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University of Helsinki To Lay Off a Thousand People (yle.fi)
jones_supa writes: University of Helsinki, the place where Linus Torvalds got his degree as well, will reduce staff by 980 people, with 570 being laid off by the end of 2017. In addition, the university will reorganize and incorporate certain divisions including continuing education. Professors, teachers and researchers are criticizing the cuts, which coincide with the university's administrative and educational overhaul. The staff cuts reflect the government's drastic funding cuts to education, which plays one part in the effort of trying to help the difficult economic situation of today's Finland. The university estimates that of the 980 positions, terminations during this coming spring will account for 570 positions. Of the employees to be made redundant, 75 are teaching and research staff and 495 other staff. The rest of the cuts will be spread over the coming years.
It sounds like most of the cuts don't affect the people who are fulfilling the core mission of the university, the ones who teach, do research and advise the students. US universities have hired so many administrators that they need more administrators just to keep track of all the administratoring they do. When there are budget cuts, it's administrators who draw up the cost-cutting plans, so it turns out as one would expect. At least in the US, universities can just keep raising tuition. In Finland that is impossible.
Organizational downsizing and layoffs are inevitable. The difference is that these people get to keep their national pensions, will receive at least 700EUR/mo in basic allowance even if they're not qualified for unemployment insurance, and if they are, as they are likely to be, up to 85% of their normal pay for up to a year while they try to find a replacement job. Then there is the normal array of services, should any of them run into real difficulty. It's much more manageable than what you'd get in a third world hellhole like Arkansas.
Troll smarter, not harder next time.
TFS says:
75 are teaching and research staff and 495 other staff.
So a few are teachers and researchers, but MOST are useless administration and "overhead".
Could be a lot worse. Could be a little better, but it's almost the opposite of your claim that most of those being cut are the people actually serving the direct function of the university.
Actually, the number of quota refugees for Finland is about 1000, and the number of actual refugees is about 15000. Yes, firing 1000 well paid university staff probably actually amounts to paying for a large fraction of Finland's share of the Syrian refugees.
Do you have any idea of how expensive beer is in Finland?
This would never happen to an institution owned by the benevolent government of a nice, progressive country with constitutional protections for earning a living wage. Oh, wait...
The problem is that our government is far from benevolent. This is the most hard-line capitalistic government during the entire history of the Republic of Finland. This government has made it its mission to completely dismantle every remnant of the welfare state and turn Finland into a tax haven for the rich. The "difficult economic situation" is merely a pretext.
I'm veering off on an off-topic tangent, but the fact is that almost all economists, when asked by the press, have stated that the measures taken by the current government only worsen ad prolong the situation.
Lemon curry???
I like the use of "park rangers" as an example. If you want real examples of non-productive tax-payer funded jobs... you're looking at the millions of useless admin jobs/managerial posts in the civil services. Most of them women. Most of them flexible working/job sharing/endless maternity leave. All of this, in turn, propping up an HR industry that again multiplies up the costs and useless jobs.
From what I'm reading here, Finland's economy is tanking, necessitating these cuts...
Not really, Finland's economy is tanking because we're in the Eurozone, because our exporters decided to compete by cutting costs instead of raising quality, but mainly because of five years of continuous shrinking of national economy due to these cuts.
Just yesterday our minister of finance said that it was not a choice by necessity but by political ideology. The Finnish government is basically doing to Finland what EU did to Greece. I don't know what we did to earn such hatred from them, though.
ISIS provided what the government and the private sector couldn't provide, a paying job. That's what the Iraqi insurgents did when Bremer disbanded the military and fired anyone with ties to the Baath party. He didn't even make allowances for those who had to join to get their jobs. He then prohibited Iraqis from starting businesses that might compete with American businesses. They went so far as to importing foreign workers and materials for reconstruction. 70% unemployment was the result
Another big mistake was not disarming the military before disbanding them. They also forgot to secure the ammo dumps. Many of the IED's were made up of what was culled from these storage compounds.
The decision to withdraw was made in 2008 under a SOFA agreement with Iraq. Obama tried to amend the SOFA to keep a security force there, but Maliki would not agree to legal protections for US soldiers. So we withdrew under the conditions of the 2008 SOFA.
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