Promoting local agreements
Local collective bargaining and co-operation at workplaces have a long history in the Chemical Industry. Despite that, the subject is still topical, since importance and need of agree on locally has grown. The experiences of the local collective bargaining in the companies of the Chemical Industry Federation are positive.
The local collective bargaining requires practice and good negotiation culture in the workplace. In the Chemical Industry the federations react positively to the local collective bargaining. We do not force to agree locally, however, we highly recommend using the opportunities when there is need for them.
It is well recognized that just alone with the texts in the collective agreements it is not possible to predict and adapt to the rapid changes in working life. For this reason, we have added opportunities of local collective bargaining to our collective agreements almost in every negotiation round. There are many good things in local collective bargaining and local agreements: with them can be added flexibility as well as speed of reaction in different situations. In addition, local agreements can help companies to adapt swiftly to customers changing needs. To response together to the changes in working life commit the personnel towards for the common goals. There is lot of potential in the local collective bargaining, which have not been used yet.
In the Chemical Industry Federation´s collective agreements for the years 2023-2024 the local collective bargaining has been raised to a new level together with the negotiations parties Industrial Union and Trade Union Pro. The goal is, that the companies of the Chemical Industry Federation succeed in the global market. The opportunities of local collective bargaining in collective agreements should be easy to use when necessary. Possible obstacles or challenges which occurs and associates with dialogue cannot pause the local collective bargaining.
Results from local collective bargaining
The Chemical Industry Federation, Industrial Union and Trade Union Pro follows the progress of local collective bargaining in the Chemical Industry with a separate survey, which is carried out quarterly. The first survey has been carried out in March 2022.
Joint actions towards local collective bargaining
The federations together give their support for co-operation and local collective bargaining at workplaces by the following means:
- So called yellow card to solve the problems in negotiation culture and challenges in local collective bargaining
- Company specific sparring events, local collective bargaining sparring events targeted at the negotiating parties in companies.
- Joint training events, focuses on the opportunities for local collective bargaining included in collective agreements, and highlights good agreement practices applied by companies in the industry. The purpose of the events is to encourage the parties to try local collective bargaining.
- Co-operation level survey, purpose is to distribute information on the co-operation level survey in workplaces and provide the opportunity to discuss the results of the level surveys at the sparring events.
- The story contest to collect good practices of local collective bargaining. The contest is entered by describing useful examples of workplace negotiation culture related to local collective bargaining.
- Temporary working hours experiment as well as more flexible working hour bank than previously
- Tool for working hour planning, federations will develop an easy-to-use tool to facilitate local collective bargaining, particularly regarding the issues related to working hours
- Updating the working hours guidance