The Process of Rebuilding Will Measure the Open-Mindedness of the Trade Union Movement

I want to see a trade union movement that has an open-minded attitude to new things. If we try to maintain the old – or try to get back to what we saw as normal back in 2019 – we are just defending existing benefits.

The arrival of the coronavirus crisis surprised us all this spring. Maybe not surprised, exactly – we did receive the messages and information from China and later from Italy, but at the start of this year few people could predict how completely life would change during the spring.

Closing down society always comes at a price. That price is not only financial, but also social and humanitarian. Having been shut into our homes will impact us all for a long time.

Several working groups are already discussing how we can get back on our feet as fast as possible.

I think that the trade union movement plays and important role in this. Settling for our traditional role is not enough, however. We should not be reduced to running an unemployment fund and helping people quickly, even though these things have a huge impact from a human perspective. We are expected to carry out these tasks as well as possible even when society is not going through an extensive crisis.

I now expect more from us.

We want the Government to make sure that nothing changes.

We often find more problems than opportunities in new things.

We become worried. How will this work out!

If we are completely honest, our movement has not always been the most open-minded when faced with change. Now that we need to get Finland back on its feet, we need open-mindedness. It is about time we get to grips with what the transformation of work actually means. What it means for employment relationships, but above all, what it means for how we work. Jobs disappear, new work is created, modes of operation change. Some sectors and unions have of course already been forced to face this reality.

Akava should be a forerunner in this. Now our members often do work that is neither time nor location dependent, and during the coronavirus epidemic it has been proven that even in the more traditional jobs within Akava, it is still possible to take up new tools and ways of working.

Possible, but also painful.

Could we therefore support and help our members even better than before, while the nature of work changes and we have to learn new things quickly? This could have a significant societal impact in the future – not only in terms of preparing for potential new waves of the epidemic, but also in everyday life, such as combining family and work, and making it easier for people to flexibly choose where they live regardless of where they work.

The coronavirus crisis has been a tough ordeal, and we can only guess what the consequences will be. But we can already see that it has also created something new. The trade union movement – us here at Akava – should be talking about how this has changed and could change our own work. It would be an opportunity to talk about how the situation has impacted work in different sectors, and what our members expect and wish from us. It is not just about serving our members, but about serving Finnish jobs. And when it comes to getting Finland back on its feet, that is no mean feat.