More than meets the eye: Finnish employers and the centralised labour market model, 1960s–2020s

This article examines the evolving role and attitudes of Finnish employers towards centralised bargaining from the late 1960s to the early 2020s. Employing a qualitative historical approach and analysing archival documents from Finnish peak employers’ associations, we explore the motivations behind employers’ commitment to centralised bargaining, from wage moderation and competitiveness to broader political and societal goals. Recently, there has been a shift towards ‘coordinated decentralisation’, where employers advocate decentralised practices while maintaining coordination among themselves. The findings contribute to discussions on the evolution of industrial relations by offering insights into how national contexts, transnational trends, economic cycles, and government policies influence employer actions, which in turn have a significant impact on labour market relations and bargaining systems. We suggest notions of surface centralisation and decentralisation to characterise the complexities behind an apparently centralised or decentralised system of wage bargaining.