The Negotiation Organisation for Public Sector Professionals JUKO, Trade Union Pro, and the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors JHL have today issued a strike notice for the universities of Helsinki and Turku.
The 24-hour strike will begin on May 27th at 00:01 and end at 23:59, if no solution is reached regarding the working conditions and salary increases for university employees before then. Conciliation continues today, Monday, May 12th.
The strike covers all jobs under the General Collective Agreement for Universities. Exemptions from the strike include IT on-call services and essential maintenance of IT backbone services, essential care of samples and animals, and tasks whose omission would pose a danger to human life or health or significant risk to property.
No agreement on salary increases or teaching hour cap
Negotiations for the university collective agreement have been ongoing for over three months. For the past three weeks, the labour dispute has been intensively conciliated under the leadership of the national conciliator, but no settlement proposal has been reached yet.
The key contentious issues in the negotiations are salary increases and the teaching hour cap, which protects those engaged in teaching and research from excessive workloads.
Teaching, research, and the supporting administration form the educational foundation of society.
“The future of all of Finland is built on expertise, and it is the university employees who create it. Therefore, fair, general increase-focused salary increases and working conditions that support well-being are not a matter of negotiation but a necessity,” emphasize JUKO, Pro, and JHL.
There are thirteen universities in Finland, employing a total of 35,000 people.
Membership letter for Research Professionals in Turku and Helsinki
Research Professionals members who work at the Universities of Turku and Helsinki have received the membership newsletter today.
More information about collective agreement for universities in yliopistotes.fi-website
Up-to-date information on the conciliation can also be found on JUKO’s Facebook (in Finnish).