Authors

• Ministry of Labour
• Statistics Finland

Keywords

arrangement of working time, autonomy at work, employees, job characteristics, job security, personnel management, personnel policy, wages, working conditions, workloads

Abstract

The survey studied employee opinion on the quality of working life in Finland. This is the first survey in the Finnish Working Life Barometer series.

First, the respondents were asked how many years/months they had worked for the employer they were working for at the time, the number of persons at the workplace, what kind of changes there had been in staff numbers, working hours, contracts and organisational structure during the past 12 months and whether people had been transferred to other units. Further questions covered whether there had been conflicts at the workplace and between what groups.

Autonomy at work, influence of trade unions and professional associations at workplace, overtime and its compensation, working time, changes at workplace over the past year, pay systems and pay level were investigated. The respondents were asked how likely it was that they would be dismissed or laid off or their tasks would be changed over the next year. Views were charted on the likelihood of getting a new job if becoming unemployed, employment situation in Finland in general, possible future changes in Finnish working life and financial situation of R's workplace in the future.

Background variables included the respondent's region of residence, employer type, industry of employment, occupational group, working hours per week, year of birth, mother tongue, gender, age group, marital status, status in employment and basic and vocational education. Most background variables were obtained from the Labour Force Survey 1992 telephone interviews.