Anu Vehviläinen (Centre), the Minister of Local Government and Public Reform, has addressed concerns related to the transfer of hundreds of thousands of employees due to the social, health care and regional government reform.
The Finnish government has begun preparing for the transfer of roughly 220,000 employees onto the payrolls of the counties and the permit and supervisory authority to be established in the social, health care and regional government reform.
“Once we have the regional councils at the start of next year, they’ll give the final go-ahead,” tells Anu Vehviläinen (Centre), the Minister of Local Government and Public Reform.
Over 90 per cent of the employees are nurses, physicians and social workers. The remaining roughly 20,000, meanwhile, will move to the counties and the permit and supervisory authority from the offices and district offices of a total of 238 administrative branches.
The new organisations will take on the employees at the beginning of 2020.
Vehviläinen says the employees will transfer to the new organisation under their current terms and conditions of employment but will not be afforded the five-year protection against unilateral termination that was afforded to employees transferred as part of the latest round of municipal consolidations.
She stresses that the government is by no means seeking to create lay-offs, but acknowledges that the reform provides the new organisations an opportunity to examine whether certain duties could be re-organised. Thousands of employees, she adds, will leave the social and health care sector through natural attrition alone in the years to come.
“Roughly a third of the current staff will retire by 2026 when it comes to social and health care tasks. That’s quite a high number, 60–70,000 people,” tells Vehviläinen.
She also assured that only a small number of employees would have to relocate due to the reform as the counties will retain offices in several municipalities and be obliged to provide certain services all over Finland.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT Photo: Martti Kainulainen – Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi
