Abstract
This article puts into a historical context the employment conceptions and policies of leading Social Democrats in Finland from 1975 to 1998. It takes into account both the strategic decision-making and public argumentation of the Social Democrats in employment-sensitive issues related to economic, employment, labour market, state company, competition, globalization and integration policies.Finland’s Social Democrats moved towards emphasizing private sector-led employment, approached the middle classes, adopted monetarist ideas, accepted the ‘market economy’ and favoured ‘controlled restructuring’ over counter-cyclical measures in a series of steps in 1975–1998. The deregulation of financial markets meant a shifting of the basis of Social Democratic employment policy from steering the capitalist economy to seeking market acceptance of the party’s politics. This did not manage to guarantee full employment in Finland during the period.Furthermore, Finland’s Social Democrats seemed initially to practise a ‘third way’ type of ‘Bad Sillanpää’ policy long before its adherents in the UK. such as Tony Blair. After the mid-1970s, the Finnish Social Democrat-led governments no longer imitated Sweden, while implementing many reforms which were followed by the Swedish Social Democrats.
Highlights
The aim of this article is to put into a historical context the employment conceptions and policies of leading Social Democrats in Finland from 1975 to 1998
The following empirical archival analysis reveals that the leading Finnish Social Democrats considered that general economic policies, labour market policies and transnational connections had a more important impact on employment than the more narrowly defined ‘employment policy’, ‘unemployment security policy’ or the development of public welfare services in 1975−1998
Globalizing financial markets gained a substantial role in Social Democratic employment conceptions, whereas at the same time the role of state companies was weakened in their opinion
Summary
The aim of this article is to put into a historical context the employment conceptions and policies of leading Social Democrats in Finland from 1975 to 1998. Prime Minister and SDP party secretary Kalevi Sorsa argued in his party’s Directorate that the future choices in economic and incomes policy (collective nation-wide agreements between government, labour market parties and agricultural producers on terms and conditions of employment, taxes, prices and social policy reforms) varied between ‘dark and horrible’ He concluded that the negative trade balance was becoming the most difficult problem for the Finnish economy, and both the unemployment rate and inflation were predicted to rise.. Guaranteeing the export sector’s competitiveness by taming the costs of companies and the public sector was followed in the 1980s by SDP’s disengaging from the spiral of inflation–devaluation.59 This idea became the core of the economic policy of the following Centre-Left governments (1982−1983 and 1983−1987), which were led by Sorsa after Koivisto was elected President in January 1982.60 The SDP-led government’s controlled restructuring policy meant a commitment to the continuation of the rationalization and automation of production along with shortening working hours and easing retirement entry.. The market-acceptance strategy, did not succeed in reducing Finnish unemployment substantially in the 1990s (Figure 1), weakening the position of the unemployed
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