Union Congress
PAM’s priority action programme: How can the agreement system be modernised?
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PAM’s Congress in June decided on a new priority action programme, which is made up of six themes. The second theme deals with modernising the agreement system to respond to the changes in working life.
The priority action programme sets out PAM’s basic premise that, regardless of the type of employment, workers must be ensured minimum working conditions, a decent working environment and well-being at work also in future.
Minimum employment conditions are defined via labour legislation and the collective agreement system that supplements it. Around 90% of wage earners are covered by collective agreements.
However, the current agreement system is being challenged by the internationalisation and polarisation of business. On the other hand people’s individuality is more pronounced, so that agreeing working conditions should help create meaning for the working community.
Digitalisation and the global competition that it enables are having a greater impact on collective regulation and are changing the conditions under which work is performed. Flexible ways of using labour are spreading: for example the number of part-time wage earners has increased throughout the 2000s.
The platform economy is creating completely new types of employment relationships that threaten to pass the entrepreneurial risk and responsibility for well-being at work and wage-related social security on to employees themselves.
“Current regulation basically doesn’t recognise at all ways of working that fall between salaried employment and self-employment. For example, if work is done via gig agency platforms, the legal status of the employee may be unclear ", says PAM’s expert for working time and pay systems Sirpa Leppäkangas.
Take a look at PAM’s priority action programme for 2020-2024.
PAM's objective is
- to update the regulatory framework for working life through ongoing collaboration between employees, employers and government to enable change that is sustainable from the point of view of society as a whole. The regulatory framework for working life should continue to be worker protection, which for PAM members means in particular securing employment that safeguards incomes.
- to define through collective agreements a minimum level of working conditions that safeguards employees’ incomes and a decent working environment. Local agreement is used to achieve better packages for employees and companies. Organised workplaces can be given more scope for local agreement.
- to define new agreement mechanisms that take account of new forms of working.
