Government's rejection of nurses' demands
Financial Times' David Ibison wrote an article on the patient safety bill that contains some quite misleading paragraphs:
The government's rejection of nurses' demands for a 24 per cent wage rise over two years prompted nearly 13,000 nurses to threaten to resign next Monday, bringing some of the country's top hospitals to a standstill.
The entity that rejected the nurses' demands was of course the Commission for Local Authority Employers, the municipal employers' organization. It's not the same thing as the government at all.
The dispute underscores the growing tension between Finland's right-leaning government, which has abolished most collective wage agreements and asked unions to negotiate on an individual basis, and a labour force more accustomed to across-the-board agreements. A wave of strikes has hit the country, affecting 40,000 workers.
Ibisen again confuses the government and the various employers' organizations. The government, for its part, would have been just fine with an across-the-board agreement. Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen still pines after one (fi).
By contrast, Bloomberg's Kati Pohjanpalo has a rather good background article on the issue. In addition to getting the facts right, it even offers context.
2 comments:
'It was shockingly stupid of them' is a fantastic quote. Not been a fantastic week for British journalists covering Finland, has it?
Ibison can at least take heart in that he won't get flamed nearly as forcefully as Boyes. Still, when you're writing for the Financial Times, you really ought to get rather basic economic facts right.
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