Abstract:This article focuses on the discursive construction of the nursing profession in the context of an industrial action. Drawing on studies that claim that the diffusion of new public management reforms restructure healthcare professions and on feminist studies arguing that gender is crucial to understanding the concepts and processes of this restructuring, the article examines a media debate surrounding a recent labour dispute in the Finnish healthcare sector. The analysis illustrates how the nursing profession … Show more
“…In the second problem representation, lack of nurses in the future , we found similar argumentation in both TEHY's and SUPER's editorials (see also Henttonen et al, ). One problem of low salaries for nurses is that in the future, it will be difficult to recruit and retain nurses in Finland.…”
Section: Results: the Problem Representations Of Unequal Paysupporting
confidence: 68%
“…It is bizarre that certain other trade unions are amongst the most vocal in opposing registered nurses’ wage increases. (TEHY Magazine, September 2007)The quote above highlights how the goals of registered nurses met resistance from both KT and other trade unions (see also Henttonen et al, ). The Finnish corporatist system and collective bargaining system do not support allocating wage increases to certain groups and not others.…”
Section: Results: the Problem Representations Of Unequal Paymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In Finland, the undervaluation of nurses' work has been an ongoing topic of discussion for decades. It has also been on the agenda of collective bargaining and resulted in industrial action, as described in this article (see also Henttonen et al, 2013). The issue of nurses' wages that do not match job demands remains difficult to resolve, especially in the Finnish corporatist setting, which does not allow one occupational group to receive pay increases when others do not.…”
Section: Nurses Trade Unions and Equal Paymentioning
confidence: 95%
“…Both are iconic, feminized occupations in public sector care work. (e.g., Briskin, 2012;Henttonen, LaPointe, Pesonen, & Vanhala, 2013). The case was also important because it made visible the dynamics that prevent wage relativities from changing and the gender pay gap from narrowing.…”
In addition to political parties and the government, trade union confederations and employer organizations are major power players in the Finnish labour market, policymaking and the wider society. This article analyses the significant role of the Finnish corporatist regime in creating and maintaining the gendered hierarchies of the labour market, including the gender pay gap. Using the case of the Finnish nurses’ industrial action in 2007, our analysis highlights the capacity of the corporatist regime to resist change in current wage relativities and effectively block attempts made to challenge the status quo. This article describes how wages are macro‐political, shaped by political processes, negotiations, power relations and vested interests of central stakeholders within the Finnish corporatist regime. The analysis focuses on the problem representations through which the actors articulate either their attempt to increase wages or to maintain the status quo, which makes their vested interests, as well as politics, visible.
“…In the second problem representation, lack of nurses in the future , we found similar argumentation in both TEHY's and SUPER's editorials (see also Henttonen et al, ). One problem of low salaries for nurses is that in the future, it will be difficult to recruit and retain nurses in Finland.…”
Section: Results: the Problem Representations Of Unequal Paysupporting
confidence: 68%
“…It is bizarre that certain other trade unions are amongst the most vocal in opposing registered nurses’ wage increases. (TEHY Magazine, September 2007)The quote above highlights how the goals of registered nurses met resistance from both KT and other trade unions (see also Henttonen et al, ). The Finnish corporatist system and collective bargaining system do not support allocating wage increases to certain groups and not others.…”
Section: Results: the Problem Representations Of Unequal Paymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In Finland, the undervaluation of nurses' work has been an ongoing topic of discussion for decades. It has also been on the agenda of collective bargaining and resulted in industrial action, as described in this article (see also Henttonen et al, 2013). The issue of nurses' wages that do not match job demands remains difficult to resolve, especially in the Finnish corporatist setting, which does not allow one occupational group to receive pay increases when others do not.…”
Section: Nurses Trade Unions and Equal Paymentioning
confidence: 95%
“…Both are iconic, feminized occupations in public sector care work. (e.g., Briskin, 2012;Henttonen, LaPointe, Pesonen, & Vanhala, 2013). The case was also important because it made visible the dynamics that prevent wage relativities from changing and the gender pay gap from narrowing.…”
In addition to political parties and the government, trade union confederations and employer organizations are major power players in the Finnish labour market, policymaking and the wider society. This article analyses the significant role of the Finnish corporatist regime in creating and maintaining the gendered hierarchies of the labour market, including the gender pay gap. Using the case of the Finnish nurses’ industrial action in 2007, our analysis highlights the capacity of the corporatist regime to resist change in current wage relativities and effectively block attempts made to challenge the status quo. This article describes how wages are macro‐political, shaped by political processes, negotiations, power relations and vested interests of central stakeholders within the Finnish corporatist regime. The analysis focuses on the problem representations through which the actors articulate either their attempt to increase wages or to maintain the status quo, which makes their vested interests, as well as politics, visible.
“…As Briskin () has shown, collective actions by nurses have often involved resignations rather than strikes, reached out to wider collectives and negotiated gendered images of the profession (e.g. Henttonen et al , ). In this article, we focus on how processes of commodification enable and shape nurses' collective actions, seen as part of a wider fightback against crisis‐related austerity by public workers (Colatrella, ; Gall, ).…”
This article analyses an episode of collective resignation. Carried out mainly by specialist nurses, this is a proliferating form of worker protest in Sweden that poses a challenge to austerity policy and emerges in a specific industrial‐relations context. Mobilizing for collective resignation, activist nurses navigate terrains of neoliberal governance, marketization and flexible labour‐market dynamics. The collective resignation is also a form of action underpinned by a discourse of gender equality. Our analysis, which attends to the co‐emergence of gendering and subject formation in the narratives of a group of activists and to the use of gender‐equality rhetoric in framing collective action, shows how opportunities for collective action arise that also restrain the exercise of agency. In this case, subject formation included contrasting nursing to tropes of archetypical militant workers and negotiating tensions between care and collective action. This involved reproducing and challenging established forms of gendering.
More often than not gender equality policies are good on paper but fall foul of politicized implementation processes. The reasons behind this are becoming a key area of investigation for feminist scholarship on the implementation of gender policies. This article analyzes the barriers to implementing gender equality policies in a corporatist regime. Focusing on the 2007 nurses’ industrial action in Finland, the article considers the case of “Nancy the Nurse,” which aimed at negotiating higher wages for nurses. Our findings suggest that the corporatist regime effectively prevented the implementation of gender equality policy, thus upholding the status quo and maintaining current wage relativities.
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