The tabloid Ilta-Sanomat breaks down what kind of income and holidays the 200 newly-elected Finnish parliamentarians can look forward to when they begin their service on 23 April. IS predicts that after the 14 April general elections, about a third of the elected MPs will be new to the job.
New MPs in Finland earn 6,614 euros per month, along with a tax-free expense allowance of 987 euros for MPs that live permanently in the capital city region, and 1,315 euros for those who live elsewhere. This extra compensation is even higher for those who maintain a second home in the capital city area.
Plenary session recesses leave a total of 4.5 months of holiday a year: with a week's break for Easter, a summer holiday from the second week of June until the first week of September, another week's break in late October-early November, and a standard Christmas break.
MPs are compensated for travel on all forms of domestic transport and are also entitled to compensation for taxi trips, IS reports.
While ordinary workers in Finland accrue a pension of 1.5 percent of annual income, MPs accrue four percent. MPs receive a pension for up to 15 years that equals 60 percent of their monthly income over the last 15 years of their career. This money is paid out as an old-age pension when they turn 65.
IS reports that MPs also receive an adaptation allowance that lasts up to three years if they are not re-elected. The right of MPs to claim adjustment pensions until retirement age was recently struck down, following a citizens' initiative demanding an end to the so-called parachute pensions, a proposal which lawmakers subsequently voted to approve.
Few united fronts on family leave
Helsingin Sanomat continues with a story on election candidates going rogue with regard to Finland's parental leave policy.
HS went through the answers MP-hopefuls gave to the paper's election compass (find Yle's English-language version here) and found that many candidates do not toe their party lines when it comes to proposed family leave reforms. At present, mothers use the clear majority of family leave time in Finland, which is seen to weaken women's position in the labour market. Several parties propose increasing the proportion of leave that fathers should take in order to better share the childcare burden and remedy the problem.
Two parties are united in their opposition to the plan, HS writes, as 90 percent of the Christian Democrats and the Finns Party "somewhat or completely disagree" with increasing dad quotas. One-third of Centre Party candidates were also opposed.
The Greens and Left Alliance show the most united support for the plan, with one-fifth of Green candidates not on board, and one-quarter of the leftist group's representatives indicating that they disagreed.
The discord is most apparent in the centre-right National Coalition Party (NCP), however, where just over half of election candidates subscribe to the party's official campaign platform calling for quotas to be split evenly between men and women. Almost as many candidates have gone solo in the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as well, according to the paper, as 40 percent do not agree that increasing men's share of family leave is important.
Kallio site of most traffic accidents
And the tabloid Iltalehti finishes the paper review this Thursday with a story on traffic accident hot spots in Helsinki.
Tweets from the head of the Helsinki police force's traffic monitoring unit report that the Kamppi district in the city centre is no longer the area with the most traffic accidents, as the areas near the Hämeentie thoroughfare have now taken the title.
Accidents in the districts of Kallio and Alppiharju in particular have risen sharply. From January to March 2019, 34 accidents were reported in Kallio, doubling last year's figures from the same period. The authorities suspect that on-going renovation of Hämeentie is partly responsible for the increase.
If the trend continues, Kallio will pull past Kamppi, which has been the location of over 100 accidents annually for the last two years, making it the most dangerous traffic area in the city.
The amount of traffic accidents in Helsinki is growing year-on-year, but IL reports that the good news is that there have been no traffic accident fatalities in the city for the last eight months. If this streak continues for another month, it will be an all-time Helsinki record.