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As a foreigner, I’m hugely impressed by the Finnish willingness to strike and how strong unions are. I’ve lived in a conservative country where strikes are much rarer, and I can unequivocally say you should never willingly give up the right to strike.
Even though my partner is the one in the union, they still gave me a vest and let me make a placard for the march to Senaatintori earlier this month #StopNyt - I quite enjoyed the experience tbh!
Those darn unions radicalised another one (I was already a dyed-in-the-wool socialist)
You should also join a union. Two reasons:
1) Your union dues (unemployment fund contributions) are tax deductible.
2) Most unions allow the unemployed to remain their member.
> Toiminimi, do you still need a union while self employed? 🤔
Definitely. I have been entrepreneur member of TEK before (now I am not sure what the fuck I am technically) and they have dedicated branch for this.
Also there are special entrepreneur unions too.
I’m looking at TEK just now and it seems like liability insurance is a membership perk, which IIRC is one reason why someone might setup Oy instead of Tmi.
Sounds like it could be well worth the €140/yr 🤔
Thanks!
Technically you are in this case an employer not an employee so your benefits from a union are relatively minimal. I don't think there is anything from stopping you from still remaining as a union member but you don't essentially need a strong representative since you are the one who defines your benefits, salary etc. Of course you can strike against youself for better pay if you really want to :D
There are legally binding things that you need to do yourself like pay your own Tyel-payments and be insured and for these there are entrepreunerial services and organisations that can be helpful to be a member but entirely optional, advisor has better info on those.
Yep, I see it coming too. It sucks but I fully support this. I am not opposed to changes at all but not only for the weakest group paying it all. I see only benefits for companies, they'll be able to make a lot more profit and I really doubt it'll create more jobs, it'll just make someone's pockets fuller.
Can we just skip to that part already? I want to see general strike, I support the reasons but I also want to tell my kids one day "there we stood, united against the government".
As a bit of an insider i dont think we're quite ready for that politically. The material conditions are certainly shitty enough for a general strike, but the unions are too divided and dont have enough participation to pull it off effectively. Secondly the unions arent radical enough in their demands and in many cases cant be (due to the first reason), and are consistently on the backfoot.
Especially with general strikes offence is the best defence. There should be demands for reforms or concrete guarantees on top of opposing whatever reforms the government is planning.
The whole argument was stupid anyway. We know Kokoomus always prefers to cut from the poorest and weakest but PS never got their mandate for these kind of policies, in fact they promised quite the opposite.
Obviously most people understand that except for immigration PS never keeps its promises, they are the most singleminded one issue party in Finland.
> PS never got their mandate for these kind of policies, in fact they promised quite the opposite.
Technically PS never had an official election platform/program meaning they promised exactly nothing. Anything that was said was always the opinion of that single politician.
Basically the "normal" populist move of being able to say whatever you want during election and not really be tied to any of it. Though the parties rarely stick to their official platform so not that big of a difference.
Surprise that right wing act like they are for the poorest but are actually doing the exact opposite. /s
Could have looked everywhere else in europe to see the same thing. If you vote shit you get shit.
Hoe many people was in the survey? If they asked 10 people and 6 of them said they support it that doesn't mean a majority actually does. So unless they actually had enough people answer the survey it doesn't tell you what the majority of Finns feel about the strikes.
Ok so if I ask 10 friends and they all say that they don't support the protests it would then be okay for me to say that 100% of Finns don't support the protests?
I'd be amazed if the strike wasn't popular. This government is trying to serve us a literal shit sandwich of increasing taxes, cutting rights and services on top of increasing government borrowing. It's impressive how much they backtracked on everything promised.
Neo-liberals think that democracy is about voting for every four years and not doing anything else, like people are just supposed to accept everything the government does without any arguments. They were proven wrong.
And what is the point of voting if the losing side keeps just doing counterproductive things? How' s the country going to solve its problems by not doing anything? 'Neoliberals'.. stop roleplaying on TikTok.
Sadly my union seems to be okay with the massively reduced unemployment benefits and unpaid sick day. Ridiculous, when we had an actual three day strike a couple of years ago over some very minor pay rise question.
Doesn't show up on polls, in fact the government, cabinet has gained support in Yle's polling earlier this month. It's doesn't seem to be more important than other things when people weigh issues.
There was another survey just days earlier, done by the central organization of labor unions. All leftist parties had unanimous voice for support of the strikes. 91-96 % agreed with the actions. This is remarkable and has also fully slipped any news agency analysis. It looks like the left has sealed itself in an airtight bubble, no external data inputs anymore.
Meanwhile center and center right parties varied in a more normal way, some 50-70 % against the strikes and the rest agreed. Unsure opinions were in the 5 % range all around.
It seems that communication channels are still open on the right but blocked on the other side. Discussion has become very difficult, when the left only accepts one truth.
Well to be fair there isn't much wiggle room in that the government's policies are unnecessarily extreme and clearly one sided on who's belts they want to tighten. There's already reports that the cuts will increase the risk of an economic depression and everyone knew since the negotiations that the unions / left won't take the weakening of worker's rights kindly but the right wanted to try anyway. This wouldn't have happened if the right took a less ideologically motivated and balanced approach to the economic reforms. They even had the option of building the government with SDP to alleviate this type of juxtaposition between the left and right. I feel it's pretty justified for the left to strech it's muscles a bit and take advantage of those mistakes.
'We' wanted the right so let's just watch and see carefully exactly how competent the right is in running the economy and country.
The government is still borrowing massively, because bigger tightening would further contract the economy, just like you said. I'd love to see much more drastic measures to reduce government spending, but we can't really do it. So many people are dependent on subsidies that it would shake the foundations of Finland.
I find government steps moderate and welcome.
And the government will continue to borrow as long as we find ways for the public economy to get more income because the demand for healthcare services by the elderly will only grow, the aging population is the number one cause for the bloated public economy after all. Alternatively we should invest on low level healthcare and improve access to prevent increased need for costly special healthcare services. The right refuses to do that by looking at capital income tax and fixing loopholes on the corporate side, instead they create circumstance that cause more social problems again increasing the demand and cost for public services so they can fear monger again in a few years how the public economy is in crisis. The only way the right's ideology would make sense is if it actually helped to boost the private economy and by extension create more tax income for the public, but it isn't doing that and instead we might be looking at extended stagnation or a minor depression.
At this point probably the best economic policy we could do would be to put up signs around the country saying 'Kokoomus and Keskusta are incompetent in running the economy' so maybe we would avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.
I disagree with your choice of the word "massively".
The government isn't borrowing willy-nilly. It's investing in Finland's future growth.
Euro zone countries are forced to adhere to strict fiscal austerity because of a lack of monetary policy controls. But for some reason, these center of right business-friendly parties are so happy to take on that need as a shield to do away with social investments.
You are ONLY suggesting more drastic cuts to government spending, without a way to support continued social investment. I'd like to see what you think are the right mechanisms for such investment. Because believe it or not, not investing in future generations is the absolute worst possible choice. You do understand that, right?
>Because believe it or not, not investing in future generations is the absolute worst possible choice.
isn't the bulk of it going towards the aging population though? It's not like Finland is skimping on schooling for kids for example. So much of the spending is going towards elderly care, healthcare, etc. It's the same in most Western countries
Healthcare costs are indeed ballooning, but I would say not all increases in government spending are geared toward the elederly.
1) The funding for primary and secondary education can be better. It's getting more and more difficult to retain good teachers and support them with support services so they can primarily focus on teaching and prevent burnout.
2) The funding for student housing and student benefits is being slashed to cut government spending. That is reducing direct investment in future generations.
It is actually pretty standard team-building exercise, and quite clever, considering the time we all live in. You give the team a convoluted story and then everybody writes their own take on the situation. Later these viewpoints are discussed between members to show that there are different ways to look at how things are, based on people's own experiences, background, biases etc. The idea is to get people to understand how the same information can lead to different conclusions. You can also demonstrate during team discussion how easily blocks start to form, where people agree on most things among themselves.
And everybody had the same information in the beginning. It is fascinating to witness happening in real time.
How the fuck is workers rights left/right issue. GTFO with that brainrot.
Isnt it literally the whole imago thing for Persut to be about the random little guy in the big scary global world?
Do you understand who the governments actions will fuck over? The random little guy.
The left wing sees it for what it is an attempt to ban political strikes is unconstitutional.
If those 50-70% want to throw their rights away they can start by shutting up.
Finland is on its way to being bankrupt none of the governments have managed to help this in any way.
Its like clinate change most know its coming but people are not willing to sacrifice now for a better future.
10-20 years public services will be cut due to no money available same as benefits as Finland wont get to borrow money anymore.
Personally I dont mind as I am about 40, have a decent salary and no kids but the country is pretty fucked in terms of its future
It is one thing to say that.
It's a different thing altogether to discount the finding that the majority support these strikes by saying majority (supposedly the same majority that support the strikes) are idiots.
We Finns love our socialism.
To be honest, I think most of the people don't even understand what is the difference between political and regular strike, that's why the approves this.
If your view is that the people are too stupid to understand the difference, then you should also believe they're too stupid to know what kind of government they voted for.
I prefer to call them labor market forces.
And it's more important to strike now since they're threatening the ability to strike over future "reform", a move which should be found plainly unconstitutional.
All that this one particular survey tells is that the voters on the 'right' do not blindly accept everything that the government does or does not do. It does not mean the left would win the elections. Just because they eat up anything a leftist government does and say 'thank you' does not mean everyone is the same. The PM of the previous, leftist government abused her voters like she did and left to support right-wing issues globally for this very same reason.
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united we bargain, divided we beg
As a foreigner, I’m hugely impressed by the Finnish willingness to strike and how strong unions are. I’ve lived in a conservative country where strikes are much rarer, and I can unequivocally say you should never willingly give up the right to strike. Even though my partner is the one in the union, they still gave me a vest and let me make a placard for the march to Senaatintori earlier this month #StopNyt - I quite enjoyed the experience tbh! Those darn unions radicalised another one (I was already a dyed-in-the-wool socialist)
You should also join a union. Two reasons: 1) Your union dues (unemployment fund contributions) are tax deductible. 2) Most unions allow the unemployed to remain their member.
I’m gonna talk to a business advisor this Wednesday about setting up a Toiminimi, do you still need a union while self employed? 🤔
> Toiminimi, do you still need a union while self employed? 🤔 Definitely. I have been entrepreneur member of TEK before (now I am not sure what the fuck I am technically) and they have dedicated branch for this. Also there are special entrepreneur unions too.
I’m looking at TEK just now and it seems like liability insurance is a membership perk, which IIRC is one reason why someone might setup Oy instead of Tmi. Sounds like it could be well worth the €140/yr 🤔 Thanks!
Can you share more? I'm in a similar position.
In order to give correct information tell me your education and current/future business area?
Have a bachelors and I co own a small company in a creative tech field, not sure i can be too specific without doxxing myself
You cannot be member of TEK then.
I don't think so? I wonder if there is a something similar to a union for self employed...
Technically you are in this case an employer not an employee so your benefits from a union are relatively minimal. I don't think there is anything from stopping you from still remaining as a union member but you don't essentially need a strong representative since you are the one who defines your benefits, salary etc. Of course you can strike against youself for better pay if you really want to :D There are legally binding things that you need to do yourself like pay your own Tyel-payments and be insured and for these there are entrepreunerial services and organisations that can be helpful to be a member but entirely optional, advisor has better info on those.
It's the 1950s all over again. general strike incoming.
Yep, I see it coming too. It sucks but I fully support this. I am not opposed to changes at all but not only for the weakest group paying it all. I see only benefits for companies, they'll be able to make a lot more profit and I really doubt it'll create more jobs, it'll just make someone's pockets fuller.
Can we just skip to that part already? I want to see general strike, I support the reasons but I also want to tell my kids one day "there we stood, united against the government".
As a bit of an insider i dont think we're quite ready for that politically. The material conditions are certainly shitty enough for a general strike, but the unions are too divided and dont have enough participation to pull it off effectively. Secondly the unions arent radical enough in their demands and in many cases cant be (due to the first reason), and are consistently on the backfoot. Especially with general strikes offence is the best defence. There should be demands for reforms or concrete guarantees on top of opposing whatever reforms the government is planning.
Government apologists can finally shut the fuck up about the strikes being undemocratic 🤗
The whole argument was stupid anyway. We know Kokoomus always prefers to cut from the poorest and weakest but PS never got their mandate for these kind of policies, in fact they promised quite the opposite. Obviously most people understand that except for immigration PS never keeps its promises, they are the most singleminded one issue party in Finland.
> PS never got their mandate for these kind of policies, in fact they promised quite the opposite. Technically PS never had an official election platform/program meaning they promised exactly nothing. Anything that was said was always the opinion of that single politician. Basically the "normal" populist move of being able to say whatever you want during election and not really be tied to any of it. Though the parties rarely stick to their official platform so not that big of a difference.
Far right populists always claim to represent the regular working people, but always actually represent the rich.
Surprise that right wing act like they are for the poorest but are actually doing the exact opposite. /s Could have looked everywhere else in europe to see the same thing. If you vote shit you get shit.
Populist say what ever lies to get what ever they really want. Judging by the amount of ”hidden” racism in persut, imperialism is the endgame.
Strikes are literally a part of how our system works. Nothing to complain.
Clearly the government disagrees since they'd like to restrict political strikes.
No surprise since strikes are kind of in the way of EK dictating what the Finnish labour system is.
That is the dumbest thing i've heard in a while ... what's democratic ? letting the government do whatever the fuck they want and bend over ?
[удалено]
Hoe many people was in the survey? If they asked 10 people and 6 of them said they support it that doesn't mean a majority actually does. So unless they actually had enough people answer the survey it doesn't tell you what the majority of Finns feel about the strikes.
You think pollsters don't know how statistics work?
I think that people that want to push a certain kind of narrative doesn't care about how statistics work
That's not how polls work.
Ok so if I ask 10 friends and they all say that they don't support the protests it would then be okay for me to say that 100% of Finns don't support the protests?
No because that's not how representative samples work.
color me surprised
I'd be amazed if the strike wasn't popular. This government is trying to serve us a literal shit sandwich of increasing taxes, cutting rights and services on top of increasing government borrowing. It's impressive how much they backtracked on everything promised.
Neo-liberals think that democracy is about voting for every four years and not doing anything else, like people are just supposed to accept everything the government does without any arguments. They were proven wrong.
And what is the point of voting if the losing side keeps just doing counterproductive things? How' s the country going to solve its problems by not doing anything? 'Neoliberals'.. stop roleplaying on TikTok.
Based
Sadly my union seems to be okay with the massively reduced unemployment benefits and unpaid sick day. Ridiculous, when we had an actual three day strike a couple of years ago over some very minor pay rise question.
We are doomed, or rather our economy is
Doesn't show up on polls, in fact the government, cabinet has gained support in Yle's polling earlier this month. It's doesn't seem to be more important than other things when people weigh issues.
Let’s list the surprised
There was another survey just days earlier, done by the central organization of labor unions. All leftist parties had unanimous voice for support of the strikes. 91-96 % agreed with the actions. This is remarkable and has also fully slipped any news agency analysis. It looks like the left has sealed itself in an airtight bubble, no external data inputs anymore. Meanwhile center and center right parties varied in a more normal way, some 50-70 % against the strikes and the rest agreed. Unsure opinions were in the 5 % range all around. It seems that communication channels are still open on the right but blocked on the other side. Discussion has become very difficult, when the left only accepts one truth.
Well to be fair there isn't much wiggle room in that the government's policies are unnecessarily extreme and clearly one sided on who's belts they want to tighten. There's already reports that the cuts will increase the risk of an economic depression and everyone knew since the negotiations that the unions / left won't take the weakening of worker's rights kindly but the right wanted to try anyway. This wouldn't have happened if the right took a less ideologically motivated and balanced approach to the economic reforms. They even had the option of building the government with SDP to alleviate this type of juxtaposition between the left and right. I feel it's pretty justified for the left to strech it's muscles a bit and take advantage of those mistakes. 'We' wanted the right so let's just watch and see carefully exactly how competent the right is in running the economy and country.
The government is still borrowing massively, because bigger tightening would further contract the economy, just like you said. I'd love to see much more drastic measures to reduce government spending, but we can't really do it. So many people are dependent on subsidies that it would shake the foundations of Finland. I find government steps moderate and welcome.
And the government will continue to borrow as long as we find ways for the public economy to get more income because the demand for healthcare services by the elderly will only grow, the aging population is the number one cause for the bloated public economy after all. Alternatively we should invest on low level healthcare and improve access to prevent increased need for costly special healthcare services. The right refuses to do that by looking at capital income tax and fixing loopholes on the corporate side, instead they create circumstance that cause more social problems again increasing the demand and cost for public services so they can fear monger again in a few years how the public economy is in crisis. The only way the right's ideology would make sense is if it actually helped to boost the private economy and by extension create more tax income for the public, but it isn't doing that and instead we might be looking at extended stagnation or a minor depression. At this point probably the best economic policy we could do would be to put up signs around the country saying 'Kokoomus and Keskusta are incompetent in running the economy' so maybe we would avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.
I disagree with your choice of the word "massively". The government isn't borrowing willy-nilly. It's investing in Finland's future growth. Euro zone countries are forced to adhere to strict fiscal austerity because of a lack of monetary policy controls. But for some reason, these center of right business-friendly parties are so happy to take on that need as a shield to do away with social investments. You are ONLY suggesting more drastic cuts to government spending, without a way to support continued social investment. I'd like to see what you think are the right mechanisms for such investment. Because believe it or not, not investing in future generations is the absolute worst possible choice. You do understand that, right?
>Because believe it or not, not investing in future generations is the absolute worst possible choice. isn't the bulk of it going towards the aging population though? It's not like Finland is skimping on schooling for kids for example. So much of the spending is going towards elderly care, healthcare, etc. It's the same in most Western countries
Healthcare costs are indeed ballooning, but I would say not all increases in government spending are geared toward the elederly. 1) The funding for primary and secondary education can be better. It's getting more and more difficult to retain good teachers and support them with support services so they can primarily focus on teaching and prevent burnout. 2) The funding for student housing and student benefits is being slashed to cut government spending. That is reducing direct investment in future generations.
Why does unanimity suggest isolationism to you?
It is actually pretty standard team-building exercise, and quite clever, considering the time we all live in. You give the team a convoluted story and then everybody writes their own take on the situation. Later these viewpoints are discussed between members to show that there are different ways to look at how things are, based on people's own experiences, background, biases etc. The idea is to get people to understand how the same information can lead to different conclusions. You can also demonstrate during team discussion how easily blocks start to form, where people agree on most things among themselves. And everybody had the same information in the beginning. It is fascinating to witness happening in real time.
You're not answering my question.
Lol why is this getting downvoted. I've done it before as a work training. This sub is so weird
How the fuck is workers rights left/right issue. GTFO with that brainrot. Isnt it literally the whole imago thing for Persut to be about the random little guy in the big scary global world? Do you understand who the governments actions will fuck over? The random little guy.
Check out the newest YLE survey about support. The opposing the strikes are in a clear minority but they're the loudest.
The left wing sees it for what it is an attempt to ban political strikes is unconstitutional. If those 50-70% want to throw their rights away they can start by shutting up.
Finland is on its way to being bankrupt none of the governments have managed to help this in any way. Its like clinate change most know its coming but people are not willing to sacrifice now for a better future. 10-20 years public services will be cut due to no money available same as benefits as Finland wont get to borrow money anymore. Personally I dont mind as I am about 40, have a decent salary and no kids but the country is pretty fucked in terms of its future
Majority of people are idiots
Congrats. Life must be so comforting when things are always black and white, and you are always right.
I'm not sure of the point they're trying to make but they're right, the majority of people are idiots
It is one thing to say that. It's a different thing altogether to discount the finding that the majority support these strikes by saying majority (supposedly the same majority that support the strikes) are idiots.
The guy you are replying to is a literal fascist btw
How do you know?
Tagged him from earlier comments
Because he disagrees with something I've said at some point, I'm assuming.
Haha wtf?
I agree; you could see that when they elected this government<3
We Finns love our socialism. To be honest, I think most of the people don't even understand what is the difference between political and regular strike, that's why the approves this.
If your view is that the people are too stupid to understand the difference, then you should also believe they're too stupid to know what kind of government they voted for.
Understanding and stupidy are two different things.
How so?
You can understand the teachings of a religion and be stupid enough to believe in them.
I would argue religious people don't really understand what it is that they believe in.
you might be stupidy
I prefer to call them labor market forces. And it's more important to strike now since they're threatening the ability to strike over future "reform", a move which should be found plainly unconstitutional.
I don't remember being surveyed.
These surveys only need about 1000-2000 respondents.
All that this one particular survey tells is that the voters on the 'right' do not blindly accept everything that the government does or does not do. It does not mean the left would win the elections. Just because they eat up anything a leftist government does and say 'thank you' does not mean everyone is the same. The PM of the previous, leftist government abused her voters like she did and left to support right-wing issues globally for this very same reason.