Let’s use the changes to create progress
Over the past year during the closures, we have had major changes in our (working) life. It has been challenging, educational, at times frustrating and has required a huge effort from all of us. But many of the experiences we have gained also point towards the contours of a new and better working life, if we use them properly.
Dealing with change – and working to get the best out of it – is not new to us as employees in the financial sector.
Therefore, it is also not new to us as a community and organisation. When the phenomenon of fintech really started to get going in the early 2000s, it was also one of the changes that was challenging and demanding. Many people talked about ‘disruption’ and a threat to the established sector.
Finansforbundet has now reached an agreement with the new Arbejdsgiverforeningen for Fintech (Employer’s Association for Fintech) on a framework agreement and main agreement that defines the framework for the companies’ pay and working conditions. The latest concrete result of us as an association making a decision in principle six years ago and getting involved in the start-up of Copenhagen Fintech. Because we believed that we could go further with cooperation than with scepticism.
Today, we operate in a labour market where the organisation of new industries in no way takes place automatically, and where the Danish model must not be taken for granted. Danish fintech now has both a close collaboration with the rest of the sector and a collective agreement.
At the same time, more than 2,300 new jobs have been created over the past five years. Relationships have been created between financial companies and new startups. A partnership of enormously strong companies and organisations from major parts of the top of the Danish business community. And finance and fintech have been designated as a new official Danish position of strength in the business promotion system.
Our approach as a trade union has thus made a difference. A broad commitment was the path to dialogue with companies about organising themselves in an employers’ association. This way, we could create results and concrete solutions for the employees.
We need to take the same open approach to the new opportunities to get the most out of the shutdown and the huge experiment around our working lives that we have all participated in during the corona pandemic.
Now we will soon enjoy seeing each other ‘properly’ again as colleagues. But we also have to use our new insights and opportunities to create a better, more flexible and more sustainable working life in the long term. With working conditions adapted to the new reality – and that also suit our life situation and everyday life even better.
That is the topic and dialogue we will start with you in the coming months. This is also one of the changes we can use together to create progress.