Katri Karkinen
Saimaankatu 60 B 29, 15140 Lahti, Finland. e-mail katri.karkinen@lammasoja.net
A paper to Tarto NJF meeting from 2nd to 4th May 2012
Substitute workers in dairy cattle and animal welfare
This paper is about a worry concerning working conditions of agricultural substitute workers. There are about ten thousand substitute workers in Finland and it seems that hardly anyone of them is able to prolong their career until the official retirement age of 63 year. First I will discuss what the substitute workers have to do with animal welfare. After that I will write what the system of substitute workers is about. Finally I report about a study tour to the municipality of Sysmä in Tavastehus province, where an office of substitute workers takes place. The idea is to describe a case of how system, that in Finnish is called maatalouslomitus, is working. The webpages of Farmers Social Insurance Institution in Finland, that is responsible for implementation of substitute work, is using the term farmer’s locum –service (Mela 2012).
What animal welfare consists of?
Animal welfare is a result of several factors. One important factor is the work that is daily done with animals. So it is critical from the point of view of animal welfare, how work is organized and what its conditions are. In the case, when there is a dairy cattle run by a family, there is a need to break up from daily routine every now and then. It is necessary from the point of view of all members in the family.
In this paper the aim is to view animal welfare as a co-product of various components. In the prevailing concept of animal welfare the focus is in the body and surroundings of animal individual. Then it seems not relevant to talk about how farm work is organized. That is why there might be a need for reformulation of concepts. During the years of agricultural policy of European union, the animal welfare has been defined in many ways. It often seems to provide a new dimension to the more traditional approaches such as animal breeding and animal husbandry. The animal welfare is putting a new set of questions in the front of us. Besides, the welfare of animal and their care-takers could be regarded as the two sides of one coin.
The structures of working life are changing. The structure of agriculture and the rapid technological reorganization of work are providing a huge data for research. In Finland, a dairy cattle is most often a family farm. A farmer or some other persons in the family involved in agricultural work has got a right to a substitute worker as long as she/he is a member of the public pension fund for agriculture (Farmers’ Social Insurance institution). The substitute workers in agriculture are a state financed organization. (Häkkinen 1995.) I am planning to write a research project with the aim to discuss the relevance of substitute work and workers and their working conditions.
A dairy cattle needs a care all around a day and year. If we belief in the official statements of agricultural policy, the technological innovations replace human tasks more and more. The agricultural policy is almost synonymous to new technological application. It amends the agricultural tasks in general but it amends the division of labour between genders, too. In the farms in Finland women were in charge of cattle until applications of new technology. Since the milking machine (milker) even men started to milk, too. However, women are still important in the running of dairy cattle. You cannot find any dairy cattle where there are no women involved in the work.
When looking in the history, the Finnish agriculture has had different phases. Most important of them was an extensive resettlement scheme and agrarian reform in the post-war period. They solved the problem of landless rural people as well as settlement of the Carelian immigrants. From 1950s the focus in agricultural policy shifted from the settlement activities to income policy. Some societal trends affected farms: urbanization that decreased rural population and the argumentation of overproduction of cereals, milk and butter. (Granberg 1995.) The next phase in agricultural policy focused in incomes and production, it was openly wondered, how to guarantee farmers’ incomes in the era of motors and chemicals, because overproduction was threatening? I remember a foreign specialist asking, what to do in Finnish agriculture, when there are too many farms, which are too small and they produce too much food. In the beginning of 1980 when I entered the University, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry in Helsinki, in statistics were showing that there were one hundred thousand farms.
The promoting of structural change in agriculture demanded investments to enlarge farms and animal units in size. So this happened since the structural policy was implemented. The structure of farms truly changed. Only one third of agricultural farms were lost during the 15 years as a member in the European union. Now the number of farms with animal is calculated less than 20 000.
What agricultural substitute work is and how it was born?
The welfare state –concept that refers to Nordic way of organizing society evolved in Finland later than in Sweden or Norway. The concept of welfare state is still very much under political debate. The roots of welfare state lie in the governmental power of two political parties: the Rural Central Party and the Social Democratic Party. They decided about the extensive social schemes that had impact in the regional equality as well as they had many social purposes. The schemes included the provision of pensions to agricultural people. It has been argued, that the wide coverage of pensions can be explained by the agrarian structure that prevailed in society. (Granberg 1995.)
One of the principals of social policy was the universalism. This means that all services of social policy must be open to every citizen (Kuusi 1964). As the employees of industry and public services had a right to have an annual vacation, this right was extended to agricultural population, too. This was a remarkable decision with a lot of impacts, because Finland was that time (and still is) most rural country in Europe. The system of agricultural substitute workers could be regarded as part of the evolution of social policy programs during the decades of 1970-1980. It was first the male farmers but later even women farmers got the chance to be part of social programs that provided old-age pensions and accident insurances. (Wilmi 1994; Seppäläinen 2005.)
The Act in 1974 of the parliament it was agreed upon universal right to have a vacation from the permanent farmer occupation. Even agricultural people had to be guaranteed an annual vacation according the universalist principal in social policy. The municipalities were given the responsibility of implementation. Since the Act, thousands of people were recruited as substitutes for farm work, because the Act created possibilities that so many could never dreamt of. (Minutes of the plenary 1999.)
The creation of substitutes for farm work seems to have rather a centralized character. The organization of substitutes took place rapidly in some local municipalities, but others had delays in implementation. There are some charming stories how substitution was created in the municipality of Joroinen in Savolax written by Riitta Seppäläinen (2005). For example, in the start farmers hardly wanted to go for a leave. She/he regarded the duties irreplaceable. The municipal officers got on persuading farmers to go for a holiday, but at the same time they had to persuade workers to substitute farmers. In the first years of agreement a farmer could have six days off annually. Later, the amount of vacation as well as its purpose have been defined and redefined. According the present institution, her/his vacation depends on the acreage as well as animal head units in the farm.
The case of Sysmä office
Today, a cattle farmer (she, he, daughter, son, grandparents) is liable maximum 26 days annual leave. In the area in southern central Finland, in the municipality of Sysmä there is an office that is charge of organizing substitute workers in the region. The clients are 420 farms, and the office staff decides who of the workers is able to adapt to the clients’ demands. Every farm has a personal touch towards substitution and particular farm machinery. (Sysmä 2012.)
In Sysmä there are almost one hundred workers, to whom the work as substitute is their major occupation. They have a permanent working contract with the municipal organization. There are supplementary workers, too, who work on shorter contracts or even according the timecard divided in hours. Sometimes the substitute is needed after a very short notice. In the case, when cattle care-taker is falling sick or there is a serious accident, and the care-taker is not able to fulfill duties. Other type of demands for substitute workers are occurring, when cattle care-taker wants to have a parental leave or participate in vocational training etc.
The staff of Sysmä office, that was three ladies, assured me, that they cannot remember a case when an agricultural substitute worker had left the job by retiring of old age. They told me many cases, when the employer had to break the working contract because the worker had a medical certificate of not being able to go in work on anymore. Unfortunately they did not have any summary or statistics about these cases.
After contacting the Keva research unit in Helsinki I could verify, that substitute workers in agriculture belong to the group of professions that suffer from early retirement age. They are retied mostly because of musculoskeletal diseases. Very few with a long career in substitute work is actually retiring of old age. (Keva statistics 2012).
Afterthoughts
The more animal is considered a “product” the more it is necessary to see those factors that produce the product. The British sociologist Rhoda Wilkie inspired me to look at professions involved in animal care. Wilker herself studied breeders, dealers, hobby farmers and consumers. The breeder understands the living animal while dealers take attention to dead stock. (Wilkie 2010.) How does the substitute worker understand animal? Or better, what does substitute worker mean to animal and farmer? All substitute workers carry out physically hard job (Kivineva 2011). They should be regarded as an essential element in animal welfare.
Reference
Granberg Leo 1995. A Break in Agricultural Policy – from Peasant Values to Welfare Rationality. in The Peasant State. The State and rural questions in 20th century Finland. ed. Leo Granberg and Jouko Nikula. University of Lapland Publications in the Social Sciences B 20. Rovaniemi. Finland.
Häkkinen Sari 1995. Maatalousyrittäjien sosiaaliturva Euroopassa. (Social security of farmers in Europe). Maatalousyrittäjien eläkelaitoksen julkaisuja 1995/2. Farmers Social Insurance Institution. Helsinki.
Keva statistics 2012. Keva Pension Fund. Helsinki.
Kivineva Raimo 2011. Kirjoitus Maatalouslomittajat ry yhdistyksen verkkosivuilla. http://www.maatalouslomittajat.fi/ajankoh2.html
Kuusi Pekka 1964. Social Policy for the Sixties. A Plan for Finland. Finnish Social Policy Association.
Mela 2012. Insured wellbeing from Mela. An electrical brochure of Farmers’ Social Insurance Institution. Internet: http://www.mela.fi/Esitteet/Insured_wellbeing_from_Mela.pdf
Minutes in the plenary in Parliament 1999. Täysistunnon pöytäkirjat 1999. Eduskunta 9.11.1999. Pöytäkirjat Internet hakusanalla maatalouslomitus: http://www.eduskunta.fi/triphome/bin/akx3300.sh?TUNNISTE=HE+64/1999&KASVAIHE=$
Seppäläinen Riitta 2005. Maatalousyrittäjien lomituspalvelut Joroisissa 1974-2004. (History of substitutes in agriculture in Joroinen municipality, Savolax.) Maatalousyrittäjien eläkelaitos 2/2005.
Sysmä 2012. Sysmä municipality. Maatalouslomitus ja sen palvelut. Internet: http://www.sysma.fi/index.php?PAGE=447&NODE_ID=256&LANG=1
Wilkie Rhoda M. 2010. Livestock/Deadstock. Working with Farm Animals from Birth to Slaughter. Temple University Press. Philadelphia. USA.
Wilmi Jorma 1994. Sukupolvi viljelijän sosiaaliturvaa. Maatalousyrittäjien eläkelaitos 1969-1994. (History of social security of farmers).