The social and health trade union Tehy has filed a criminal complaint with the police regarding unpaid wages to members of the City of Helsinki.
The trade union stated in its press release that the salary problems have continued for months and have affected several thousand employees in the capital region. A particular problem has been the payment of overtime and bonuses, which make up a large part of the total salaries in the social and health sector.
"Several hundred employees have not received their full salary for several pay periods," the legal representative of the trade union Kari Tiainen said.
The city of Helsinki has been dealing with the technical problems of the salary system since April, when the city’s financial administration reported about 7,000 unread messages related to salary matters by the middle of last month.
This has led to some unpaid workers resorting to taking out high-interest payday loans and bartering second-hand goods to cover daily expenses.
Do: Who is responsible?
In his criminal report, Tehy has asked the police to find out who is ultimately responsible for the payroll problems. The association stated that the overall responsibility probably rests with the city office and the city manager Sami Sarvilinna.
The city has stated that the problems are caused by IT problems, because the employee information has not been transferred correctly from the old salary system to the new database.
The city has also blamed the health workers’ spring strike for the problems.
"The workers were on strike only from the 3rd to the 9th. May. They should have prepared much earlier for such a big system change," Tiainen told Tehy inside.
The trade union has previously made a request to the regional administrative agency about unpaid wages, and other unions in the industry have also taken a stand.
The city of Helsinki is Finland’s largest employer with approximately 38,000 employees.
The city estimated at the end of June that salary problems affected about five percent of its entire workforce.
Source: The Nordic Page