Neuvottelija.com

Episode 206 · 2023-08-09 · 46:42 · Original in Finnish

The construction union is after the entrepreneurs | Katariina Komulainen, Tia Kiiskinen | Negotiator 206

Originally published as “Rakennusliitto yrittäjien kimpussa | Katariina Komulainen Tia Kiiskinen | Neuvottelija 206”

Katariina Komulainen of Euro Work and Tia Kiiskinen of Yrittäjän Tili ja Laki join Sami Miettinen. The episode is about what happened on Finnish building sites in June 2023, when people working through invoicing services were removed from the sites — and why traditional sole traders went out with them. It sets out the four forms of self-employment, the motive behind the YEL pension reform and the co-operative model, and the numbers underneath: 93 per cent of Finnish entrepreneurs are micro-entrepreneurs, and the YEL fund was 400 million in deficit. Both guests sell services to the people affected.

Guests: Katariina Komulainen, Tia Kiiskinen · Host: Sami Miettinen

Core theses

  1. Four forms of self-employment behave completely differently in law, and conflating them is what made the site removals look simpler than they were.
  2. 93 per cent of Finnish entrepreneurs are micro-entrepreneurs, which is the number most policy in this area is not designed for.
  3. The YEL question is a funding question: a scheme 400 million in deficit cannot be reformed by adjusting the contribution alone.
  4. Both guests sell services to the group under discussion, which the article states.

Watch and listen

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Key moments

  1. 00:00 — The guests: Katariina Komulainen and Tia Kiiskinen
  2. 00:41 — Serial entrepreneur backgrounds from Saudi Arabia to the Baltics
  3. 01:16 — Being a woman in construction
  4. 03:13 — New construction has halved and layoffs have begun
  5. 04:21 — Construction firms going bankrupt as in the 1990s
  6. 05:34 — A Yle story about Ukrainians, and pressure from the union
  7. 06:03 — Light entrepreneurs removed from sites in June
  8. 08:23 — The tax wedge, the pension wedge and free will
  9. 08:59 — Why would a Ukrainian pay into a Finnish pension
  10. 10:43 — Four models: light entrepreneur, sole trader, co-operative, limited company
  11. 12:29 — What Euro Work does as a co-operative
  12. 13:58 — A union leader's tweet about foreign entrepreneurs
  13. 16:15 — An Estonian is acceptable, an Uzbek is not
  14. 17:48 — Who counts as an entrepreneur in YEL's eyes
  15. 19:59 — 93 per cent of entrepreneurs are micro-entrepreneurs
  16. 20:29 — Kiiskinen's column on discrimination against entrepreneurs
  17. 22:11 — The unions shake the ground because the work is running out
  18. 23:45 — A holding company and the hybrid model
  19. 24:43 — School teaches paid work, not entrepreneurship
  20. 25:36 — A business ID for every Finn
  21. 26:40 — YEL felt like an ineffective system
  22. 28:32 — How many unemployed entrepreneurs do you know
  23. 30:47 — An example: a facade renovation by a co-operative entrepreneur
  24. 33:37 — The co-operative through left-wing eyes
  25. 35:31 — The new government and the YEL reform
  26. 36:09 — The YEL fund is 400 million in deficit
  27. 38:14 — A thousand a month for forty years: YEL or investment
  28. 40:36 — The English model: pension saving without the tax wedge
  29. 42:12 — Frightening people about entrepreneurship in both directions
  30. 43:28 — Does Finland hate entrepreneurs
  31. 44:14 — A recession is an opportunity for small entrepreneurs
  32. 46:25 — Closing words

Summary

Katariina Komulainen of Euro Work and Tia Kiiskinen of Yrittäjän Tili ja Laki join Sami Miettinen. The episode is about what happened on Finnish building sites in June 2023, when people working through invoicing services were removed from the sites — and why traditional sole traders went out with them. It sets out the four forms of self-employment, the motive behind the YEL pension reform and the co-operative model, and the numbers underneath: 93 per cent of Finnish entrepreneurs are micro-entrepreneurs, and the YEL fund was 400 million in deficit. Both guests sell services to the people affected.

What happened, and why it was not simple

In June 2023 people working through invoicing services were removed from Finnish building sites — and traditional sole traders went out with them. The episode’s useful contribution is separating the four forms of self-employment, because they behave completely differently in law and the removals treated them as one thing.

The numbers underneath

Ninety-three per cent of Finnish entrepreneurs are micro-entrepreneurs, and the YEL pension fund was 400 million euros in deficit. Those two figures constrain every reform proposal in the episode, including the guests’ own.

Whose account this is

Both guests sell services to the group being discussed, and the union whose actions are criticised is not in the room.

Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Rakennusliitto yrittäjien kimpussa | Katariina Komulainen Tia Kiiskinen | Neuvottelija 206. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.

In depth

The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.

Go deeper

People and topics

Guests: Katariina Komulainen, Tia Kiiskinen

Topics: Finnish Economy & Policy Leadership & Governance

AI and agent resources

Source and content status

Provenance: Finnish source: Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and the publisher's own chapter marks, translated one for one; their spacing is irregular and matches the recording. No transcript is published here — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. Both guests run businesses that sell services to the self-employed people the episode is about, and the trade union whose actions are criticised is not represented; the long-form write-up in the Neuvottelija AI editions states both.. English subtitles: not available on this page; this is an episode summary, not a curated transcript. QA coverage 0% (metadata only). Original episode: neuvottelija.fi. Imported 2026-09-20 · last reviewed 2026-09-20. Passages the source audio left genuinely ambiguous are marked [unclear] rather than guessed.