Can the general pay increase level be challenged without consequences?
At last, the private social services sector has a new collective agreement. Trade Union JHL’s negotiators Tanja Tuunainen-Vainio and Siru Heromaa-Karjalainen discuss in this blog the process that preceded JHL’s entering into the agreement.
This negotiation round in the private social services sector has been long and hard. After a long series of events, the sector finally has its collective agreement.
The negotiations in the private social services sector began in early November. From the start, the employee organisations collaborated closely in setting their objectives and drafting the agreement texts. Even though each organisation had some slightly different priorities, we were able to put our objectives on a shared paper. The employers, too, noticed our solid collaboration in this collective bargaining round.
When an agreement was not reached by negotiating with the employer party, the National Conciliator started mediating the dispute at the end of January. Work towards shared goals continued until Trade Union JHL decided, as the only employee organisation to do so, to reject the National Conciliator’s first settlement proposal, which was issued on 14 February 2026.
We continued to believe that by presenting a united front we could still at least try to challenge the so called general level of pay increases. Only days earlier, we had issued together with some other unions a press release about breaking free from the general level policy, demanding a better pay settlement for our members and the entire sector.
We had all been told throughout the negotiations that the general level is not going to be exceeded. This contradicted what we had specifically agreed on in the previous collective agreement: that the pay gaps between the private and the public sectors will be narrowed. The unions faced a challenge, because earlier last year the public sector had reached a pay settlement that exceeded the general pay increase level. This meant that the gap was wide.
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If you work in the private social services sector, Trade Union JHL is on the side of employees just like you. Our members work for example as practical nurses, care assistants, social pedagogues, and personal assistants.
We demanded a better pay settlement for our members and the entire sector.
This was the starting point of a peculiar series of events. Media focused its attention on JHL, and things grew in the public eye to proportions that we had not anticipated. The employer party had already earlier tried to break the employee unions’ united front. Now they had the means to do that.
When a new collective agreement was finally concluded for the private social services sector, JHL was not included in it. The agreement had been made behind our back.
We were not given an opportunity
Let’s go back to those events. The National Conciliator issued a second settlement proposal on Tuesday 24 February 2026, and the organisations were due to give their answers to it on Saturday morning 28 February 2026. However, a bomb was dropped on Friday 27 February 2026 at 3 pm: To our surprise, we read from social media that an agreement had already been made. None of the other parties has contacted us even when they had reached the agreement.
We met with the National Conciliator on Saturday morning as was originally scheduled. The purpose of this meeting had been to give answers to the settlement proposal that was issued on Tuesday. That, however, changed because an agreement had already been concluded and therefore the earlier settlement proposal was meaningless.
We had read about the content of the agreement and the pay settlement on the other organisations’ websites on Friday evening. What really surprised us was that apart from the pay increase level, the content of the pay settlement that the others has agreed on together was precisely what we at JHL had pursued in the negotiations. We had pursued bigger across-the-board pay increases and argued strongly against a locally negotiated pay increase allowance. In the end, these elements were in the negotiation result.
We have been told that we had been too vocal in our demands to exceed the general pay increase level and that our union’s actions have been too strong. We had tried to get better terms and conditions of employment and higher than general-level pay increases for the entire sector by working together with the others. Suddenly we were blamed for betraying the others’ trust.
A vocal advocate of the sector
We still firmly believe that the private social services sector must get better terms and conditions of employment and better pays. Pursuing these objectives must be possible and must not result into JHL or some other party getting excluded from the negotiations.
We have to be able to challenge those who are behind the policies. We have to be able to raise in the public debate situations where deviating from the general pay increase level should be possible.
Could we deviate from the general level for example in case of a female-dominated low-paid sector where the pays are lower than in the public sector? And what about when the same pay increase percentages just increase the gap compared to export industry sectors in terms of euros? Is it justified when the pays in the sector will otherwise permanently lag behind, and reaching gender pay equality is going to take several steps back?
It must be possible to discuss and criticise the shortcomings of the general-level pay increase policy. This will not happen without a united front of the workers. Disagreements and fighting will just benefit the employers.
Helsingin Sanomat wrote on 2 March 2026 that the other unions have humiliated JHL. We do not consider ourselves humiliated – on the contrary. We have pursued the interests of our members as far as possible.
In order to be in a position to represent the interests of our members in future as well, we have been forced to accept the agreement that the others had made without us. We hope that in future every party is guaranteed an opportunity to influence the content of the agreement.
Helsingin Sanomat also wrote that JHL tries to present itself as a mighty social welfare and healthcare sector union. If this refers to it that we have vocally promoted the interests of this sector and our members, we thank for the title.
JHL’s values are still not for sale.
Throughout this process, we have received encouragement from both JHL members and other workers in this sector. They have responded positively to our strong actions for fixing the pay injustices of this sector.
We express a special thank you for this support to the entire broad spectrum of workers in the private social services sector. You all do absolutely indispensable work and deserve to be heard. Our work for better pays and terms and conditions of employment will continue.
JHL’s values are still not for sale.