Four service worker unions plan to merge in 2001. The letter of intent was signed in early December. With more than 200,000 members the new trade union will become the second largest in Finland. The Municipal Sector Trade Union has 228,000 members. More than 80 per cent of the members in the two larger unions are women.
Many factors favour the merger.
It will improve organising and lobbying power and helps to build trade union unity, as the members of these unions partly work in the same places. Recently some of the parties were involved in a bitter dispute about which union should organise cleaning staff. In collective bargaining the new union should seek a framework agreement covering the whole of the service sector, suggests Maj-Len Remahl, who chairs the Union of Commercial Employees. Another goal, Remahl says, is to make the new union so attractive that service sector employees are eager to join it, feel secure as its members and regard it as an effective channel for improving their well-being. Here she refers to recent studies showing that the main reason for joining unions is earnings-related unemployment benefit.