Wednesday, March 31, 1999

Let's all move to Finland! When you discover how wonderful the provision for quality of life is there for families, that's all you can say - once you've recovered your powers of speech. Finnish families pay no more taxes than we do, yet their childcare and parental leave structures are Utopian.

In Finland, all childcare is subsi- dised and regulated by the state and 82 per cent of mothers of children aged between seven and 12 work outside the home (compared to 36.6 per cent of Irish mothers). But this work-ethic is balanced by humane and supportive attitudes to mothers and babies: generous state supports for parental leave allow babies be cared for by their mothers in the home until the age of three. Finland gives its mothers nearly a year of paid maternity leave (taken by 100 per cent of mothers) plus a further two years of optional parental leave, after which they are guaranteed their jobs back at the same level they were at when they left. Irish mothers have to return when their babies are 10-14 weeks old (depending on whether they take the additional four weeks unpaid leave), in an atmosphere of struggle, tension and economic sacrifice as they try to arrange childcare. Newly introduced unpaid parental leave of three months can be added to maternity leave with the employer's agreement, but not all Irish mothers are able to take this.

In Finland, women take their careers seriously but at the same time are allowed the time necessary to rear babies and toddlers. Job discrimination against women is illegal so, theoretically, a woman could have four children and take three years of leave after each birth and still be guaranteed her job back 12 years later - although the tradition in Finland is to have only one or two children.

The first year's maternity leave is paid at 45-75 per cent of previous wage, or a minimum of approximately £220 a month depending on family's total income. When maternity leave is complete - when the baby is about 11 months old - the option of homecare leave begins so that the mother does not have to return to work, if she doesn't want to, until the child turns three.

If the child is not in municipal daycare, the allowance is about £112 a month for the first child, with small additions for siblings.

Fathers get six to 12 days' paternity leave at the time of birth and 48 per cent of them take it. When the Finnish prime minister and his young second wife had their first child recently, he took six days of paternity leave, which you have to admit is impressive for a prime minister.

Finnish fathers, like Finnish moth- ers, may take parental leave of 26 weeks, but only 2 per cent of fathers do. (Parental leave is protected by legislation, so that not in any circumstances can an employer postpone the granting of maternal, paternal or pa- rental leave. It is illegal to make parents redundant at the start of or during the parental leave and the employer cannot dismiss the employee when he or she informs the employer of taking leave.)

The fathers' reluctancy to take up the parental and homecare leave entitled to them, prompted the Finnish government, in 1998, to set up a committee to ponder the situation of men as fathers. Can you imagine the Irish government doing the same? To encourage fathers to take leave, employ- ers and the state introduced more flexibility into paternal and homecare leave.

Finding good daycare can be a nightmare for Irish parents, but in Finland, daycare is provided by the municipality at nominal cost to the parents - or parents can choose private daycare with a childminder, also at nominal cost.

Parents pay a maximum of about £133 a month compared to up to £400-£500 a month for each child here. The fee is means-tested, so some parents pay much less. The average Finnish salary is £9,700 for women and £12,000 for men, so the cost of municipal daycare consumes a mere 4.5 per cent of gross income in a double-in- come family, compared to 20 per cent here.

About half of Finnish children under the age of seven are in private daycare with childminders who must be regis- tered by the municipality. The state pays the parents an allowance of about £93 for each child to cover the costs.

Until the age of 10, children are guaranteed the right to have their parents look after them when they are home sick from school. Parents may take two to four days leave at a time to care for a sick child - often on full pay, depending on collective agreements.

Mia Heikkinen, from Finland, is research manager at the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, an EU-funded body based in Dublin. She is an expert in equal opportunities issues within the EU. The European Foundation is currently conducting a 15-member-state study on the prospects of equal opportunities and collective bargaining.

"Equal opportunities in the labour market are not only about enabling women to better integrate into the labour market, but also about enabling men to have better integration in family activities," she says. She sees collective bargaining as one previously largely unexplored tool of many, which Irish unions and employers could use to negotiate together better employ- ment provisions on issues related to combining family and work.

Collective bargaining has the potential of bringing equal-opportunities issues to the core of industrial relations. It can also allow individual workplaces to achieve a "tailored" ap- proach to equal opportunities issues, such as childcare .

"This wider agenda brings new relevance into union activities and attracts new members," says Heikkinen. It is important that women also participate in defining what topics are taken onto the bargaining table: "Women can contribute expertise and particular experience of the variety of women's concerns and working conditions from 'lived experience' which informs negotiations and leads to more wholesome and effective collective agreements."

She argues that by modernising the collective bargaining system to include increased participation of women in the negotiating process and to address family issues, we aspire to achieve a more inclusive European labour force. There is plenty of evidence that it is in employers' own interests to further ex- plore and develop their work practises in this direction, Heikkinen believes. Unless you help women to enter/re-enter the workplace by making work practises family-friendly, you are wasting the economic potential of this part of the labour force, and limiting overall economic growth.

Copyright The Irish Times

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