Finland's hotest days

Forest fires are raging in Russia as temperatures crossed 40 C. The forests are like tinderboxes.

Finland was no worse yesterday, knowing the hotest day in this century from 1914 with the thermometer rising to 38 C.

Today it is both hot and humid, worse than the worst you get in Mumbai post-monsoon.

The Finns are reveling in the heat. Many may not go back to work on 2nd August if this weather continues.

That brings me to the basis of the one month's extra salary a Finn receives as "Holiday Money".

In the old days, after the war, almost all Finns took the month of July as holiday. The industrial activity would ground to a standstill.

If the sunny weather continued till the end of July, many many Finns would not report back for work in August.

To get them back to work, the companies started a bonus of paying a onth's salary to all those who did get back to work. It was called "LOMA RAHA". Although this was subject to 50% taxation, it was quite an incentive to get many Finns back to work.

However, over the years this became a worker's right and it got built into the system

That meant companies were paying 13 month's wages for 11 months work. This was specially hard at the time of the 1990 recession which was probably the longest and deepest in Europe.

Hence the sytem changed and now many companies do not offer this "Holiday Money" incentive and this is one reason why Finland uses a lot of outsourced workers in many different fields as they are not able to get this incentive in their pay packet.

When I was working in the University of Oulu, I was a double beneficiary. I never took my annual hlidays inJuly. that meant I got my holiday money and i was entitled to an extra week's holiday in winter. This meant I enjoyed 5 weeks holiday and as I could one week off for Christmas and New Year, I got 6 weeks instead of 4 plus an extra month's wages! Not bad!

I think much of this has changed today!