A review of progress by the JHL public and welfare sector union towards closing the gender pay gap reveals that reforming pay structures has had some impact in this respect but mainly for higher paid workers. Progress towards the common goal of government and social partners set, as to bring down the gender pay gap from 19.1% in 2006 to 15% in 2015, is stagnating as the pay gap in 2009 was still 18.2%. The union review points to the heavily gendered segmentation of the Finnish labour market. It also shows that equality plans have been positive in terms of work-life balance and issues like discrimination and harassment, but have not made much difference in terms of pay. The key challenge set by the union is to be able to compare pay across different collective agreements.
English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/411
http://www.jhl.fi/portal/en/news/archive/?bid=931
This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2011.