SEL paid 1.4 million euros in strike pay to its members in 2024.
SEL’s most important task is to negotiate collective agreements for food industry workers. We protect the interests of our members and provide services, training and member benefits, such as employment advice, legal aid and unemployment security. Our representatives take care of our members’ affairs at the workplace. We finance our operations by collecting a membership fee, which is 1.4% of the member’s salary. SEL’s membership fee also includes the membership fee of the Open Unemployment Fund A-kassa.
In 2024, SEL members paid a total of 8.1 million euros in membership fees. We paid 1.6 million euros in membership fees to the unemployment fund. After that we refunded 12% of the membership fees, 800,000 euros, to SEL’s local union branches to finance their operations. After this, 5.7 million euros remained from the membership fee income.
SEL’s largest expense item is personnel expenses, which were 3.1 million euros in 2024. This is a typical cost structure of an expert organization whose task is to protect and serve its members. We spent a total of 5.8 million euros on other expenses in 2024. We paid 1.4 million euros in strike pay to our members who participated in our political #SeriousGrounds-strikes, in which we opposed the Orpo government’s weakening of employees’ right to strike, terms of employment and unemployment security.
In 2024, 24.4 percent of SEL’s operating expenses were spent on strike pays. Collective bargaining activities accounted for 5.4 percent of the expenses, communications 4.5 percent, organizational activities and member services 26.7 percent, training activities 7.5 percent, regional activities 5.4 percent, administration 21.6 percent, international activities 3.1 percent and SEL’s summer place Koivikkoranta 1.4 percent.
The membership fee collected by SEL is not enough to cover all the operations of SEL, so SEL’s operations are also financed by investment income. SEL’s balance sheet is strong, and our operations are self-sufficient. SEL members will continue to receive advocacy, support, security, services and member benefits from the union in the future.
Juha Kannisto
CFO of SEL