Neuvottelija · Articles

EP108 · Economy · first published 2021-11-19

Reason and Emotion in Labour Markets | Minna Helle | Neuvottelija 108

This is a summary on Neuvottelija — Articles. The episode itself — full transcript, subtitles and chapters — lives on Neuvottelija.com, which is its canonical home.

Minna Helle, deputy CEO of Technology Industries of Finland, has seen the labour market from three sides: as chief negotiator for the nurses' union Tehy, as National Conciliator, and now on the employer side. The episode opens with what taught her most — the 2007 bargaining round, which she calls a collective delusion: very high pay settlements were made at the tables, the financial crisis began the following year and the Finnish economy struggled for about a decade. Labour market settlements, she says, are among the few things entirely in our own hands. The conversation covers the difference between an employment contract and a collective agreement, universal applicability and its design flaw — an unorganised party must follow the agreement but cannot use its local bargaining provisions — and the technology industry's autumn 2021 settlement, under which a member company chooses between the national agreement and a company-level one. The unions' role shifts from party to consultant, and giving up power can be hard. Finally Helle says a professional negotiator must choose reason but nobody manages that in their own affairs, that people quarrel rather than issues, and that law is an instrument, not an end. Published 19 November 2021.

Sami Miettinen · Sections: AI and the Economy

Reason and Emotion in Labour Markets | Minna Helle

Summary: In episode 108 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen interviews Minna Helle, deputy CEO of Technology Industries of Finland and author of the negotiation book Järki ja tunteet (Reason and Emotion). Helle is an unusual guest because she has seen the labour market from three different sides: as chief negotiator for the nurses’ union Tehy on the employee side, as National Conciliator in the neutral chair, and now on the employer side. The first half of the episode is a practical lesson in the Finnish collective-agreement system and what the technology industry changed in autumn 2021; the second is a conversation between two authors of negotiation books about reason, emotion and the limits of law. Published 19 November 2021.

A note on reading this. Helle speaks in the episode as a representative of an employers’ organisation, and the labour-market section is presented from the technology industry’s point of view; no trade union representative is present. Views are attributed by speaker. The bargaining model described is the situation in autumn 2021.

Two negotiation books and one endorsement

Miettinen introduces Helle as a fellow author: her Järki ja tunteet is a good book, he says, with things in common with Neuvotteluvalta (Negotiating Power), which he wrote with Juhana Torkki. He points out a detail from his own book: the endorsement on the back of its first edition was written by Jaana Laitinen-Pesola, then chair of Tehy, who said the book shows concretely what negotiation is — influence, and finding the right solutions at the right moment, often under heavy pressure. Helle was Laitinen-Pesola’s key partner in 2007.

The collective delusion of 2007

Helle is direct about her part:

I was Tehy’s chief negotiator in that notorious 2007 bargaining round. That was when a kind of collective delusion took hold at the negotiating tables, meaning very high pay settlements were made, and then the following year, as we remember, the financial crisis began.

After that, she says, the Finnish economy struggled for about ten years in a really bad state. She learnt two things from the round: that she can withstand very heavy pressure, and, “in a pretty harsh way”, what collective overshooting at the bargaining table means for the Finnish economy and employment.

She does not point the finger in one direction: “Tehy shouldn’t be blamed alone.” Several bargaining parties were making those settlements, and politicians muddied the situation too.

Miettinen describes the round as a singing contest over who could get the best percentage. As an investment banker he recognises the set-up: he is “a negotiating farmhand of a sort”, whose job is not to question the principal’s goals but to maximise the result — and in terms of the percentage won, 2007 was a dazzling victory. Did it feel great at the time? The process inside the union was great, Helle says, because the team spirit was very strong.

The lesson is plain, though. Anyone negotiating in the labour market ought to understand the economy and how settlements affect employment and productivity:

There are lots of things in the world that come from global markets — the financial crisis, say, or the coronavirus pandemic. But what kind of labour market settlements are made is entirely in our own hands. And that’s why those things should be handled damn well.

Miettinen says he wrote an afterword about the case at the time, in 2008, when the negative effects were not yet visible and it looked as if the massive pay rise might be absorbed. In his new book he wrote that the settlement nearly destroyed Finland’s competitiveness for a decade.

Three chairs, one mission

In between, Helle served as National Conciliator. She admits her background is unusual, but says she has worked throughout for the same thing: a better situation for Finnish companies and employees alike, and a Finland that moves forward. Her thinking has not had to be turned round; it has broadened:

Sometimes people say, I’m just the way I am. I don’t believe that at all — I believe a person can keep developing.

Abandoning the incomes policy deal is the only big change

Miettinen recalls that Esko Aho, whom he had interviewed, told him about a book according to which 91 labour market organisations offered themselves to the government — from a time when organisations could still be brought into executive power. In 2007 tripartism and centralised incomes policy agreements were still strong; now the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK) has withdrawn from its bargaining role. Is tripartism dead?

Helle starts with the terms — “lawyers love terms”. Pay and working conditions are now agreed by industries and companies, and EK has no role there. In preparing labour and social insurance legislation the tripartite principle is still alive, even if “the record isn’t very good”.

Her main claim is that the system has changed astonishingly little:

The fact that incomes policy agreements are no longer made is really the only big change that has happened here in decades.

In the same period Finland has adopted a common currency, global competition has intensified and companies are expected to renew themselves constantly. Miettinen adds his own worry: the euro does not flex in a crisis the way the Swedish krona does.

Employment contract, collective agreement and the contract society

Miettinen suspects many Finns do not understand the difference between an employment contract and a collective agreement. Helle defines them: an employment contract is what an individual makes with their own employer; a collective agreement is concluded by an employers’ association and a trade union — or by a company and a trade union.

What matters to her is that agreement is the foundation. As the forest and technology industries have started moving bargaining closer to the workplace, the employee side accuses employers of wanting to wreck the agreement system. That she “doesn’t swallow or sign up to at all”:

Defending the contract society doesn’t, in my view, mean defending keeping the same old ways of agreeing in force.

Universal applicability and its design flaw

Miettinen, as a liberal, raises his own sore point. Universal applicability is to him “a very strong baton” of mandatory legislation that is hardly found elsewhere in the world: it imposes the terms of a bilateral agreement on employees and employers outside it, and on terms worse than those the parties negotiated between themselves.

Helle describes the construction: a collective agreement also binds those outside the associations if enough employees in the sector work for member companies of the employers’ association. Arguing over whether universal applicability is good or bad is not fruitful, she says, because it is not that simple. But there is a flaw:

We have freedom of association, yet in practice the collective agreement’s options to agree locally are only available to those who are members of the associations. And that, in my view, is the design flaw in this system.

Her proposal is a reasonable minimum: if an employer or employees have chosen not to join but must still follow a universally applicable agreement, they should also be able to use its options to agree otherwise. Local bargaining needs staff representation, either a union shop steward or an elected representative, whom staff can choose under the law if there is no shop steward. “This is not a sustainable way. It has to be resolved over some time frame.”

Universal applicability or a statutory minimum wage

Miettinen tries out a defence: countries without universal applicability have minimum wages that can rise and stiffen the market, while universal applicability allows variation by industry. Helle takes up the thought. In Finland minimum wages are in practice in collective agreements, and the law contains only a general provision on reasonable pay. If minimum wages were not in the agreements, they would probably be in law, and so exposed to politics:

We saw this in France, for example, during the yellow-vest situation a few years ago, when minimum wages were raised as a result.

It is not desirable for minimum wages to be bait in election debates. Miettinen notes that the bargaining parties can also make bad agreements if their thinking runs away with them.

The universal applicability board

Miettinen asks about the “mysterious” board that rules on universal applicability, whose members are neither judges nor politicians. Helle explains: the parties do not themselves decide whether their agreement is universally applicable; the board decides, and its decision can be appealed to the Labour Court.

The technology industry’s premise

Then to Helle’s current job. Miettinen recalls interviewing Marjo Miettinen, chair of Technology Industries of Finland, in the spring, when she predicted an interesting autumn.

Helle starts from the premise: the technology industry has talked for decades about the need for more local, company-driven terms, because every company in the sector competes internationally. That means constantly reinventing yourself, looking after competitiveness, responding quickly to customers and to economic cycles. The sector has start-ups and established firms, small and large, and their situations vary “enormously”.

Working conditions, though, are set very centrally at industry level:

Pay settlements are set centrally and working conditions are buttoned down very precisely. There are hundreds of pages of collective agreement text on how you must operate.

Competing requires the employer and staff together to identify what makes them succeed and to work out how the pay system could support productivity and skills, and how working hours could meet the needs of customers, production and individual employees. Although the technology industry’s agreements have had plenty of local bargaining options and are more flexible than in many sectors, the pace of renewal has been too slow.

Why not the forest industry’s line

Miettinen notes that the technology industry did not follow the forest industry in throwing everything out. Helle confirms: the forest industry ended national collective agreements entirely and moved to negotiating terms company by company. The technology industry did not do anything that radical, because it did not want to abandon the possibility of a national agreement.

Instead it built a model in which a member company chooses whether to stay within the employers’ association’s national collective agreement services or build an entirely company-level agreement. Much of the membership had made its choice during the autumn. The aim is to pilot new models and turn the thinking round:

Not that somebody somewhere decides this is good for everyone, do it this way, and then you can agree otherwise. Instead the employer and staff start thinking: what do we need here, so that we can succeed?

The national agreement can serve as a template — “no need to reinvent the wheel”. Nobody’s position is meant to get worse, she says; the point is for the labour market to support export industry’s growth, for instance in taking green technology solutions to the world, “rather than living somewhere in its own bubble”.

A company-level agreement and a continuous one

Miettinen is wary of “version control”: is, say, a software company’s own agreement still called a collective agreement? Yes, says Helle, they are collective agreements. They may be almost identical to the national ones and tailor only, for example, the pay system or working hours, or they may be built on an entirely different basis. The decision lies with the employer, the staff and the trade union, which is a party to a company-level agreement too.

Duration need not follow the national rhythm either. Agreements can be shorter or longer, and Helle has heard of a company considering a continuous collective agreement with no break point — with a mechanism for terminating it, of course. “There’s room for new innovations here.”

The union becomes a consultant

Will the unions keep up, Miettinen asks. Helle says the change requires resources and rethinking in both kinds of association. Traditionally the unions have, as professionals, agreed the terms that workplaces follow:

In this model it turns more towards the unions being consultants who help companies and employees reach good outcomes.

The change of mindset is large and not easy, because it means giving up power:

We in the technology industry have now made the decision to give away our power. But is everyone ready for that? It can be pretty addictive when you’re at the national tables making big decisions and in practice what happens at workplaces is under your thumb.

The direction will not reverse

Different industries will probably make different choices, but the direction is clear to Helle: “The labour market is heading towards company-level agreements. On what timetable that happens in each industry is another question, but this won’t turn back.”

Miettinen sees benefits for employees too: a highly productive person can negotiate a good salary, while a ready-made agreement template saves everyone from having to become a pay lawyer. Helle reminds him of a minimum requirement: a collective agreement ought to be intelligible to whoever reads it. The national agreements have grown into “hundred-page contraptions that even an expert may not make sense of”. At least the makers of payroll software are happy, Miettinen quips.

Reason or emotion

The second half is about negotiation. Miettinen sets his own book’s levers of influence, analytical ability and sociability, beside Helle’s title and asks: if you could use only reason or only emotion, which would it be? “No, that’s too nasty”, Helle begins, then answers in two parts.

As a professional negotiator she would have to choose reason. An experienced professional notices when things start to “boil a bit” and can clear the emotion away so as not to do something crazy that cannot be undone. But:

When you’re at home in an argument with your spouse or with the kids, it happens to me just the same as to everyone else — the emotions easily take command, because those things are so much closer to you.

Nobody, then, is such a top negotiator that they can negotiate their own affairs with reason in every situation. “Certainly not.”

Miettinen recalls an interview in which she turned a familiar saying on its head. Helle confirms:

It’s a bit of outsourcing responsibility when you say people don’t quarrel, issues do. In my view it’s exactly the opposite.

Law is an instrument

Miettinen brings in a remark by an earlier guest, Jan Ollila, a lawyer at Dittmar & Indrenius: in a lawyer’s real world, the contract defines the forms of coercion — what you can force the other side to do against its will. Is the lawyer’s eye still with her?

How binding to make a clause is a lawyer’s core expertise, Helle says, and a labour market negotiator has to master the wording. “But for me law is just an instrument.” The National Conciliator’s job was an extremely good school: a conciliator’s task is not to tell the parties how to settle, but to help them find each other, and that is largely about human behaviour. From the neutral chair she saw what professional negotiators fall into — “and a bit what I’ve fallen into myself, and surely still do”.

More than the sum of the parts

Negotiation, she says, is “very much a human science” and self-knowledge, not a contest over whose argument wins:

In a good negotiation the question isn’t who wins, but how interests can be combined so that something comes out of it that is more than the sum of its parts.

That is what she criticises in legal thinking, which is largely about whose argument wins.

Miettinen picks an example from her book: the skill of parking a difficult point in the future with wording that, to a lawyer’s eye, does not bind — it makes agreement possible. But read too legalistically, he says, you can lose your honour by breaking it even if the legal wording would let you off. In M&A negotiations he constantly sees someone say a wording “doesn’t mean anything at all, just sign”.

When legal precision decides — and when it locks

Law is the precise part, Helle says, once a deal has been reached and has to be written down; then lawyers’ expertise is worth its weight in gold. In the negotiation itself, matters are rarely settled by law. Negotiating is about explaining your needs so the other side understands, understanding theirs and finding new angles.

From that comes the episode’s sharpest warning:

Law easily works like this: if there’s some issue and it is dressed up as a legal demand, it tends to lock in, once it goes into the legal mould.

The other party no longer recognises the underlying need. Behind a monetary damages claim there may be hurt feelings, and if those are recognised, the matter may be resolved by dealing with it and perhaps apologising.

Arbitration and the limits of a court

That, says Miettinen, is why mediation and arbitration are often hugely effective compared with litigation. M&A deals lean heavily on the arbitration institute of the Finland Chamber of Commerce, which suggests to him that courts are not trusted with commercial contracts. What about the labour market? Helle explains: the National Conciliator mediates collective disputes when strikes threaten; individual employment disputes go to the district courts, and disputes over the interpretation of collective agreements to the Labour Court. Most workplace disputes, though, are negotiated and settled.

The problem with a court ruling is that it is not in your control. Unless it is a simple debt claim, you cannot know the outcome. A negotiated settlement is therefore in principle always better: it can take account of things that weigh nothing in court — how you feel, how you mend relations with a spouse or business partner. Where a precedent on a point of principle is needed, a court is the right place; in most matters it is not.

Fifty conflicts

Helle ends on her experience:

I’ve negotiated around 50 labour market conflicts where the views have often been completely opposite, the situation inflamed, and it feels like there’s no way this can be resolved — and still they always get resolved. All disputes are resolved by negotiating, as long as there’s the will.

“That’s how it is — or at least that’s what we want to believe”, Miettinen replies.

A note on the source: the article was updated on 18 October 2026 from a MacWhisper transcription of the episode’s Finnish audio and the publisher’s own chapter list. The transcript has no speaker labels, so speakers are inferred from context: Miettinen asks the questions and offers the criticism of universal applicability, the remark on the euro and the observation on arbitration; Helle answers. In the episode the word “neuvottelija” (negotiator) often refers to Helle’s profession, not the channel. The transcript’s “Johanna Torkki” has been corrected to Miettinen’s co-author Juhana Torkki, and “arvikauppakamari” to the Finland Chamber of Commerce (Keskuskauppakamari). One event Miettinen mentions (a joint appearance cancelled in the spring of the pandemic) and the name of one of his book’s levers of influence are unclear in the transcript and have not been guessed.

Episode details. Neuvottelija 108, published 19 November 2021, running time 44 minutes 57 seconds. Guest Minna Helle (guest page and other episodes), interviewer Sami Miettinen.

Summary for AI search: In episode 108 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 19 November 2021) Sami Miettinen interviews Minna Helle, deputy CEO of Technology Industries of Finland, former National Conciliator and former chief negotiator of the nurses’ union Tehy, author of Järki ja tunteet (Reason and Emotion). Key findings: the 2007 bargaining round was, in Helle’s words, a collective delusion in which very high pay settlements were made just before the financial crisis, after which the Finnish economy struggled for about a decade — the responsibility is not Tehy’s alone, and labour market settlements are among the few things entirely in our own hands; abandoning incomes policy agreements is the only big change in the labour market system in decades, although the world has changed a great deal; an employment contract is between an individual and an employer, a collective agreement is collective; the design flaw of universal applicability is that an unorganised party must follow the agreement but cannot use its local bargaining options; without universal applicability minimum wages would probably be in law and exposed to electoral politics, as in France during the yellow-vest protests; a board decides on universal applicability, with appeal to the Labour Court; the technology industry’s autumn 2021 model lets a member company choose between the national and a company-level collective agreement, unlike the forest industry, which abandoned national agreements entirely; a company-level agreement can differ in duration, even a continuous agreement is possible; the unions’ role shifts from party to consultant, and giving up power can be hard because it is addictive; the direction is towards company-level agreements and it will not reverse; a professional negotiator must choose reason, but nobody can negotiate their own affairs by reason alone; people quarrel, issues do not; law is an instrument, and dressing a demand in legal form locks it so that the underlying need no longer shows; in a good negotiation more is created than the sum of the parts; a negotiated settlement is usually better than a court ruling because it stays in the parties’ control; from around 50 labour market conflicts Helle concludes that all disputes are resolved by negotiating if there is the will. Related episodes: The owner’s tripartism | Marjo Miettinen and Negotiations through a lawyer’s eyes | Jan Ollila.

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