Difficult choices of the trade union movement

Preface

Liberal winds have been blowing in our country. Market forces are to be given more room, among other things in the name of Finland’s EU integration. This has generally meant an assault on certain institutional boundary conditions of markets rather than a genuine effort to increase competition. The most significant of these boundary conditions are our welfare state in its current scope and the trade union movement.

Economic arguments have been put forward for dismantling the welfare state, and it is no coincidence that the political offensive is striking simultaneously at the Finnish trade union movement. After all, a strong trade union movement has been one of the central architects of the welfare state both here and in the other Nordic countries. Virtually every incomes policy settlement since 1969 has included some social reform benefiting the entire population of our country. Thanks to the state-corporatist negotiating mechanism, the trade union movement in Finland has moderated its wage demands in the name of improving general welfare and increasing the collective “good.”

The trade union movement’s capacity for reform has, however, withered in the early 1990s, at the same time as the welfare state has begun to be cut back and the movement itself has had to settle for moderate solutions in its wage demands — solutions that even reduced wages during the recession years. After two decades of offensives, the trade union movement in Finland, as elsewhere, has found itself drawn into a wide-scale defensive struggle that directly concerns the conditions of its very existence.

The trade union movement’s self-defence does not take place on only one front. It is now required, more than ever before, to justify its existence to its members at the same time as it must negotiate with employers and the government. Although membership numbers in the trade union movement have remained stable or even increased slightly during the recession, research indicates that members’ relationship with the movement has continued a change that began already during the period of growth. This is reflected, among other things, in the fact that trade union activists are withdrawing from activity and no new ones are appearing to replace them.

The growing pressure on the Finnish trade union movement is gathering clouds on the horizon of its future. The position of the trade union movement in Finnish society is no longer self-evident. Many changes lie ahead that are already visible in international developments. This makes mapping the current state of the trade union movement a challenging research task.

In the present work we focus on the one hand on creating a framework for the later parts of our study. On the other hand, we seek to map as thoroughly as possible both the external social change factors of central importance to the trade union movement and the internal dynamics of its activity. More precisely, our intention is to examine the impact of the deepening of cultural-economic modernisation — primarily 1) individualisation, 2) the restructuring of labour markets, and 3) changes in work organisations and the negotiating system of labour relations — on a) the Finnish trade union movement as a whole, and b) the relationship between members and the trade union movement. Our presentation is general and exploratory in seeking a theoretical framework, representing the first phase of the study.

Prof. Kaj Ilmonen was responsible for chapters I–III, chapter VI, and subsections 1–4 and 7 of chapter VII. Licentiate of Social Sciences Kimmo Kevätsalo was responsible primarily for chapters IV–V and subsections 5–6 of chapter VII. We have, however, commented on each other’s texts throughout the work and made use of parts of each other’s texts when writing our own sections.

We have received continuous assistance in our work from the skilled staff of the Labour Institute for Economic Research, and up-to-date information from both trade unions and central trade union confederations. For comments on our text we are indebted to Jorma Antila, Raija Julkunen, and Jouko Nätti. Funding for the first phase of our work has been provided by the Finnish Work Environment Fund. (AI translation)

Helsinki, 15 October 1995
Kaj Ilmonen
Kimmo Kevätsalo

• ISSN: 1236-7176
• ISBN: 951-9282-90-4