A report released on Tuesday from the Service Union United PAM says that 30 million euros in different kinds of benefits are paid to workers in the retail sector each year to make up for inadequate salaries.
Figures from Statistics Finland and the Financial Supervisory Authority show that 90 percent of the people receiving state benefits in addition to their salaries were part-time workers, while just 3 percent were full-time. Eurostat figures from 2015 show that about 3.5 percent of working 18 to 64 year olds in Finland bring in an income that falls below the poverty line.
The retail sector reported a 334-million-euro profit in 2015, and the major chains have recently reported an increase in sales as consumer confidence improves.
In 2015 the board of the K-market chains Kesko decided to distribute close to 149 million euros of its 194 million operating profit as share dividends, almost 77 percent. PAM argues that with profits of up to ten times the amount of wage expenses, the retail chains in Finland have plenty of room to increase employee wages.
"A call for more low-wage work is recurring in the public discourse. Employees in the retail sector are being paid 30-million-euro's worth of social benefits such as housing or income support, each year," says the researcher behind the report, Niina Tanner.
The union’s research director Antti Veirto is concerned about the growing wage gap in Finland.
"The [working poor] phenomenon we have come to know from America is real in many western countries, and now there is proof that Finland is among them. Working people are growing poorer while executive wages are rising. Income gaps in earnings-related salaries and capital are increasing. We should seriously consider the path we'll choose to take. Surely we don’t want to reach a situation in which this social uncertainty reaches historic proportions," he said.
Expansion of opening hours complicating childcare
The Service Union United PAM is a Finnish trade union for people working in private service sectors. PAM has about 230,000 members, 72 percent of which are women. On Tuesday it also released the results of a survey in which it asked members how the liberalisation of opening hours that went into force at the start of 2016 has affected their life.
Preliminary results show that of the over 2,000 respondents to the survey, over 50 percent of women and 37 percent of men felt the new extended working hours required of them made childcare more difficult. 72 percent of women and 50 percent of men reported spending less time with their children, and almost 59 percent of female and 42 percent of male respondents to the survey said they have considered quitting their retail work because of the working hour changes.
Of the PAM members responding to the survey, 21.6 percent of the male members said they had a spouse at home on child care or parental leave caring for their children, while only 0.6 percent of women said the same.
Two jobs and zero-hour contracts
PAM representatives are also concerned about increasing numbers of retail employees having to work alone, and perhaps fear for their safety. Veirto says the number of people working two jobs at once is also at a historic high in Finland.
The union brought up the issue of zero-hour contracts in the retail sector, mentioning that the same survey found that 41 percent of the respondents that were hired under a zero-hour arrangement were still working under the contract 2 years later. Over a quarter of these reported that they cannot refuse a shift if they are offered one without consequences.
PAM says that contracts that bind the employees and not the employers are unacceptable and look to the government to pass legislation to ban the practice. A working group is now preparing a white paper on the issue at the Ministry of Employment.