Trade Union
Union density is high in Finland, with almost three-quarters of employees in unions. Individual unions, which have considerable autonomy, are organised in three confederations, broadly along occupational and educational lines. The three confederations are SAK, STTK and AKAVA.
There are 2.2 million trade unionists in Finland. Not all of these are in the workforce, with a significant number being retired, unemployed or still students. But even when this is taken into account, a very large proportion of employees are union members. A regularly repeated survey undertaken by Statistics Finland found that union density was 74% in 2008.1 This is higher than the estimates of a comparative database of union membership, based on earlier figures, which put union density at 70.0% in 2010.2
There are three trade union confederations in Finland. SAK is the largest with 1,043,000 members (January 2010). It predominantly organises manual workers, although around a third of its members are non-manual. STTK is in second place with 614,000 members (2010). It organises the majority of non-manual workers. AKAVA, the third largest Finnish union confederation, has 546,000 members and organises graduate employees. The three confederations work closely together and there has been a co-operation agreement between them since 1978. There is, however, some competition between STTK and AKAVA for graduate employees.
All three confederations are made up of a number of separate affiliated unions, although recent years have seen a number of union mergers.
SAK has 21affiliated unions, primarily organised on an industry basis. The largest SAK affiliate is JHL, the union for the public and welfare sectors, which has 222,500 members and which was created through a merger involving six unions in 2005. The next largest is PAM, which represents workers in the private services sector and has 221,300 members. The metalworkers’ union with 160,900 members is in third place. An attempt to bring a number of SAK unions, including the metalworkers, together in a major merger failed in June 2009, when a minority of delegates at the metalworkers’ conference was large enough to reject the plans. However, a merger between the unions for the chemical and the media workers went ahead at the start of 2010, creating a new union TEAM with 66,900 members.
Affiliated unions have their own constitutions and have considerable negotiating autonomy.
STTK has 20 affiliated unions organised both by occupation and industry. Currently its largest affiliate is the health union TEHY with 150,000. The second largest is the Pro union, with 130,000 members. It is the result of a merger between TU, which organised non-manual workers in private industry and industrial services and the finance union Suora, agreed in December 2010. The merger had initially been more ambitious. However, two early candidates the media union MDU and ERTO, a union organising some administrative workers pulled out. In addition not all Suora members joined the new union. Those at the Nordea Bank, decided to set up their own STTK affiliated union, while Suora members, working in the state-owned alcohol business joined the third largest STTK union, Pardia, which organises employees in central government, and has 60,000 members.
AKAVA with 34 affiliates is organised occupationally. Its largest union, OAJ, which represents teachers, has 120,000 members and the second largest, TEK with 72,500 members, organises graduate engineers.
Politically SAK has no formal links to any political party but it is close to the social democratic party the SDP. Overall, the political links may have become less important, although the three largest SAK unions provided money to the SDP in the election campaign in 2009, and the Left Alliance (Vasemmistoliitto) was also supported by some SAK unions to a more limited extent. The two other confederations emphasise that they are not party political.
The level of trade union organisation in Finland remains high, in part because unemployment benefits are often paid through the union. The Statistics Finland surveys show union density falling slightly from 73% to 72% between 1984 and 1990, then rising to 79% in 1997, as the economic crisis of the 1990s made it sensible to be a union member and benefit from increased support during potential periods of unemployment, before falling back to 77% in 2003 and 74% in 2008.3
Unions increasingly recognise that they need to take active steps to recruit those joining the labour market if they are to maintain their strength and influence. Young people are a particular target and the unions encourage students to join – AKAVA, for example, has more than 100,000 students in membership, who belong to a special student council AOVA. This has helped AKAVA’s membership to increase sharply in recent years, going from 375,000 in 2000 to 546,700 in 2009.
