Suomen Yrittäjät president considers retail sector pay deal unreasonable

Mikael Pentikäinen, President and CEO of Suomen Yrittäjät, the Finnish SME association, considers the pay solution achieved on Sunday in the retail sector difficult for small businesses.

“It’s good that a deal was struck. When the economic outlook for the sector weakens, industrial action is not needed,” Mikael Pentikäinen, President and CEO of Suomen Yrittäjät, says.

“However, it’s clear that the agreement is difficult and even unreasonable for many small businesses in the sector who don’t have the strong market position and pricing power that big companies have,” he continues.

The two-year pay solution for the retail sector lifts monthly salaries by €105 from 1 June 2023 and by €60 from 1 June 2024. In addition, retail workers will receive a €400 one-off payment with their April salary, of which €200 can alternatively be paid with September 2023 salary.

The contents of the collective agreement solution will be published in more detail this week.

Pentikäinen of Suomen Yrittäjät says that inflation erodes not only employees’ purchasing power but also businesses’.

“Few smaller businesses can pass on the rising costs to their customers. When profits are weak to begin with, a collective agreement that is too expensive will lead to staff cuts and shop closures.”

Pentikäinen says that the results of collective bargaining this year show that agreement models need to be found which give much more space for company- and workplace-specific bargaining.

“When situations and needs are completely different, a one-size-fits-all solution suits everyone extremely badly. You just can’t put the same sized shoe on every foot.”

Pentikäinen and chair of the board of Suomen Yrittäjät Petri Salminen also raised the inflexibility of the labour market in an op-ed in national newspaper Helsingin Sanomat on Monday.

“Businesses continuously criticize the collective bargaining system for its inflexibility and failure to take workers’ or companies’ increasingly divergent needs into account. A centralized system reduces flexibility and weakens productivity. Nevertheless, reform of the system is barely discussed. Reforming a system we have built ourselves is not easy,” Salminen and Pentikäinen wrote in the newspaper.

Are you already a Suomen Yrittäjät member? Read more about member benefits and advantages!