World class wobbler producer Rapala cuts jobs in Finland, increases in Estonia

New Light on Rehabilitation for the aged

Lifelong learning gains ground rapidly in the graphical industry

Union leaders and activists need new skills in the Russian crisis economy:
Finnish unions support training courses in Republic of Karelia

Cross-border sympathetic industrial action in EU countries: Legal conditions vary widely, concludes a major new study

On Vacation

A Father’s Role

Nordic cell production model outpaces Far-East assembly lines: Factory work no longer going to cheap labour countries*

Helsinki (25.10.1998 - Maarit Huhtaniemi**) Anja Lamberg is a mechanic who assembles frequency transformers. She earns much more than a mechanic in Asia. However, her weekly working hours at the ABB factory in Helsinki are shorter than those in Far-East industrial plants.

Since the Asian devaluation spiral one might think that transferring production from Finland to cheap labour countries would be more profitable than ever. Finnish companies disagree.

It is the production model that makes the difference between a cheap labour country and Finland. On an Asian assembly line women sit side by side performing work divided into short stages. In Finland there are often production cells made up of multi-skilled employees. The cell assembles the product from beginning to end according to the customer's order.

"Here a worker knows the production process for 10 to 20 different products", explains ABB health and safety manager Taisto Flinkman.

According to Juhani Pylkkänen, a technology director in the same company, independent work teams function poorly in low-income countries because of differing educational levels and working culture.

"In China a young woman who comes from the provinces to work, for instance, knows only one work stage after a year in an electronics factory", notes Rami Raulas, head of the Finnish subsidiary of Japanese computer producer Fujitsu.

Nowadays customers mainly make complementary purchases so the employee must know how to make only a few components of a certain model at any one time. While an Asian assembly line factory churns out huge amounts of a single product, Fujitsu's plant in Espoo, near Helsinki, produces more than 7,000 different models.

The Nordic countries have been pioneers in cell production methods.

The Chief Executive of Fujitsu was shocked when visiting the computer factory in Espoo in the early 1990s. "Microcomputers are not made this way", he said, horrified by the absence of an assembly line. "But the customer wants it done in this way", was the answer which the Finns used to calm down the indignant Japanese.

Nowadays, the Chief Executive himself lectures on the advantages of customer oriented production. Factories are also closing their assembly lines in Japan in order to pay closer attention to the needs of customers.

Raulas has no worries that Fujitsu's computer factory will be transferred from Espoo to a lower wage country. On the contrary, since the mid 1980s European production has been transferred into Finland and Germany.

Eero Eloranta, Professor of Industrial Economics at Helsinki University of Technology, is also ready to debunk the persistent myth of the inevitable transfer of production to cheap labour countries.

"In such countries the labour force is cheap, but the level of skills is not very high", he says. "The key criterion nowadays is no longer labour cost but overall productivity and quality."

Factory managers now swear by customer oriented production. There is no point in moving capital and goods and in having work done before there is a paying customer.

Labour costs are not significant if most of the overall production cost depends on other expenses such as the use of machinery and raw materials. It would likewise make no sense to move the factory to a developing country unless there was a skilled labour force there.

"Here labour costs account for only a few per cent of the price of a finished product. Problems in material flows or unnecessary maintenance can easily become more expensive than the payroll", Raulas notes.

Savings also mean needing fewer supervisors and quality controllers than there are in an assembly line factory. Employees get a share of the savings in the form of idea bonuses. "Many improvements in products and in production processes come from the factory floor", says Raulas, expressing his gratitude to his skilled staff.

The cell production model has also improved job satisfaction. An ordinary working day can look very convivial. A few employees just sit and the work seems to advance slowly. According to Pylkkänen effective production at ABB does not demand an especially tight rhythm of work.

"Here there is more democracy than, for instance, in the United States, where work is more conditioned by the machinery", Pylkkänen says.

Seeking maximum benefit from an expensive machine often means shift work. Cell factories also operate in shifts, but the greater degree of independence allows more flexibility in working hours. Both ABB and Fujitsu have employees who prefer 12 hour shifts compensated by extra days off.

The division of production models cannot be made solely in terms of geography as Europe still has a variety of factories. Moreover, cell factories in Nordic countries have not been an overnight success. The idea of independent cells was enthusiastically received in car factories as long ago as the 1970s, but at the start of that decade Saab had to close down its new cell factory in Malmö in Southern Sweden.

At ABB we don't talk about self-regulating but rather independently operating cells and teams. "Workers do not regulate themselves. The origins of both product and production lie in the needs of the customer", explains Taisto Flinkman at the frequency transformer factory.

Fujitsu also experiments with forms of work organisation differing from pure cell production. Some of the employees assemble computer circuit boards and mechanical parts in advance, but hard disks, memory and processor chips - the parts which most rapidly fall in price - are installed only after the order has been placed.

Professor Eloranta thinks that the most effective way to improve western factory efficiency in recent years has been by refining their logistics. This means rationalising the flow of capital and materials. After delivery the invoice is quickly despatched, but processing incoming invoices is not so urgent.

In Eloranta's opinion there is no need to fear the countries of the Far East as it is rational to serve Europe with products produced in Europe. Local networks are playing a more important role than ever. Mother factories often concentrate on assembling while everything else is shared between subcontractors. Thus, a local subcontractor may become cheaper.

"It seems to me that the proportion of local subcontractors is growing", Raulas notes.

The actual mother factories generally either employ fewer or the same number of workers as before, even though there are more end products. At the same time in Finland a huge army of subcontractors has come into being over a short period of time.

While the ABB frequency transformer factory employs over 500 workers, its subcontractors already have 3,000 employees. When transferring production, ABB has endeavoured to avoid redundancies by redeploying workers to other jobs.

This is not possible in all companies. Sometimes work which is divided into short stages goes to other companies or other localities. Work stays in Finland, but those who do it may change.

* The article was originally published in Helsingin Sanomat, the leading newspaper in Finland.

** Maarit Huhtaniemi is a Finnish journalist working for Helsingin Sanomat

© Maarit Huhtaniemi

World class wobbler producer Rapala cuts jobs in Finland, increases in Estonia*

Asikkala (13.10.1998 - Lauri Muranen**) Rapala is transferring its labour intensive production stages from Asikkala in Finland to Estonia. The company currently employs about 60 workers at its Estonian factory in Pärnu. As Rapala's production grows and natural wastage reduces the number of staff in Asikkala, the company is employing more workers in Pärnu.

Production manager Juhani Pehkonen refers to a transfer of 40 jobs within two years as the rate of job reductions in Asikkala and job increases in Pärnu.

"At the moment we have about 240 employees in Asikkala. In two years we shall still have more than 200 jobs." Pehkonen emphasises that the reduction will be based entirely on natural wastage.

He pledges that the Asikkala plant will continue to be the group's main factory. "Nobody has questioned this at any stage."

The most demanding aspects of wobbler production will continue to be concentrated in Asikkala. Semifinished wobblers will be sent for further processing to factories in Estonia and Ireland.

The fate of Rapala jobs in Asikkala has recently been under discussion as the Rapala Group is in the process of becoming a listed company. In its stock market brochure the company says that it is considering redeployment of labour intensive operations in order to increase cost effectiveness.

The factory in Pärnu was opened in January 1997 as labour costs in Estonia are much lower than those in Finland and Ireland.

About a third of the Rapala group's 765 employees work in Asikkala while the rest are abroad. Group turnover in 1997/98 was FIM 577 million (FIM 1.0 = USD 0.2) and its operating profit was FIM 123 million.

The Rapala group has plans to purchase a trollmaking company in Mexico. Elsewhere in Latin America and in Asia the group will increase its marketing efforts and is currently seeking new sales personnel.

* Originally published in Päijät-Häme, the local newspaper of Asikkala, where Rapala has its roots and main factory.

** The writer Lauri Muranen is Editor-in-Chief of Päijät-Häme.

© Lauri Muranen

New Light on Rehabilitation for the aged

Helsinki (10.10.1998 - Linus Atarah) An integral part of the National Programme on Aging Workers, launched earlier this year, includes a scheme for people over 45 years in working life to boost their working ability. A scheme of that nature falls within the overall framework and objectives of the programme which is aimed at improving the working conditions of ageing people so as to prolong their retirement age.

Details of the measures in the project are yet to be worked out, says Heidi Paatero, Secretary-General of the Advisory Board of Rehabilitation at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. But according to her, it would differ in some respects from the traditional methods of rehabilitation because a central focus will be to identify some of the endemic factors in the working environment which inhibit people's performing capabilities or generate occupational illnesses.

There is a worrying concern over the increasing high rates of early retirement in the Finnish labour force. Currently the average age of retirement is 59 years which is low by general European standards. It is therefore imperative to find out if unsuitable working conditions may be the cause of people trying to abandon their jobs early in life. The aim is to accumulate knowledge in the causes of work-related illness and disseminate the information. Therefore, a core task of the project in the initial stages will essentially be information dissemination activity, explaines Paatero.

The practice of previous rehabilitation methods has been focused on training and changing individual people whenever they developed problems which impaired their working ability. A drawback in this individual-centred view of rehabilitation is that it does not go into the root cause of the problem of occupational illness. "When people easily get tired, bored or feel that they work excessively the question is not simply to train them in order to squeeze out more from them but to find out whether work is organised in a rational way", says Paatero.

It is equally inadequate, as has been the practice, to send off a worker on holiday to find curative measures to his illness and return to the same conditions which may have generated the initial illness, says Paatero. Therefore in order to plug the gap in the traditional method, there will be a shift away from the individual as an immediate subject of rehabilitation and rather focus on gaining an insight into the way work is organised, in order to streamline to meet people's needs.

Since the project is aimed at providing optimal working conditions for ageing workers there will be the need to streamline the organisational structures in the workplace, utilising the existing knowledge of old age-related impairements and relocate people according to the tasks which best suit their condition. "The whole project is very much a question of understanding the way ageing people work and to make working conditions suitable to their condition", Paatero stresses.

In this connection she says that there will be the need to adress the issue of technology. In her opinion, there appears to be an insufficient knowledge in the application of technology. For instance, most of the time of office work is spent stucked behind computers and if it is found that this becomes strenuous for ageing people then the application of work techonolgy has to be re-examined.

Paatero is also quick to point out that the term "rehabilitation" is actually a misnomer. "Experts do not even want to call it rehabilitation as such but rather improving the working ability in ageing people", she says. It is less to boost an individual's physical and mental capacity per se and more to create optimal working conditions in which people can perform to their best abilities.

In that connection Paatero admits that the plans to be worked out in the training scheme will not be entirely new because concern over the issue of maintaining people's working ability emerged in the 1990s. It is also currently the subject of attention in another project known as "Ability of the Future" organised by the private insurance institutions. With these as background what needs to be done now is to increase awareness among employers and workers alike.

Existing knowledge on how the work environment affects peoples' perfomances comes from the manufacturing sector where big firms with sufficient resources have conducted pioneering studies on the phenomena and have developed good models to provide workers with motivating and less stressful working conditions. But according to Paatero, the issue has not yet been paid sufficient attention in working situations in the white-collar sector where the working environment is essentially different. Consequently, there is a dearth of knowledge in this sector.

People in white-collar jobs, for instance, frequently suffer from stress and other burn-out phenomena, have a constant feeling of working excessively and yet do not find a way out of the situation. Therefore part of the project's task should be to gain a proper understanding of white-collar work situation and find out what needs to be done in restructuring them.

However, even if a greater awareness becomes widespread about providing optimum working conditions for ageing people, a central issue that needs to be adressed is to find out how different employers will implement the measures. Small scale employers, for instance, might not be able to afford the resources involved in introducing measures, and consideration will be given whether such employers ought to be supported.

Such small scale employers will also need to be convinced that restructuring workplace organisation to meet the needs of ageing workers is ultimately economically beneficial because it will compensate for costs incurred from absenteeism due to work-related illness. So the whole programme has a great deal to do with attitude change to accept that fact that elderly people need to be retained in working life. As Kari Vinni, Secretary-General of the National Programme says, "People have to be convinced that ageing people have an extra value".

Edited by Sheryl Hinkkanen

Originally published in Socius 1-1998, the magazine of Ministry of Social Affairs and Health

Lifelong learning gains ground rapidly in the graphical industry

Helsinki (03.10.1998 - Juhani Artto) The five-year GRAM project, which began in 1995, has given a strong boost to vocational education in the Finnish graphical industry. Media Workers Union secretary Pekka Lahtinen believes that by the end of next year more than 800 skilled workers will have passed a demanding vocational examination. The new system of vocational exams in various industries was set up by the authorities in 1994.

An examination pass shows that the worker is able to make effective use of the most modern technology and also has good knowledge of its theoretical basis. Before taking the exam, most candidates have participated in either 120 or 60-day courses. One third of these courses comprises theoretical studies and the remaining two thirds consists of guided practical training at the workplace.

GRAM is a 100 million mark (1 FIM = 0.19 USD) project, with one fifth of the money coming from the European Social Fund, one fifth from the Finnish authorities and about 60 per cent from some 170 companies which have joined the project. GRAM was established especially to help small and medium sized companies. The project area is Helsinki and the surrounding province where about half of all graphical industry jobs are located.

The Media Workers Union is one of five partners involved in the project. Researchers form the fifth group.

Encouraged by GRAM's good results, the partners have founded similar projects in several other provinces.

In the beginning the main challenge was to create a system which would enable small and medium sized companies to let their employees take longer periods of study.

Pekka Lahtinen of the Media Workers Union says that thanks to these efforts the industry now has a proper system of vocational education. "Continuous education has become an integral part of the industry."

"However, this is only the beginning. I'm sure that by the year 2007 more than half of all graphical workers will have passed this new vocational exam", he foresees.

"In the past, a skilled worker did not need extra studies, but now looking for additional learning opportunities is a sign of a really skilled worker."

Leo Norvio, an employers federation leader, emphasises the significance of these developments on the international competitiveness of the Finnish graphical industry. "The growing appreciation of vocational skills enhances product quality."

Last year the value of Finnish graphical industry exports was about two billion marks.

Norvio points out that wide-ranging skills reduce employee stress and make the use of personnel more flexible. In his opinion, technological change is now more radical than in the 1970s when photosetting and offset technologies became popular.

"As the age profile of employees is rapidly rising, it is important to maintain everyone's skills at the level of the most modern technology", Norvio says.

He estimates that in ten years about half of present employees will have retired or for other reasons will not be available to companies.

The leader of the GRAM project, professor Antti Paasio, has long studied the graphical industry as a business. His first thesis is that the graphical industry has previously invested astonishingly little in developing its employees. "Much more attention has been paid to technology."

His second generalisation is that in large companies the workplace atmosphere is worse and internal communications are less effective than in smaller companies. The difference can already be noticed when there are more than 20 employees in the workplace. Paasio draws this conclusion from material gathered in the GRAM project and in several of his earlier studies.

"The starting point for GRAM was the learning needs of various employee groups, but the point of view has now changed. The project has become more an investigation into the most burning problems of companies in the industry."

Paasio hopes and believes that a permanent change in working culture and management methods is now under way and that this will lead to vital long-term changes.

Paasio supports the idea of giving workers broader skills profiles than before. "The spectrum of abilities can be broadened and points of contact with other trades can be increased. It would be like life insurance for individual employees, but a change in work place atmosphere, management systems and attitudes is a precondition of success in this kind of effort", he stresses.

A change in attitudes towards older workers is needed, too. "There is no justification for the attitude that those over 50 years of age are no longer able to learn everything that is needed for the most modern production systems."

"A 55-year old employee has lots of potential and a 63-year old worker is too young to finish working", Paasio says, with worries about the present situation in which the baby-boom generation is approaching retirement.

Union leaders and activists need new skills in the Russian crisis economy: Finnish unions support training courses in Republic of Karelia

Petrozavodsk (29.09.1998 - Juhani Artto) The Republic of Karelia is part of north-western Russia. For many Finns Karelia is a highly emotional issue because a large part of the region belonged to Finland until 1944. At that time 400,000 Finns lost their homes and their property in Karelia and were resettled in various provinces of post-war Finland.

Another natural reason for the considerable interest shown by Finland in Karelia is the long common border. The Fenno-Russian border is 1269 kilometres long. In the north, Finland borders the Murmansk region and in the south, the Leningrad region surrounding St. Petersburg. The Republic of Karelia lies between these two regions and has a 700 kilometre border with Finland.

780.000 people currently live in the Republic of Karelia. The principal ethnic groups are Russians (74 %), Karelians (11 %), Belorussians (7 %), Ukrainians (3 %) and Finns (3 %). The ethnic Karelians are linguistically and ethnically closely related to the Finns.

Before the 1990s, official statistics recorded that Karelian levels of production and living standards were slightly above the Soviet averages. The basis of wealth lay in the forest and engineering industries.

In the last few years, the Russian economic crisis has hit the Republic of Karelia especially hard. Most of the large industrial companies have either shut down or drastically reduced their operations. Although the official unemployment rate is 6,8 per cent of a labour force of 270,000 people, the real rate is much worse, says Gennadi Salaponov, President of the Karelian central trade union.

Unpaid salaries and wages are as serious a problem in Karelia as elsewhere in Russia. Even the leading export industry combine, the Kondoposhk pulp and newsprint mill, has not been able to pay its 6,000 employees on time.

In Salaponov's opinion, the Russian government made a big mistake in not favouring the key industries which could have financed the State budget. "In Karelia the forest industry is the key sector, but even now it is in trouble."

"Heavy taxation is an unbearable burden for many companies. They are unable to pay wages and salaries, as the authorities have frozen company accounts because of unpaid taxes", Salaponov explains.

Recently the Swedish forest industry company AssiDomän relinquished its ownership in the Segeza pulp and paper combine blaming the authorities for not being able to negotiate properly concerning vital issues. Segeza normally has 6,000 employees, but due to conflicts between the company and the authorities its production has been interrupted for long periods.

Positive news for Karelia has been the newly won right to export directly without interference from Moscow. In 1995 export values rose to USD 600 million, which was three times higher than in the early 1990s. Since this record year exports have fallen slightly. One reason for this was vocal criticism by environmental groups. According to these groups, logging partly takes place in forests which should be protected.

In 1997 the major export sectors were pulp and paper (29 %), timber and wood (25 %), aluminium (14 %), iron pellets (13 %) and machinery (12 %). Finland is the largest market for Karelian products. Half of the Republic's foreign trade is with Finland, Germany and United Kingdom.

Foreign trade plays an important role in Karelia's economy since one third of total production is exported. Its future, however, is threatened by a continuously low level of investment. The forest industry even suffers from raw material shortages, although the annual growth of the Karelian forests far exceed the annual logging. The contradiction is explained by the weak liquidity of companies.

The economic crisis has seriously reduced the incomes of most people living in the Republic of Karelia. Individual smallholdings have become the main providers of daily rations. The old and the sick who are dependant on public social programmes have been worst hit by the crisis.

In early September 1998 industrial workers earned around USD 100-120 a month but the near future prospects were dim and unpredictable. The strong downward trend in the value of the rouble greatly influences the prices of basic consumer goods which to a great extent are imported.

Since skilled Finnish workers are among the top ten, or at least the top twenty earners in the world, hardly anywhere in the world is the income gap between two neighbouring nations as great as that which exists on the two sides of the Fenno-Russian border.

For the trade union movement, these rapid political, economic and social changes have been difficult to manage. In the new situation the experiences gained in the Soviet Era have been of little help. In the past, trade union organisations had no independence from the ruling élite.

However, the high rate of organisation originating from the Soviet past and the Karelian tradition of "doing things together", provides a favourable starting point for strengthening the trade union movement. 160,000 people are currently trade union members, meaning a 60 per cent organising rate. This is less than the 70 per cent rate of two years ago.

The trade union organisations have had to reduce their own staff considerably. As little as four years ago the central trade union employed 64 people. It now has a staff of 12.

Trade unions, employees and the government in the Republic of Karelia have made a framework agreement on working conditions. The more concrete terms are fixed in sectoral collective agreements made at federal level in Moscow.

Finnish trade union organisations have reacted quickly to the new needs and prospects for co-operation with the Karelians. Before the 1990s cross-border union contacts were mainly restricted to official meetings with union leaders in Moscow. In the 1990s these contacts have become more versatile.

In the largest common project in Karelia, the Finnish trade union movement is subsidising courses for union leaders and activists. The project, which is co-financed by the European Union, has attracted hundreds of activists. In the first round of the programme in 1997, 80 union leaders and activists participated in training in Finland. Since then these courses have taken place in Karelia. The project is due to continue until 1999.

In early September, soon after the beginning of the latest crisis, the mood of activists was at a low point. "The most difficult thing is that we don't know what to expect", says the president of Karelia's forest industry workers' union Anatoli Sedov. "We don't know what the State wants from us, as politicians devote their energies to in-fighting and forget the needs of the industrial sector", he analyses.

Cross-border sympathetic industrial action in EU countries: Legal conditions vary widely, concludes a major new study

Helsinki (17.09.1998 - Juhani Artto) The globalisation of corporate life is increasing the role of cross-border sympathetic industrial action. This means that the legal framework of cross-border sympathetic industrial action is becoming a vital issue for the trade union movement.

This is the starting point of a new study by the Finnish legal researcher Juri Aaltonen LL.M. commissioned by the Finnish Metalworkers Union. The 210-page study describes and compares conditions in the 15 Member States of the EU. The work was published in Finnish in late August and will be available in English in December.

The legal considerations pertaining to international sympathetic industrial action vary widely between the EU countries. However, the terms "sympathetic industrial action" and "international sympathetic industrial action" are known in all of them. There is no country in which an agreement to refrain from industrial action prevents the organisation of sympathetic industrial action.

The principal difference between the Member States lies in the relationship between those involved in sympathetic action and the primary conflict. In some countries the law requires that supporters have an interest in common with the object of their solidarity, while in others it is a condition of legality of sympathetic action that the supporters cannot themselves benefit from their action.

Up to now, sympathetic industrial action and its significance have obviously been marginal, Aaltonen notes. The rarity of sympathetic industrial action is the reason for the slow development of relevant legal norms. Exceptions are Sweden, Finland and Denmark, where sympathetic industrial action has played a very significant role in labour market practice (See the Trade Union News from Finland report of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area bus drivers' strike: “Drivers strike ends in clear victory".

Aaltonen observes that the legality of international industrial action is not completely clear in any EU country. In several member countries even the criteria for national sympathetic industrial action are unclear.

In his concluding chapter, Aaltonen groups the 15 countries into four groups. The "Northern" group comprises Finland, Sweden and Denmark, the "Southern" group includes the four Mediterranean countries and Portugal, the "Island States" are Great Britain and Ireland, while the remaining five are the "Central European States".

The Northern States

In the Nordic countries the possibility of resorting to industrial action depends on collective agreements, and on agreements at central organisation level in Sweden and Denmark. The emphasis is on respecting the industrial peace obligation which these agreements incorporate. This obligation does not prohibit supportive industrial action but the reason for such action may not be a legal dispute.

Collective agreements in the Nordic countries only restrict the right to arrange industry-wide strikes. Boycotts and selective strikes may take place lawfully.

In Finland and Sweden solidarity actions may be organised legally as so called genuinely supportive industrial actions. By contrast with the situation in several EU Member States, sympathetic action in the northern European countries is more likely to be legal if the interests of the supporters and of the supported are more distant from one another.

Denmark differs in this respect. Here the main rule is that international solidarity industrial action is illegal. An action may be legal, however, if the original action is legal and there is a sufficiently strong common interest connecting the supporters and the supported.

In Finland, Sweden and Denmark the legality of the original conflict is a condition of the legality of sympathetic action. In all three countries it would be legal to refuse to perform work which has been transferred from another country because of a strike there.

The Southern States

A common feature of all the southern States is the constitutional right to strike or to organise industrial action. In each country except Greece, however, it is individuals and not unions who enjoy this constitutional guarantee. In Greece, individuals have the right to strike but a strike may be organised only by a trade union.

In Italy, France, Spain and Portugal sympathetic industrial action can be legal only when the supporters and the supported have a common interest. Much unclarity prevails, however, over what counts as a common interest. In all of the southern EU countries sympathetic industrial action is illegal if the original strike is illegal.

In the southern group of Member States only Greece has specific statutes on international solidarity action. In the other States the general provisions on national sympathetic actions are applicable. These Member States approve of international solidarity strikes when the purpose is to support employees who are in dispute with one and same multinational employer but in another country. "If the reasons for the conflict are production, reorganising or removal from EU territory, then sympathetic industrial action would very likely be legal in all of the five southern countries", Aaltonen writes.

The Central European States

In Germany and Luxembourg the right to engage in industrial action is based on legislation. In Belgium the basis consists of agreements made between the labour market partners. In The Netherlands it is held that the European Social Charter safeguards the right to organise industrial action, but in Austria this right and its regulation are derived from jurisprudential literature.

In the Central European countries collective agreements include an industrial peace obligation but in Belgium this is not legally binding.

Belgium and Luxembourg differ from the other Member States in that the trade unions are not legal persons. This is why they cannot be brought before the courts for organising illegal strikes.

In the Central European group strikers have no obligation to give notice of industrial action in advance, but political strikes are always illegal.

In Germany sympathetic industrial action cannot be legal unless the supporting action affects a party to the primary dispute.

The Island States

The British and Irish common law legal system differs considerably from the legal systems of all other EU countries. Political industrial actions are prohibited in both countries.

In these two countries industrial action is protected by law only when it occurs according to an official procedure. In Britain this procedure is so complicated and demanding that in practice it is obviously impossible to comply with it completely.

In Britain and Ireland the employer has the right to dismiss participants even of a legal strike. However, the employer does not have the right to dismiss selectively, nor to re-hire selectively.

Finland is slightly more permissive than the EU average

Compared with Belgium, the Finnish system hampers industrial action, but compared with Great Britain the Finnish system is favourable to industrial action.

The most liberal element of the Finnish system is its attitude towards sympathetic industrial action, although it is not the most liberal system in the EU on this point either. Other aspects of Finnish industrial action regulations are not particularly favourable to industrial action.

As a whole, Aaltonen regards the Finnish system as slightly more permissive of industrial action than the EU average.

In his judgement the most important element of the Finnish system is the generally clear demarcation between legal and illegal industrial actions. The establishment of such legal safeguards provides what Aaltonen identifies as the centre point of collective bargaining - its predictability.

On Vacation

Helsinki (14.09.1998 - Juhani Artto) For most working Finns the holiday period is now over and soon the Summer will be as well.

There is a noticeable contrast in Finland between summers, when the sun stays above the horizon until late at night, and the dark, cold winter months. Correspondingly, ordinary Finns have two widely varying ways of life. One consists of work, bills, hurry and noise causing a dangerous degree of stress, while the other is more or less opposite to all that with leisure, long unhurried days and little stress. With reason, one can speak of a double life lived by a whole nation.

For most Finns the best place to spend the vacation is at the mökki, a modest log cabin or chalet in the country, or at the kesähuvila, a larger and better equipped version of the summer cabin. For a country with only 5,1 million inhabitants, there are 430,000 second homes in the countryside, mostly near to lakes which are good for bathing, fishing, boating and enjoying the spectacular scenery that Finland is famous for.

Many working class families also have their own summer homes, while many of those families who do not may stay a week or two at their relatives' or friends' places.

Many Finnish families even spend weekends in their cabins outside the vacation period, unafraid of snow, frost and modest facilities.

The length of holidays has long been an important issue in collective bargaining. Union members have clearly expressed their preference for long vacations and this has given the trade unions the strength needed for success in struggling to secure them.

In Finland five weeks annual leave is normal. The average holiday is shorter than those of Germany, Italy and Austria but longer than those enjoyed by Belgians, Spaniards, Greeks and Portuguese. Britain, France, The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark have the same length of holiday as in Finland.

In the State bureaucracy there are groups which have six weeks or even longer annual leaves. This fact recently caused Helsingin Sanomat, the leading national newspaper, to print a headline claiming that the Finns have the longest annual leaves internationally. The source of the article was an annual comparison made by a German employer organisation.

In Finland practically all wage and salary earners get at least two days fully paid holiday per month at work. In most jobs this rises to two and half days of holiday per month in the second year of service, meaning a five week holiday. In some cases this is extended to six weeks after 15 years of service. In practice, however, there is a lot of deviation from the basic rule.

Certain new factors now threaten to destabilise the idyllic side of the Finnish "double life" model, however. There is pressure to move the holidays from June-July - when the days are longest - to August, as August is the main vacation month in several Western-European countries. Also the rapid increase in atypical employment and the employers' strong push for greater flexibility tend to undermine opportunities to have, as a norm, five weeks uninterrupted holiday.

This year, however, these threats were marginal. The holidays were as long as ever, but were marred by bad weather. After several record sunny and warm summers, this year's holiday period was cloudy and wet.

For those who sell cheap vacation packages to Mediterranean holiday resorts, this means good business, as occurred once again this year. Sales of package tours to foreign holiday resorts increased by 30 per cent.

A Father's  Role

by Russell Snyder*

(07.09.1998) A father's role in pregnancy and childbirth is taken very seriously in Finland. After all, it takes two to tango and the father must share the responsibility for bringing a new life into the world. It is very gratifying for a man to know he played an important part in the child bearing process and that his wife was able to rely on his support.

When my wife got pregnant with our first child, neither one of us knew much about what we were getting into. When she got morning sickness I tried to find something she could eat without throwing up; when she got dizzy spells I tried to support her or at least catch her before she fell; and when she had mood swings I tried to be tolerant or at least hold my tongue. We both read lots of books, magazines and brochures about pregnancy and childbirth (she in Finnish and I in English), we attended three parenting classes together, and went on a tour of a hospital maternity ward. We also spent plenty of time shopping for baby things - and found out that having a baby is not cheap. We prepared the apartment for our future little resident - and got an aerobic workout moving things, building things and taking things apart. And in the evenings we discussed baby names and observed our unborn child kicking and moving around in the womb  good-bye to nightcafés, movies and concerts.

When the big day arrived I carefully timed the contractions and persuaded my wife that it was time to go (she didn't really want to). I dropped my wife off at the Women's Clinic of the Helsinki University Central Hospital and by the time I parked and returned she was already being attended by a midwife and was wired to a couple of monitors. Soon we went into a modern-looking delivery room and she was examined by another doctor. When my wife complained about the pain and asked for an epidural, an anesthesiologist breezed into the room and effortlessly gave her the injection.

While waiting for my wife to go into labour, my job was mainly to comfort her. When the baby started its journey down the birth canal, I helped the midwife by lifting my wife's leg, but when things started getting messy, I was relieved by another nurse. I spent the rest of the time holding my wife's hand and reassuring her. After the birth, a nurse took the baby and I out of the room. She disappeared momentarily to clean up the baby and then she weighed, measured, and checked it while I helped as best as I could. By the time we got back into the delivery room, the afterbirth and stitching up had been completed. My wife and baby stayed for three nights in the hospital and I spent as much time as possible visiting them. It was a grand day when we were able to take our daughter home, and we were grateful for the good service in the hospital, but we wondered if we might have missed something.

Our second childbirth was somewhat different. Helsinki started directing all its residents to the Helsinki City Maternity Hospital and we arrived at their doors around two years after the birth of our first child. The delivery room there looked like a living room. The soft, dim light made it seem cozy. Our room was tastefully decorated in a light shade of blue - other rooms were available in green, pink, gray, yellow, or orange colour themes. There was also a shower, a stereo and a comfortable father's chair.

When my wife asked the midwife for an epidural she was gently discouraged from having it, which meant a lot more pain. And this time I was encouraged to take a more active role. I massaged my wife's back for long periods and helped her try out various positions with a Sacco cushion, a rocking chair and big pillows. When she went into labour, I worked together with the midwife lifting my wife's leg and encouraging her by saying "Push, push, good, that's it..." while I held her hand at the same time. This was quite a tiring job, so when a second midwife came into the room I was surprised that she didn't replace me. She just let me work until I heard the first cries of our new baby. I didn't leave the room at all this time. I was present for the afterbirth, the stitching up and I bathed the baby myself (under the supervision of the midwife, of course).

The hospital offered us a family room, which meant that I would stay over, eat together with my wife, and spend time getting to know our new family member. Our other daughter could have stayed too, but we decided to let her visit her grandma.

Our room was very pleasant.  It had two beds, a sofa, a writing desk, a picture on the wall and a window with a view. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late snack were served at the cafeteria at set hours; coffee, tea and fruit were available any time day or night. This family ward had a television, newspapers, a play room for kids and a special father's shower. Although this is more of a 'self-service' hospital than the other one and it puts far more demands on the father, it lets him participate and believe that he has an important part to play in the childbirth  something that fits in very well with the father's role in Finland.

It's certainly true that a man doesn't go through all the intense pain and agony of labour experienced by a woman. However, a caring and responsible father can feel confused, stressed, exhausted, worried, afraid, overwhelmed and worst of all useless. I know, I experienced all these feelings during my wife's labour as probably does every modern Finnish father trying to do his part. I remember that all the negative emotions vanished from my mind after listening to the gentle words from my exhausted wife's lips after the childbirth: "Honey, I couldn't have managed without you." That's what every father in Finland wants to hear.

Published originally in Socius 4-97, the magazine of the Ministry of Social Affairs

*Russell Snyder is an American writer and freelancer living in Finland