kirje_yklle

FINNISH STATE MEASURES AGAINST THE UNEMPLOYED (kirje YK:lle)

The current measures taken against the unemployed in Finland should be placed on general awareness and evaluation.

The Act became true on 2006, affecting all unemployed people, so forced sanctions on:

-refusal
-resignation
-if the unemployed self-caused the firing
-if the unemployed causes the employment action to not happen

CONSEQUENCES OF CHANGE IN LAW

The result has been unemployed to become unpaid labor, without the right to choose their line of work. Activity meets the ILO forced labor description and a violation of the UN Human Rights Declaration, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the TSS contract and the Finnish constitution.

PRESENTATION OF THE ACTION

Unemployed labor can be imposed for any work to which he is considered capable of.

That ’work’ is not paid for, because it is officially known as either rehabilitation, coaching, learning at work or training. However, this is like normal, real and productive labor for the employer.

Unemployed are being used wide-ranging: the unemployed have to work practically unpaid, as dishwashers, packers, caretakers, service and transportation workers, office workers … or even in some cases, to give the copyrights of their intellectual products and innovations to the employer, without compensation, as it was part of the ’training’ the employer has ’ownership’ on.

Finland is currently in a situation where one is paid normal wages in accordance with the law, and the other one is paid only social support (around 400-500 euros per month) for the exact same work. Gross average wage in Finland is about EUR 2 600.

There is no real possibility to refuse taking part in these ’measures of employment’. They do not have possibility for pension, vacation, to quit, or for any other rights of a normal life. The trade union movement does not intervene in any way, because it is not ’official’ work and because the worker cannot afford to pay the union membership. There is no supervision by any institution whatsoever.

One method of ’measures for employment’ is to organize a crash-course, including months of field training. This course becomes mandatory for the unemployed and it is forced by threat of penalty. This course may not have anything to do with actual training, as means of realistically build-up the skills of an unemployed one. Also they do not ask for an opinion from the unemployed, at any stage.

ACTION-RELATED PENALTY OF REFUSAL

If the unemployed person refuses or quits from the measure provided for him, his social support is abolished. Suspension will be valid for a limited period or until he agrees to a new measure or finds a job. This also happens if the employer fires him, telling the dismissal was his (the now-unemployed ´s) own fault.
In this case, the person must apply for social benefit. Since this is a last-resort benefit, getting social benefit may require you to first liquidate all of your assets, and ”eating” your house wares.

If you refuse taking any of these ’measures for employment’ you submit yourself to a penalty, which is, reducing the monthly social benefit 20- 40%, for couple of months. It already is impossible to live a decent life in a country as expensive as Finland, even without unjust reductions.

Also, even these are minute sums we are talking about, the system takes weeks to pay out. The wavering of disbursement is bad enough, but it might be subjected even more unjustified cuts and reductions.

The Income Support Law in Finland, however, states that ”the reduction can only be made provided that the reduction will not compromise the dignity of life, the means required for essential maintenance (of home) and the reduction cannot be otherwise unreasonable. Reduction can be for a maximum of two months at a time. ” This does not apply in practice.

In the media there has been several reports about the pressure the social benefit workers are submitted to: to not to let people to know about their legal rights. Also many cases of document-hoaxing have occurred by some of the social benefit workers.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman has said he is aware that the ongoing social support under-budgeting is a violation of the Constitution. The legal system has had to intervene in the social benefit office’s practices of the benefit payments several times, where the person’s income and expenditures have been calculated to cause a loss of income for the applicant.

Despite this, both the social work and the employment office decisions are made with arbitrariness. This enables decision-making processes that effectively remove the legal rights from the unemployed.

POSSIBILITIES TO APPEAL

When an unemployed person is considered disobedient , the employer did fire him or even a fault with the information flow, the employment office clerk immediately sends out a message of abolishment to the payer (of the benefit) and refers the case to the employment office to their Labor Commission. The commission then calls for a (written)reply from the unemployed person, with a hefty list for attached documents, to be submitted within a time limit.

It takes several weeks to process. During this processing period, all benefits are cut from the unemployed.

After obtaining the reply from the Labor Commission, the unemployed person cannot begin appealing the decision, until he has sent the letter from the Labour Commission to the payer of his social benefit payer and got their decision of denial, which can be re-exported for weeks. Only after this opens up the opportunity to appeal the decision of Labor Commission.

Labor Commission Appeals has thus been the most difficult, complex and time-consuming. Appeals are also generally unsuccessful.

Hard-driven, tired, wiped out and broke the unemployed person is, however, in a situation where the mental and physical resources lack to go along to push the appeal process forward - even when his or her ability, knowledge and skills would meet the bureaucracy. The application process might take 1.5 years.

Noted also that, in addition, Finland has got several scolding from the Human Rights Court about elongated ligitations. Also the normal legal opinion is, that the accused must prove guilt. All of these unemployed-targeted practices require the accused to prove himself innocent.
Since man is thus completely dependent on the immediate disbursement of the benefit, he has practically no chance to appeal, but he has to do with decisions of the authorities and submit to the dictation, whatever kind they were.

Freedom of speech

The point where it states (in the new change of law) unemployment benefits can be suspended if the person has caused the ’measure of employement’ to fail due their own actions, can be seen as denying the freedom of speech.

If he gives a negative criticism on the measure, it can be interpreted as an ’action of refusal’. In this case, blurting out an honest, negative opinion can be interpreted like that.

It has been reported that the state-funded associations for the unemployed were told not to comment on the new law, at the risk of losing funding.

CONSEQUENCES

These forced measures have caused a lot of negative consequences. They have certainly contributed to the problem of poverty in our country and in the public a surge of violence.

The direct consequences are:

-The depletion of Real-Paid-Jobs.
Many unscrupulous employers use the forced measures to save on labor costs.
The measures of employment, the commune used to have in order to employ the unemployed with Real Salary, have been turned into these non-paid ’training opportunities’. This distorts the job market.

-More Violence and protests
A lot of labor and social welfare offices have been experiencing violent outburst, and they have had to hire professional security officers. Only the most brutal cases brake the news-limit on media.

-More Fear and mental abuse
On both sides. Many of the office workers know they are doing wrong, but are forced to go on, in order to preserve their own jobs. Eventually the ones with conscience burn out and quit. This ’natural-selection’ slowly results having only ’bad’ social workers.

-Diversion of society.
Tens of thousands of young people have already refused to submit to the current system, and moved to an separate organized society. How do they live, it is not known. The older folk are removed from the statistics, so that official unemployment figures will be better for show.

The motion

This motion has been edited more than a month in open wide discussion and web services. It has been read by thousands of people participating also in the drafting and by people who served in the employment office.

FINAL WORDS

UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights mentions: Everyone has the right to work, free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone is entitled without any discrimination to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family dignity and livelihoods, if necessary, which is complementary to other means of social protection.

EU Charter says, no one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labor. Everyone has freedom of speech. This right shall include freedom of conscience and the freedom to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regional boundaries. Everyone has the right to work and to pursue a freely chosen or accepted occupation.

The Finnish Constitution guarantees freedom of trade: Everyone has the right to legally earn a living, chosen work, occupation or means of living. The public authorities shall ensure the protection of labor.

It may seem incredible that, like Finland, recognized as a civilized country, would infringe against these declarations, and that here exists this kind of exploitation of the vulnerability of the unemployed.

Although the issue has been raised as a recognized anomaly in parliament, the media and presidential argumentation, in practice nothing has been done. The hegemony of a ’Nation of Law’ is so strong in Finland, this reality is mostly dismissed.

But the truth is that large numbers of Finnish unemployed have been forced to work and works just now, against his will, without pay, under threat of punishment - which meets the definition of the ILO’s ”modern slavery”. The alternative is completely untenable situation.

Finally, it is appropriate to make amendments to the Act itself, an interesting observation. Indeed, it has not been and there is no other purpose for this act (the change of law), than to allow unpaid forced labor.
The unemployed were punished already before the change in the law, if he did not accept training or employment. Legislative amendment only reason was that -now- he no longer can refuse unpaid work, as long as it is called ’the measure of employment’.


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Kaisa kommentoi:
15.1.2010 18.52
http://juhalaavola.blogit.uusisuomi.fi/2008/09/26/orjatyota-suomessa/