The labour market is undergoing constant change, and employment legislation needs to keep up with this. For this to be possible, new ways of thinking are required among labour organisations and political decision-makers. Accepting a job must always be profitable. Working after retirement should also be incentivised.
We want to allow local bargaining for all types of businesses, even those in non-unionised sectors. At the same time, we want employees to have influence in companies via a representative on the board or in another governance body.
Finland is in a labour shortage crisis. The retirement rate and the need for additional recruitment mean that foreign labour is needed, and therefore we want to see measures for increasing and facilitating labour migration. Finland will face great challenges in maintaining its public services and functioning industry and commerce, unless we see a significant rise in our population.
It is important to make it easy for young people to access the labour market. This requires close collaboration between educational institutions and employers, as well as conscious efforts to make the shift to working life easier.
On SFP’s initiative, the government has launched a national development programme for wellbeing at work. This programme must be ambitiously continued through the next term. The aim must be to halve sickness absenteeism related to burnout and ill-being at work within the next five years. Work environments that foster wellbeing are crucial if we are to reduce the number of disability pensions.
We need better and more effective employment services. The TE Offices must be able to respond to diverse needs for support. Support for the long-term unemployed must be extended. The challenges related to the lack of correspondence between job openings and jobseekers must be addressed.
The family leave reform, for which SFP has long advocated, has created opportunities for parents to share parental leave. Efforts to change attitudes within the labour market are also needed if the proportion of leave taken by fathers is to increase. Our aim is to extend earnings-related family leave until the child turns 18 months.
WE WANT
- to gradate earnings-related daily allowance rates and make them more incentivising by being higher at the start. We want earningsrelated daily allowances to apply to everyone. Accepting a job must always be profitable.
- to see a flexible labour market with local bargaining
- to scrap labour market testing for foreign labour
- to establish a guaranteed processing time for work permit or residence permit applications for workers; the work permit processing period must not exceed 30 days.
- to give the long-term unemployed real opportunities for returning to the workforce
- that successful pilot projects related to individual cross-sector support be expanded to apply to further groups of long-term unemployed people
- to continue improving opportunities for partially disabled workers to remain in or return to the workforce
- to incentivise employers to offer further education opportunities and encourage lifelong learning
- to ensure that the national development programme for wellbeing at work is ambitiously continued through the next government term
- to bring about reforms that lead to sickness absenteeism being halved and disability pensions being reduced
- to see equality in the labour market, closing the gender pay gap
- to extend income-related family leave until the child turns 18 months
