JHL’s goals for the parliamentary elections in 2027: better working life and an end to impoverishment

We can already see how many characteristics of a class society are coming back. Economic and social mobility are harder than before in low- and middle-income families. Learning in working life and further studies have become more difficult, and vocational education and training have suffered from cutbacks and no longer prepare for further studies like they used to. Families of limited means have more and more difficulties to support children’s hobbies or studies.

If we fail to correct this situation, there is a risk that Finland will have three diverging labour markets. They are caused by a broader societal and labour market change as well as by Finland’s right-wing government’s actions that deteriorate the world of work and its attack against the trade unions representing employees’ interests. Such downward spiral of working life has to be prevented.

Our goals include:

• Criminalising underpayment separately, as has been done in Norway. This means that not paying the salary or wages or parts thereof would become a criminal offence in itself. Criminalisation lowers the threshold to intervene, makes the criteria of punishability more clear and strengthens employees’ rights.
• Increasing the resources of the Tax Administration, occupational safety and health authorities and the police so that they can ensure that forms of labour exploitation are rooted out and competition remains fair. This will also increase government revenue and strengthen the funding base of Finland’s social insurance scheme.
• Improving effectiveness of monitoring with adequate sanctions as well as improving occupational safety and health authorities’ rights to get sufficient information. Harder criminal sanctions to businesses that commit criminal offences, including for example a ban on business operations and a corporate fine.
• Limiting the length of contracting chains and extending contractor’s obligations and liability to the entire contracting chain, including liability for salaries and wages and for terms and conditions of employment. The Contractor’s Liability Act should obligate a contractor to verify whether the work permits of foreign employees who work for a contracting partner are in order.
• Giving right of action to trade unions. Right of action means that trade unions can bring an action to court on behalf of an employee. Furthermore, right of class action needs to be extended to cases that concern labour law so that the union can bring a case to court on behalf of multiple employees in a single action.

Climate change and loss of biodiversity, digitalisation and development of artificial intelligence and accelerating urbanisation affect Finland in many ways.

The effects of these changes on the world of work in Finland have to be considered in decision-making.

Employees should be involved in carrying out changes and transitions. Those who do the work know best what it involves, and they are the ones who will carry out the changes in practice.

Working life has hardened. Harassment, violence and threat of violence have increased in workplaces. Harassment and threats may spread to employee’s private lives as well, for example through social media.

Our goals include:

• Creating a new adult education benefit that is funded with employer and employee contributions.
• Improving the working life position for people with partial work ability or need for special support by guaranteeing their right to partial sickness allowance and part-time work. At the moment, an employer does not have a legal obligation to arrange part-time work that the employee needs in order to get partial sickness allowance. Employees need to be guaranteed the right to part-time work as well.
• Imposing an obligation on an employer to determine an employee’s ability to work and to accommodate and adjust the work, arrange other work and train the employee to other work that the employer can offer. The employer has to do these if the employee’s ability to work is temporarily or permanently significantly reduced. The employer has grounds to terminate the employment due to the employee’s state of health only after these things have been done.
• Issuing a decree on psychosocial strain.

Finland’s public finances have been mostly in deficit since the financial crisis in 2008–2009. Several governments have tried to curb the growth of debt, mostly with little success.

Therefore, it is important to not just increase the revenue of the public sector but to also reform the system of managing the public finances.

Our goals include:

• Supporting the growth of service export. When the portion of services in Finland’s exports grows, the country’s long-term financial sustainability improves.
• Combining the objectives of good leadership, productivity of work and incentivising of personnel. This will improve productivity of work.
• Promoting establishment of personnel funds in the public and private sectors. The goal is to improve the productivity of the public sector by rewarding the personnel collectively if the appropriate productivity objectives set for each workplace are met.
• Creating a fair lifetime model for inheritance tax and gift tax. The level of the tax should be determined by how much inheritance or gifts a person receives during their lifetime.
• Restoring solidarity tax on wealth with a duty to report and a moderate tax level.
• Prudently increasing progressivity in taxation of earned income by making only partial index adjustments in the top two income groups.