The so-called Swedish model marketed as the basis for the pay gap act means that pay increases would not be agreed upon in the collective agreement for nurses, but locally in the wellbeing services counties. The Swedish model is also being justified with the claim that more of the pay increases stipulated in the collective agreement could be allocated to nurses than other professional groups. This claim is unrealistic and does not acknowledge the current state of public-sector agreements.
Nurses in the wellbeing services counties are subject to the general collective agreement for the health and social services sector (SOTE agreement). In the scope of that agreement, the proportion of nurses among all employees is so large that uneven allocation of pay increases within this agreement practically means transferring pay increases from one nurse to another. The mediator would be forced into this with the pay gap act. The pay gaps would remain among nurses.
Not even labour shortages are increasing salaries in the wellbeing services counties
The Government’s fundamental claim is that the labour market is a free market and labour shortages increase salaries, meaning that employers definitely would increase salaries. But how could this even happen when the wellbeing services counties have no financial leeway as employers?
Labour shortages and market forces are of little help when the state is micromanaging the operations of the wellbeing services counties with its laws while simultaneously forcing the wellbeing services counties to cut their expenses by all possible means. The wellbeing services counties simply do not have the financial leeway needed for agreeing on salaries locally or implementing voluntary cost-of-living pay increases.
The wellbeing services counties are now even reviewing their responsibilities as they are being forced to select which legislation to breach because there is no money. All the talk of the effect of market forces on salaries in the wellbeing services counties or “employers’ own salary policies” involving voluntary salary solutions is ridiculous, as including such means in the budgets of the wellbeing services counties would go against the law.
Micromanagement by decision-makers is removing actual leeway from the wellbeing services counties
The wellbeing services counties have no opportunities to acquire money for their needs, as they have no taxation right or any other means typically used in the public sector to increase their income.
While certain politicians are micromanaging the wellbeing services counties’ duties at the national level, others are deciding on their money at the municipal and regional level. No one is looking at the big picture or assuming responsibility for it. In this equation, the wellbeing services counties have no financial leeway to manage salaries with their own solutions.
Even if the wellbeing services counties’ current deficit problem were to be solved with savings in the coming years, nothing would change in the grand scheme of things. Unless the financing structure of the wellbeing services counties is fixed, they will continue to be at the mercy of cost and expenditure decisions made by others, and different politicians will decide on them as if disregarding each other. In this operating environment, the wellbeing services counties do not have the means to follow the Swedish model, not even in theory.
All the talk of the Swedish model solving future salary problems in public healthcare is completely empty.
The pay gap act, disastrous for nurses in Finland, cannot be set by justifying it with the Swedish model or any other hollow talking points.