neljapäev, mai 11, 2006

Finnish and Estonian Trade Unions to 'Harmonize'

Back in the day when I was a whiny new new leftist (in the US the 1930s Left is known as the "Old Left," the 1960s Left is known as the "New Left," and like everything in this post-post-modern world, the 1990s Left was known as the "New New Left")we used to complain about globalization, and how come, if the world was just one, big, free market, the labor movement couldn't expand at the same rate that multinational corporations - many of which had no national face - did.

Leave it to the Estonians and Finns to answer that question many years after it was posed...

The top employee organisations in Estonia and Finland have agreed to harmonise the supervision of workers' rights between the two countries.

The chairmen of the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), the Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees (STTK), the Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals in Finland (Akava), the Confederation of Estonian Trade Unions (EAKL) and the Estonian Employees´ Unions´ Confederation (Talo) signed a deal in Tallinn on Thursday.

A transition period limiting the access of Estonians to the Finnish labour market expired on May Day.

The organisations said the unions should do everything in their power to ensure the smooth flow of information across the Gulf of Finland.


This is also further proof that the "Talsinki" meme - that Tallinn is just a suburb of Helsinki, that Estonian and Finnish are actually two dialects of one huge Finnic language group, that the future will be just one big, warm sauna, goes beyond the existence of the 'Talsinki' Rugby Team - which combines Helsinki's Rubgy Club with the Tallinn Tigers.

Sure there are the little differences. While 'hyvää' in Finland is 'good', 'hüva' in Estonia is just 'ok.'

5 kommentaari:

Anonüümne ütles ...

Actually, "hüva" doesn't mean just "ok". The word is a synonym of "hea" which means "good" (the two words have exactly the same comparative and superlative forms, too: hea-parem-parim, hüva-parem-parim). A few examples: "hüva roog" = "hea roog", "hüva leili!" = "head leili!", "hüva nõu" = "hea nõu", etc.

I suppose you think "hüva" means "ok" because people often use it in sentences like "hüva, lähme koju" ("ok, let's go home").

P.S The Finnish word is "hyvä" -- "hyvää" is its partitive form.

Giustino ütles ...

You mean the Finns actually have rules for how many vowels they put at the end of their words?!

You are correct - I have only heard hüva used as in "Noh, hüva, teeme nii"
My Estonian teacher denied the use of the word hüva and said it was a Finnish word. But my wife only used it as an 'ok' synonym. That is the only experience I have had with it.

Aga see on hüva harjutus! Aitäh.

Anonüümne ütles ...

I am afraid that this harmonization is mainly brought by sleazy Estonian middlemen who conviniently were/are milking up the both sides of the gulf. Estonians were able to work in Finland using these predatory enterprises that did the hiring and delivered cheap and ununionized labor for shady constraction sites and deducted "their share" from already lower than union wages. So, I suppose that Finnish unions wanted no pressures to lower exsisting labor rates. However, I am glad that these remaining restrictions get their proper place in the dustbin of the history.

Anonüümne ütles ...

Ah, shame on that teacher of yours! Stay away from him/her.

Giustino ütles ...

Estonian sleazeballs? Not hard to believe they exist!