‘Work at the weekend without any extra pay – why?’

Outi Keto-Tokoi, chief shop steward at Hennes & Mauritz, spent last weekend with her sisters at their childhood home in Kannus, Ostrobothnia. She got to meet up with her sisters and their families for the first time in a long while. They took a sauna, soaked in a hot tub, had a barbecue, laughed and talked. The whole garden was filled with candles to honour the end-of-summer Venetian Night celebration.

Would she have been willing to give it all up for a job assignment?

‘Depends on the price,’ Keto-Tokoi jokes, but then goes on more seriously: ‘You can’t put a price on that. It’s very important for me to meet up with my own family. I can’t think of a job offer that I would have wanted to accept.’
This time, not even double Sunday pay would have been a sufficient incentive. Since Keto-Tokoi’s sisters live in different locations, they can only get together a few times a year.
‘It’s a catastrophic idea. It’s self-evident that nobody would work at the weekend without extra pay,’ Keto-Tokoi states after discussing the idea of eliminating extra pay with her co-workers.

Stores will be allowed to keep their doors open whenever they wish as early as next year, if the Centre Party’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä and his Cabinet get their way. The Government proposes a Bill to repeal the Opening Hours Act completely. The Government Proposal also hints that the Government would like to see employees’ and employers’ organizations address extra Sunday and night pay as part of their upcoming collective agreement negotiations. The passage assessing the employment impact of the Bill points out that the actual effects of deregulating opening hours would be based, among other things, on collective settlements, ‘in particular, on the content of the provisions applied within the sector’. The text makes a specific reference to extra pay for Sunday and night work.
It is exceptional for a Government Proposal’s Rationale section to interfere with the collective bargaining agenda.

In June, when Jyri Häkämies, Director General of the employers’ Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK), suggested doing away with Sunday pay as an outdated notion, the idea was turned down flat by PAM President Ann Selin and PAM Congress delegates, who were meeting at the same time.

According to Tuomo Leppänen, the chief shop steward of Cooperative Society Keskimaa’s commercial sector, unlimited opening hours could also make life more difficult for commercial sector employees in other respects.
‘Family life today is fragmented enough as it is and this change will certainly do nothing to improve the situation.’
Based on his previous experiences, Leppänen cannot bring himself to put much stock in the Government’s hopes for growth in employment in the sector, because total sales would not increase much. A more likely result is that working alone may become more prevalent, which will bring about problems with breaks and safety.

‘The same working hours will simply be spread over a longer period of time,’ Keto-Tokoi suspects.
In her opinion, extended opening hours could be supported if working hours were to increase.

Based on data collected by Statistics Finland, however, the number of store employees did not increase the last time that regulation of opening hours was relaxed in 2009. Instead, jobs became concentrated in large cities and surrounding areas over the following years.

Leppänen also doubts the profitability of late-night opening hours. Instead of nights, it is therefore more likely that commercial sector businesses are planning on keeping stores open on public holidays, such as Epiphany and Ascension Day.

The Rationale section of the Government Proposal also includes other peculiarities besides hinting at cutting extra pay. The Rationale states that current restrictions ‘put stores of different types and sizes in an unequal position’. However, one of the specific aims of the current Opening Hours Act has been to safeguard the survival of small self-service stores and kiosks in order to guarantee local services.

Secondly, the Proposal estimates that deregulation of opening hours will improve the traditional commercial sector’s competitiveness in comparison with electronic commerce, including international online stores. However, many commercial sector businesses are also involved in e-commerce and are currently developing collaboration between e-commerce and traditional stores, which means that this juxtaposition is somewhat artificial. It is also hard to believe that keeping Finnish stores open at night or on public holidays would prevent the growth of international e-commerce.
As the icing on the cake, the Government believes that jobs and part-time working hours will increase while not expecting any major changes in opening hours – and anticipating neither any significant safety risks for those working alone nor any need to increase provision of shift care at day-care centres. So, would the repeal of the Opening Hours Act have any impact or not?

Government Proposal
1. The Government proposes a Bill to repeal Act No. 945/2009 governing the opening hours of retail trade and barber and hairdressing shops, commonly known as the Opening Hours Act. In other words, this would put an end to regulation.
2. A small business owner operating in a shopping centre, for example, would still be entitled to keep their store closed one day each week.
3. If Parliament passes the Bill, the amendment could enter into force next year, at the earliest from the turn of the year.
4. The Bill is currently going through a consultation process and PAM, among others, will issue its opinion by 21 September. Opinions will also be submitted by several ministries, the Regional State Administrative Agencies and employers’ organizations.