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FINLAND
September 2000
Tiina Hanhike (Ministry of Labour)
and Tarja Nupponen (University of Turku)
The Spearhead project of telework in Finland
In December 1998, Sitra (Finnish National Fund for Research and Development), published the Finnish National Information Society Strategy. The strategy identified eight Spearhead Projects for the future development of the Finnish information society. The programme of the current Government includes several objectives related to the development of the Finnish information society. The visions of the original programme were concretised in the project portfolio adopted by a cabinet evening session. This practical programme also includes many Spearhead-projects.
The Spearhead-projects are:
Electronic Transactions Services
Teleworking
Sustainable Information Society
Personal Navigation
Electronic Learning
The Local Information Society
Content Industry
Knowledge-Intensive Work
[download (EN)]
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September 2000
SAK magazine 'Palkkatyöläinen' no.: 7
Special issue about telework
Etätyössä paljon selvitettävää
Telework – many things to be studied
Through the magazine SAK delivers information to the all trade union activists as well as to the shop stewards. Palkkatyöläinen's circulation is 30,000 copies.
The editorial states that telework is still a curiosity rather than every day life for the blue-collar workers. Among SAK members only 10,000 are doing telework. Many things need to be studied still: what consequences will the mixing of work and leisure time cause; how will the working conditions be taken into account; how will the work be measured, monitored and managed; how will telework be written into the contracts, laws and social security texts; and will the trade union movement have any say in telework conditions?
Articles include:
'Distant-worker – master or slave?'
about distant-workers who manufacture Christmas decorations in their homes.
'Teleworker is one’s own boss '
'Telework is still in “child’s shoes”'
an interview with Professor Pekka Huuhtanen, from The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.
'Telework is under special observation by the trade union movement'
by Jyrki Helin, describes the EURO telework project and its aims.
'TPO company’s tele-electrician’s are satisfied with their work'
about the work of the electricians or fitters that work in a tele-office and also do mobile telework.
'Mobile telephone changes working – the definition of telework is slipping away'
an interview with Hans Wikholm from the Finnish Electrical Workers' Union. He says that the electricians' and fitters' work has become truly wireless and real-time as they start their days by opening the computer and logging into the net through their mobile telephones.
'Telework increases its popularity'
describes the work and life of a Computer Designer Heli Ketola who works from home. She enjoys not having to drive to the work place anymore but mentions as a negative point not getting to meet her fellow workers and not belonging to the work society.
'Real telework not done very much'
by Erkki Laukkanen. He tells about the new statistics of SAK’s member inquiry 2000.
'Telework – happy place or refuge?'
by Marko Hentunen of Trade Union’s youth organisation SAKKI. He fears that teleworking will be refuge for people who are not wanted or liked in the work place: the strong will survive at work and weaker people will want to work from home in fear of that “horrible work place”. He feels that something must be done to the working conditions before this scenario comes true.
[view articles from Palkkatyöläinen]
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September 2000
SAK magazine 'Löntagaren' no.: 7
Special issue about telework
Telework – many things to be studied
Through the magazine SAK delivers information to the all trade union activists as well as to the shop stewards. Löntagaren's circulation is 22,000 copies.
Similar articles about telework to those detailed in the listing for Palkkatyöläinen (above) can be found in Swedish in Löntagaren magazine.
[view articles from Löntagaren]
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May - August 2000
Centre for Extension Studies, University of Turku
Telecommuting Applications in the Municipalities in Finland'
and 'Expansion of Municipal Telecommuting'
Three documents relating to Municipal Telecommuting
The first: 'Telecommuting Applications in the Municipalities' explains the nature of the recommendation made by different organisations ie., asking the municipalities to enter the University's joint development project during the year 2000. In Finland municipalities have a large autonomy, and entering projects like these is done on voluntary basis. It needs to be said that it is only a recommendation and not a negotiated agreement as such.
The second: 'Expansion of Municipal Telecommuting - a development project' is a project presentation explaining the body which the municipalities are asked to join.
The third is a short summary, written by Mr. Tapio Penttilä in August 2000, of the preliminary results of the questionnaire sent to the Finnish municipalities.
We believe that with the help of this project teleworking will increase in the Finnish municipalities in the future. More information can be obtained from Tapio Penttilä at tapio.penttila@utu.fi
[download document 1 (EN)]
[download document 2 (EN)]
[download document 3 (EN)]
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14 June 2000
Erkki Laukkanen, economist
SAK trade union
Slight increase of telework among SAK members - latest survey data
The results of SAK's member inquiry have just come out. The data shows that there has been a slight increase in the number of people who are teleworking among SAK members.
Union members are very interested in teleworking. According to the results of the inquiry every fifth member would like to test teleworking.
Interest to telework correlate with computer skills, but only 30 % of actual teleworkers use IT solutions, such as email or internet.
[download (EN)]
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14 June 2000
Kari Vilkman and Juhani Pekkola
at SAK Telework seminar
Material on eWork and mobile telework
Report and press release relating to
a SAK Distance Work Seminar at Kiljava, Finland. Kari Vilkman is the chief shop steward of blue collar telecommunication technicians of Sonera Corporation. He is also the employees' representative on the Board of Sonera. In total, Sonera employs in the region of 10,000 people, of whom some 1,800 are blue collar technicians, all of whom are members of the Metalworkers' Union which is affiliated to SAK. Vilkman writes of the practices and problems of mobile telework and local agreements.
[download (EN)]
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May 2000
Mr. Hannu Rosengren
SAK
Description of SAK's first computer mediated distance learning course called "You in the Movement – Trade Union School of the New Time"
"You in the Movement – Trade Union School of the New Time" is SAK's new course for computer aided distance learning. The student will learn using home PC and special CD-rom as well as via internet. A traditional version of these studies is also available and it will take altogether 27 hours to complete.
[download (EN)]
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1 April 2000
The Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK)
The overview of Finnish ESF Telework Projects [EN]
Published on the Internet:
http://www.uta.fi/telework/esrraportti/frame_index.html
In Finland, the positive attitude of the European Community towards telework is seen in the ESF programme; for example, there is a separate priority to support the measures aiming to promote telework in sparsely-populated areas. Furthermore, in the programme for objective 5b, telework is put down as one of the themes. This survey of telework projects aims to explore the concrete measures and practices of telework and to describe the outcome of the regional development projects.
This report is a practically oriented overview of telework-related ESF (European Social Funds) projects implemented in Finland during 1995-98. A survey was carried out with the objectives to get the overall picture of telework projects and to evaluate their content for the purpose of producing information to support the promotion of telework. The survey covered 40 telework projects. In the survey, the projects defined as true telework projects were those which develop the organisation of work by using ICT (information and communications technology) and in which promotion of telework is a central objective.
Because of the objectives and the nature of the ESF programme, telework projects usually were training projects with unemployed people as their target group, offering them education in information and communications technology and in entrepreneurship. There also were projects which aimed at the development of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), including consultancy and information about the possibilities of ICT. The study furthermore included two research projects implemented by research institutions and a few ones which focused on the development of learning environments.
The telework projects represented a variety of notions regarding what telework is in practice. However, all projects shared the underlying idea of increasing people's skills and of promoting employment and regional prosperity. Regarding the development of regional telework, three aspects were represented in the project contents: a) encounter of job and workforce, b) encounter of microenterprise and client, c) change of a company's ways of working in the direction of dispersing activities. Often the projects represented activities such as promotion of local employment, marketing of the possibilities of telework and of the skills of teleworkers through WWW.
To some extent the telework projects had an effect on employment, they activated people locally and promoted general knowledge about telework, and they led to the uptake of new behaviour in job search, organisation of work, development of education and local cooperation. But on the whole the survey showed that the simultaneous promotion of employment and telework through training was a challenging and partly unrealistic task.
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February 2000
Mr. Olavi Sulkunen (SAK)
SAK, STTK and AKAVA
Joint answer to ETUC questionnaire on special problems concerning telework
This nine-page joint answer by the three Finnish Central Trade Unions to ETUC's questionnaire on special problems concerning telework gives an overview of Finnish legislation on telework. It has all norms and recommendations of telework issues that can be found in the Finnish Labour law.
[download (EN)]
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9 February 2000
Mr. Jyrki Helin, Ms. Ritva Laitinen
SAK
Report of first national Euro-Telework meeting
[download]
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June 1999
Mr. Hannu Rosengren
SAK
SAK's 'Member PC' project
These nine slides gives a short description of one SAK project called the "Member PC project". The main aims of the project were:
* to help union members to access the information society
* to help members at their work
* to help members to buy or hire home PC's at moderate rates and
* to help the unions to keep in contact with their members.
As a result of the project about 15,000 home PCs were ordered by SAK union members. The idea for this project was copied from our sister organisation in Sweden, the Swedish LO.
[download presentation (PPT)]
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1999
Statistics Finland:
Gender Equality in Working Life
Status Report on European Telework 1999 (European Commission, Directorate-General Information Society) page 26 gives total amount of teleworkers in Finland 16,77% of workforce. Our national data shows smaller numbers, as shown below. The main reason for this is definition of telework, being stricter in Finland.
According to national surveys (Statistics Finland 1990 and 1997) teleworking has increased in Finland almost five-fold during the 1990s. 9% of employees were teleworking at least occasionally in autumn 1997. In 1990 the percent of all employees was 2. Defined in this way, teleworking is slightly more common among men than women.
Among socio-economic groups teleworking was most used by male management/upper white-collar employees (19%), male research and planning staff (17%) and other male upper white-collar employees (15%). Among female teachers teleworking was most common of women 8%, as common as among their male colleagues. Among manufacturing workers are teleworking 1% of women and 2% of men.
In Finland approximately 80% of workforce is organised both among blue-collar workers and among white-collar employees. The figures above tells also the teleworking situation among trade-union members.
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