Riku Aalto: The Finnish labour movement is never ashamed
In his May Day greeting, Riku Aalto, chairman of the Industrial Union, states that the The Finnish labour movement is never ashamed. According to Aalto, it always walks with its head held high, proud of its actions and achievements. You can watch the entire speech in the video below. The speech is also subtitled in Finnish, Swedish and English.
Read the full speech below
Dear friends,
May Day is not just a sign of spring or a tradition, but a reminder that justice, fair work and human dignity are not self-evident.
They are things that have been achieved together – and that is why they must be defended together, every day.
This year, we celebrate May Day amidst uncertainty. In many homes, everyday life has once again become extremely stressful.
Fuel prices and mortgage interest rates have risen. The question is increasingly being asked: how will we cope with everyday expenses? How will we have enough money?
Wage increases will bring relief now and in the coming months. These solutions are a testament to what we can achieve by working together. However, wage increases alone are not enough to remove the worries that overshadow the everyday lives of many families today.
I don’t need to list for you all the cuts and decisions that have been made to discipline the working population over the past three years. You are familiar with these decisions in your own everyday life and at your workplace.
The security that you could rely on before no longer feels as certain. More and more people are having to fend for themselves. Trust in society’s safety nets has begun to crumble.
Therefore, we must ask:
Will the welfare state help in times of need, or will the responsibility for helping be left to those closest to us, to charity, and ultimately to chance? The answer to this question is no longer self-evident.
The changes to working life and social security have been guided by a one-sided political ideology: benefits, working conditions, and rights are being weakened in the name of growth and employment.
We can already say with certainty that the chosen policy has not worked. Instead of employment and economic growth, only poverty, unemployment, and state debt have increased in Finland.
The promises were great when we were given the justification for why the benefits and rights of the working population must be weakened.
One key promise was 100,000 new jobs. The reality has been different.
Employment has weakened. The unemployment rate has risen to over ten percent – the highest in the EU.
There were no 100,000 new jobs in companies. There were 100,000 new poor people in Kela and the Social Insurance Institutions.
Debt was not reduced, but Finland ended up in the EU’s observation category.
Money that was taken from workers’ security and rights was distributed as tax breaks to high-income earners and the business community.
Two and a half years ago, we went on political strikes together to defend workers’ rights and demanded that the right-wing government back down from its most drastic cuts and weakening measures.
We did not succeed in changing the government’s course, but we sent a message that everyone heard: The working population will not accept injustice silently, but will rise together to defend their rights whenever they are threatened.
After the political strikes, I have often been asked whether it was a mistake to go on strike when there was no change. The answer to this is unequivocal: it was not. Now we see what kind of impact the decisions made have had: Poverty, unemployment and misery.
As the chairman of the Industrial Union, I am proud to say that there was only one party in this country that put everything at stake against the black politics. That party was the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK) and its member unions.
Finnish exports were stopped and large industrial plants were closed week after week. We should not be ashamed of this common will and movement.
The Finnish labour movement is never ashamed. It always walks with its head held high, proud of its actions and achievements.
Dear listeners,
May Day is the right time to talk about change. Great social movements and waves of change have never been born by chance, but have been initiated precisely in times like these.
The society we live in today has been shaped in many ways as a result of the major decisions that the working population has jointly driven forward.
The stakes in the parliamentary elections to be held in a year’s time are exceptionally high.
The Industrial Union is demanding a change of direction. Finland cannot continue on this path.
We are in a situation where a choice must be made. This is not about small fixes, but about the direction in which this country is being taken.
Do we want a Finland that is built on the Nordic welfare model – justice, security and shared responsibility? Or do we accept a development in which everyone is increasingly left to fend for themselves?
It is also about fundamental issues in working life. Do workers have the right to demand better working conditions and a fair wage? Do they have the right to trust that security will cover them in the event of unemployment, illness or old age?
These are questions we must answer, and at least the answer of the Industrial Union is clear. We want to turn the course back towards the Nordic model, from which Finland has been deliberately led away in recent years.
This is not about returning to the past or yearning for the past. It is about making a conscious choice about the future. Finland succeeds best when it builds on its own strengths – and the most important of these strengths has been the Nordic way of combining work, security and the economy.
On this path, the employee is not a cost item to be cut from, but a foundation to be built on.
This is visible in working life, where rights are not a matter of negotiation but a starting point. In the fact that work pays a salary that allows you to get by. And in the fact that people can trust society when life takes an unexpected step aside.
This kind of direction does not arise by itself. It is made through decisions. It requires a strong trade union movement, fair legislation and, above all, the will to develop working life in the long term – not just for the next economic cycle.
When employees are treated fairly and their livelihood is secured, trust is created. And it is trust that keeps society moving: it encourages us to work, invest and build the future.
This is the choice we make.
Happy May Day to all!