAK trade unions, with 39% of their members doing regular shift work.

The study also shows that a flexible response by employers to working hours improves job satisfaction. Workers on flexitime schemes were noticeably happier than employees with fixed hours, about half of them describing themselves as ‘highly satisfied’ with their hours of work. .

Commentary

Current Finnish collective agreements allow a relatively broad scope for collective bargaining on terms and conditions of employment at the workplace level. The opportunities for local bargaining vary between industries and also between companies in certain industries, but the SAK survey shows that blue-collar occupations in particular are an area where local agreements are still quite unusual.

Pertti Jokivuori, University of Jyväskylä