PAM’s objective for the collective agreement negotiations: “Settlement along lines of German industry would give service sector workers pay rises of around 200 euros”

The Executive Committee of Service Sector United PAM decided on Thursday to commit to progressing negotiations with SAK unions. In the collective agreement negotiations PAM is aiming for increases that safeguard the purchasing power of service sector workers.

“Our view is that workers don’t just deserve a pay rise, they also need one with all the inflation that’s around. Decent pay rises would show that employers are doing their bit to ensure workers can manage to live their lives securely through these difficult times”, says PAM President Annika Rönni-Sällinen.

SAK’s Executive Board decided on Monday that the confederation’s member unions will jointly seek a pay settlement along the lines of the pay rises achieved in German industry. According to Rönni-Sällinen, this would mean permanent increases of around 200 euros a month to workers’ average wages in PAM sectors. In addition, the social insurance charges that were transferred to wage earners as part of the competitiveness pact should again be borne by employers.

“Employees previously concluded the competitiveness pact to restore companies’ competitiveness in the difficult global situation at the time. Now it is the turn of business take on these charges to support workers and their purchasing power. A concession of this sort would also help us to find common ground at the negotiating table, where huge pressures have built up”, Rönni-Sällinen says.

PAM’s Executive Committee decided on Thursday to terminate the collective agreements in the commerce sector and eight other collective agreements. The agreements cover over 200,000 employees. In all of these agreements, pay rises for 2023 were due to be agreed by 15 December. The Finnish Commerce Federation flatly turned down pay negotiations for the commerce sector nor was an agreement reached with Service Sector Employers Palta on increases for the eight other sectors. Normal collective agreement negotiations lie ahead for all these sectors, covering not just pay rises but also all the other provisions of the collective agreements.

PAM negotiates collective agreements for a total of 30 sectors. These cover 410,000 employees.

PAM working together with other SAK unions

PAM’s Executive Committee decided to commit to working together with other SAK unions in aiming to negotiate a joint collective agreement settlement to safeguard wage earners’ purchasing power. PAM’s Executive Committee considered it important to launch a joint approach and that this collaboration would make all the unions stronger in their negotiations.