Sisters (can’t) unite! Wages as macro‐political and the gendered power orders of corporatism

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE Sisters (can’t) unite! Wages as macro‐political and the gendered power orders of corporatism Paula Koskinen Sandberg 1 |Milja Saari 2 1 University of Tampere, Faculty of Social Sciences, Gender Studies 2 Academy of Finland Correspondence Paula Koskinen Sandberg, University of Tampere FI‐33014 University of Tampere. Email: [email protected] Funding information Suomen Akatemia, Grant/Award Number: 316514; University of Helsinki Research Funds In addition to political parties and the government, trade union confederations and employer organizations are major power players in the Finnish labour market, policymaking and the wider society. This article analyses the significant role of the Finnish corporatist regime in creating and maintaining the gendered hierarchies of the labour market, including the gender pay gap. Using the case of the Finnish nurses’industrial action in 2007, our analysis highlights the capacity of the corporatist regime to resist change in current wage relativities and effectively block attempts made to challenge the status quo. This article describes how wages are macro‐political, shaped by political processes, negotiations, power relations and vested interests of central stakeholders within the Finnish corporatist regime. The analysis focuses on the problem representations through which the actors articulate either their attempt to increase wages or to maintain the status quo, which makes their vested interests, as well as politics, visible. KEYWORDS collective bargaining, corporatism, equal pay, industrial action, wages as macro‐political 1|INTRODUCTION This article analyses the significant role the Finnish corporatist regime has had, and still has, in creating and maintaining the gendered hierarchies of the labour market, including the gender pay gap. Corporatism and corporatist regime refer to the significant power trade union confederations and employer organizations have over labour market issues, ------- --------- ---------- ---------- --------- ---------- --------- ---------- ---------- --------- ---------- This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Authors. Gender, Work & Organization published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received: 28 April 2017 Revised: 28 June 2018 Accepted: 26 July 2018 DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12300 Gender Work Organ. 2019;26:633–649. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gwao 633 policy and legislation (e.g., Siaroff, 1999; Woldendorp, 1997). The social partners and political parties together form the Finnish corporatist regime. The corporatist regime has proved to be highly resistant to attempts made, for example, to challenge current wage relativities or claim equal pay for feminized occupations. However, the Finnish corporatist regime, though a strong institution, is not a monolith. As this article will exemplify, there are different actors with their own interests to represent. Even when seemingly similar, these interests may diverge based on social categories, such as the gender, class or ethnicity of the group the trade union represents. As we were writing this article, 11 years after the 2007 industrial action by Finnish nurses that formed the basis for this study, the negotiation process for collective agreements had just been finalized. During the negotiations, power struggles between the central actors in the process received daily coverage in the Finnish media. At the same time, in Finnish public debate, the gender pay gap is typically addressed as a matter of gender segregation in the labour market and a question of individual choice and attitudes. This creates an interesting situation in which the impact of labour market organizations on wage‐setting is simultaneously acknowledged and silenced: it is acknowledged when addressing pay increases for certain industries but silenced when addressing the gender pay gap. In this article, we highlight the importance of studying wages and equal pay as gendered macro‐political power struggles. By macro‐political, we refer to institutions such as collective bargaining within the Finnish corporatist regime, which still remains highly coordinated, and in which central actors negotiate the terms of employment for most employees within the Finnish labour market; and party politics, which also have a fundamental impact on wages in the Finnish public sector through budgets and resource allocation. For understanding the macro‐political dynamics of wage determination, we coin the concept of wages as macro‐political. Studying wages as macro‐political refers to understanding wages as part of gender power orders (Nousiainen, Holli, Kantola, Saari, & Hart, 2013) and as subject to ongoing, gendered struggles between interest groups over power and legitimacy. When analysing equal pay as a political issue, it is easier to understand why it remains a highly contested topic as well as why promoting equal pay continues to be challenging despite a national and international legal framework that includes it (e.g., Finnish Act on Equality between Women and Men, 1986/609, 232/2005, 1329/2014; ILO, 1951; European Commission, 2006). The Finnish context provides an interesting case for studying wages as a macro‐political phenomenon. In coordinated labour markets such as the Finnish labour market, wages are not only or even mainly shaped by intra‐organizational practices or power relations within organizations, but by political processes in the form of wage negotiations between trade unions and employer organizations, and in party politics and the macroeconomic frame shaped by the government. Thereafter, pay practices are implemented in organizations, where their politics become less visible. Thus, we argue that wages are deeply political and should be analysed as such. While this may seem obvious, the macro‐political perspective has received less attention in the organization studies literature on wages and equal pay, which often focuses on micro‐or meso‐political perspectives such as politics and gendered practices in organizations, and the systems of wage determination such as job evaluation (e.g., Acker, 1990; Koskinen Sandberg, 2017; Steinberg, 1990). While scholarship on wages exists in fields such as sociology, political economy, industrial relations and organization studies (examples include Acker, 1989; Conley, 2014; Figart, Mutari, & Power, 2002; Gerhart & Rynes, 2003; Heneman, 2003; Mann, 2007), economics has been highly influential for the way in which we currently understand wages. Human capital theory, the role of the market in shaping wages, as well as explaining wage differences with chosen variables have become widely accepted ways of understanding what wages are (classics include Becker, 1994; Mincer, 1958; Oaxaca, 1973; for critiques, see Austen, Jefferson, & Preston, 2013; Grimshaw & Rubery, 2002). With this article, we provide an alternative way to study wages and gender pay gaps via power relations, politics and negotiation between central actors. We illuminate our insights with an analysis of the Finnish nurses’industrial action in 2007. The analysis focuses on the problem representations (Bacchi, 1999), ways of framing the problem of unequal pay, through which the actors articulate their attempt to either increase wages or maintain the status quo. In addition, the analysis identifies agonistic adversaries, actors and institutions that have power to change wage relativities (e.g., Saari, 2013; Mouffe, 2000). Our research questions are: 1. How can wages and equal pay be understood and conceptualized as macro‐political questions? 634 KOSKINEN SANDBERG AND SAARI 2. In making the claim for wage increases for nurses, how were the sources of wage inequality and corresponding remedies articulated? What kinds of problem representations of wages and equal pay were constructed from these discourses? Who were identified as agonistic adversaries, for instance, actors and institutions with the power to change wage relativities? 3. How did the Finnish corporatist system react to the claims made and what were the implications? The nurses’industrial action is particularly interesting for several reasons: the 2007 collective bargaining round took place just before the 2008 economic crisis, which hit Finland hard. During the crisis, Finland was stuck with unusually high wage increases, since other industries demanded wage increases as well. To this day, the nurses’industrial action has been blamed for the loss of the competitiveness of the country's economy and is used as a counterargument for lifting feminized occupations of the public sector out of a wage pothole. The case is also interesting because industrial action organized by feminized occupations is rather rare in Finland, and because the occupational groups in question are registered and practical nurses. Both are iconic, feminized occupations in public sector care work. (e.g., Briskin, 2012; Henttonen, LaPointe, Pesonen, & Vanhala, 2013). The case was also important because it made visible the dynamics that prevent wage relativities from changing and the gender pay gap from narrowing. There was the electoral campaign promise made by the National Coalition Party on wage increases for undervalued, feminized public sector occupations and a €150 million budget for the increases. Still, the wage increases were blocked by the dynamics of the corporatist regime. The data used in the analysis comprised two background interviews with informants who were central in the 2007 industrial action, and magazines produced by the action's central actors: TEHY —The Union of Health and Social Care Professionals; SUPER —The Finnish Union of Practical Nurses; and KT —Local Government Employers. These texts served as effective material for retrospective analysis of the 2007 industrial action, as they represent strategic communication targeted to the organizations’members as well as other stakeholders. We analysed editorials and chairperson's columns produced between 2006 and 2008 —that is, before, during and after the industrial action. We built a description of how the events unfolded and traced the main problem representations, ways of constructing the problem, of unequal pay in the data. We also examined the ways in which gender and class are constructed in these problem representations. In addition, we evaluated how the Finnish corporatist labour market system both enables the politicization of wages and makes the implementation of measures to promote equal pay very difficult. This article is structured as follows. First, we discuss ways of conceptualizing wages and present our contribution to this discussion: the concept of wages as macro‐political. Second, we describe the Finnish corporatist regime and its institutions. Third, we discuss the undervaluation of feminized care work. Fourth, we elaborate on our methodological approach and research data. Fifth, we frame our analysis by presenting the case under investigation in more detail. Sixth, research results, including the problem representations of unequal pay, are presented. Finally, our findings and contributions are discussed in relation to our theoretical framework. 2|BRINGING MACRO‐POLITICS INTO THEORIES OF WAGES To understand the dynamics of the gender pay gap, it is crucial to understand wages. A wage is much more than just a fee in exchange for labour. Rather, it can be viewed as a political arena in which people's identity, culture and politics are negotiated. Wage is a critical component in forming social categories and hierarchies of race, class, gender and citizenship (Mann, 2007). The point of wage being a political arena and a critical component in forming hierarchies between occupational groups within the Finnish labour market will also become clear in our analysis of the problem representations (e.g., Bacchi, 1999) of equal pay articulated by the central actors of the 2007 nurses’industrial action. In coordinated labour markets such as in Finland, wages are determined via collective bargaining between trade unions and employer organizations, resulting in the implementation of wage levels and pay systems across the entire sector. Collective bargaining is also a political arena where the power relation between central actors are negotiated. In addition to social partners, Finnish government and political party ideologies have also been embedded in the KOSKINEN SANDBERG AND SAARI 635 macroeconomic context of wage determination. As our example highlights, collective bargaining processes and related negotiations can become highly politicized in certain circumstances. As stated in the introduction, much of the previous scholarship on wages and equal pay has been conducted within the field of economics. In mainstream economics, wages are seen as based on markets as well as human capital factors of individual workers, such as education and work experience (classics include Becker, 1994; Mincer, 1958). In these approaches, gender segregation of the labour market is typically offered as an explanation for a large part of the observable gender pay gap. Rubery, Grimshaw, and Figueiredo (2005) argued that conceptualizing the gender pay gap only with productivity factors is clearly at odds with scholarship done within fields such as sociology. Focusing only on productivity denies the role of social actors. In heterodox economics using institutional approaches (e.g., Austen et al., 2013), wages are seen as shaped by the institutional context. Figart et al. (2002) have categorized implicit theories behind equal pay debates. Debates and previous scholarship have focused on three dimensions of wages: wages as a price, wages as a living and wages as a social practice. Wages as a price refers to the mainstream economics perspective mentioned above, where wages are seen as being based on investments in human capital (e.g., Becker, 1994; Mincer, 1958) and shaped by market forces. Wages as a living comprises studies and debates on living wages (e.g., Luce, 2004) and minimum wages (e.g., Rubery, 2003). From this perspective, wages are seen as a means to provide a living for workers and their families. The third area of scholarship is wages as a social practice, where wages are seen as shaping and reflecting deeply embedded, shared cultural understandings of ‘appropriate places’for workers of different classes, genders and ethnicities (see Acker, 1990, 2006; Skeggs, 1997). Wages serve these three functions simultaneously (Figart et al., 2002). In this article, we highlight that wages are profoundly political and should be analysed as such. By definition, politics refers to the distribution of power and resources via decision‐making. By ‘political’, we refer to macro‐level politics, such as party politics, macroeconomic frameworks of governments and centralized collective bargaining, such as the type found in Finland. We coin the concept of wages as macro‐political to describe how wages are shaped by political processes, negotiations, power relations and vested interests of central stakeholders within the macroeconomic and political framework. The macro‐political dimension of wages has indeed been discussed in some studies (e.g., Acker, 1989; Eveline & Todd, 2009; Figart et al., 2002; Mann, 2007; Rubery & Grimshaw, 2015), but few studies have focused on the macro‐politics of wage determination and equal pay within a Nordic corporatist regime (e.g., Koskinen Sandberg, 2018, Saari, 2016). Viewing wages as macro‐political incorporates institutions, power relations and agency. Current wage relativities are not written in stone; although not easy, they can be renegotiated. 3|THE FINNISH CORPORATIST REGIME AND ITS INSTITUTIONS The Nordic countries, Finland among them, have often been viewed as model countries for gender equality. Being gender‐equal is a strong narrative in Finland, which also makes studying gendered structures and power relations in Finnish society and its labour market particularly interesting. The Global Gender Gap Index (World Economic Forum, 2017) ranked Finland as the third‐most gender‐equal country in the world. Yet, in the Nordic comparison, Finland has the most gender‐segregated labour market and a relatively wide gender pay gap: 16.7 per cent in 2016 (Grönlund, Halldén, & Magnusson, 2016). In the Nordic countries, wages and equal pay are commonly understood to be the responsibility of labour market organizations, which has in turn slowed down the development of the legal framework around equal pay (Fransson, 2000; Nummijärvi, 2004). It has been conventionally assumed that wages and equal pay cannot be directly influenced by either the government or politicians (Saari, 2016). A distinctive feature of the Finnish context is the corporatist regime, which implies significant power that the trade union confederations and employer organizations have over wage determination, policymaking and legislation. The Finnish corporatist regime is a strong institution with a long legacy (Koskinen Sandberg, 2018). One of the reasons why equal pay policies have not been very successful in narrowing the gender pay gap in Finland is the corporatist 636 KOSKINEN SANDBERG AND SAARI labour market structure, which is based on consensual agreements between employers, employees and the government. In Finland, both the trade unions and employer confederations are well organized: union density is relatively high at 64.5 per cent (Ahtiainen, 2015) and most employers are also organized. In Finland, the working conditions of employees are based on legislation and collective agreements. Between 1968 and 2006, general agreements on terms and conditions of employment, and the level of pay rises, were negotiated in tripartite cooperation as a part of income policy agreements. In these, the government was one of the negotiators. Even after 2006, the collective bargaining system has remained rather centralized and strongly affected by the corporatist tradition of negotiating. Although equal pay is a widely accepted principle and goal in Finnish society, practices promoting unequal pay have gone unnoticed and remain widespread in the Finnish labour market (Suoranta, 2009). This situation is not the result of a lack of political articulation on the importance of equal pay. Quite the contrary, equal pay has been included in government programmes and policies since the 1960s. Equal pay has been promoted via institutions, including political parties, labour market organizations and the judicial system, through legislation, gender equality policies and programmes, collective agreements and governmental platforms. Yet the gender pay gap has remained almost the same for the last 30 years. Formally, all central actors support the shared goals, but there are practices that work against these shared goals. These include behind‐the‐scenes power struggles between the actors, strong gender segregation of the labour market and shared, tacit knowledge on the ‘appropriate’wage differences between jobs held by employees of different gender, class, ethnicity or educational background (e.g., Figart et al., 2002). 4|THE UNDERVALUATION OF FEMINIZED CARE WORK The occupations under investigation in our Finnish example, registered nursing and practical nursing, can be seen as embodiments of undervalued feminized care work. This undervaluation has its roots in the perception that care work ‘comes naturally’for women and is conducted in the private sphere, without pay (Haggrén, 2005; see also Henttonen et al., 2013). Today, registered nursing is a skilled occupation that requires the completion of a bachelor's degree, while practical nursing requires tertiary qualifications. Yet even now, the gendered history of these occupations is reflected in the wage levels of the nurses. Haggrén (2005) wrote that in the 1940s registered nursing was viewed as a job through which young, middle‐class, unmarried women could fulfil ‘social motherhood’, the societal role attributed to Finnish women at the time (see also Rantalaiho, 1994). Claiming higher wages was not seen as suitable for these women. Consequently, the status and monetary undervaluation of the occupation in the Finnish labour market has been a relevant question for decades. Relatively high societal prestige, but low wages, characterize the occupation even today. This undervaluation can be seen as a product of intersecting gender, class and race relations. Within health care and hospitals, as work organizations, the organizational hierarchy and perceived value of conducted work are based on gendered, racialized and class‐based processes (e.g., Cleland Silva, 2016). These together produce wages for physicians, registered nurses and practical nurses, with (male) physicians comprising the top end of the hierarchy, (female) registered nurses comprising the middle and (female) practical nurses comprising the lower end, with more ethnically diverse nurse assistants comprising the bottom. In previous research about collective agreements in the Finnish local government sector, the ways in which these culturally gendered valuations of jobs and occupations have become embedded in formal wage determination practices have been conceptualized as institutionalized undervaluation (Koskinen Sandberg, Törnroos, & Kohvakka, 2018). Institutionalized undervaluation originates in socially constructed, gendered understandings of appropriate wages for work conducted by men and women (see also Austen et al., 2013; Figart et al., 2002). However, once undervaluation becomes part of formal wage determination practices, it is more difficult to detect. Undervaluation is not just the result of historical processes, but is an ongoing process shaped by many actors, such as employers, governments, trade unions and other social actors (Acker, 1989; Grimshaw & Rubery, 2007; Suoranta, 2009). In this article, we highlight the relevance of these actors and politics. KOSKINEN SANDBERG AND SAARI 637 4.1 |Nurses, trade unions and equal pay Nurses have gone on strike or engaged in industrial action in many countries to protest low wages or poor working conditions more generally (e.g., Briskin, 2011, 2012). In Finland, the undervaluation of nurses’work has been an ongoing topic of discussion for decades. It has also been on the agenda of collective bargaining and resulted in industrial action, as described in this article (see also Henttonen et al., 2013). The issue of nurses’wages that do not match job demands remains difficult to resolve, especially in the Finnish corporatist setting, which does not allow one occupational group to receive pay increases when others do not. The male‐dominated industrial relations system also sees women's militancy as threatening (e.g., Briskin, 2011). The role of trade unions in relation to equal pay objectives varies according to the industrial relations systems of the country in question. For example, in the UK, trade unions have been active in using the law to claim equal pay for their female members (e.g., Conley, 2014; Guillaume, 2015); in Australia there have also been successful equal pay cases (e.g., Austen et al., 2013); yet in Finland, this is unheard of. Instead, trade unions in Finland have negotiated binding collective agreements nationwide and would not be in a position to challenge such agreements. Other initiatives for equal pay for women have been rather rare among Finnish trade unions and equality bargaining (e.g., Heery, 2006; Williamson, 2012) is typically not a part of their agendas. In Finland, like in many other countries, women's wages used to be significantly lower than men's, according to collective agreements (e.g., Rose, 1988; Suoranta, 2009) and even by governmental decisions, which recommended different wage levels for men and women in 1945 in the so‐called wage regulation decision (Bergholm, 2005). Trade unions actively promoted the so‐called family wages for male breadwinners, while women's earnings were viewed as supplementary. Male unionists participated in exclusionary strategies since working women threatened their position in both the labour market and the domestic sphere (e.g., Guillaume, 2015; Rose, 1988; Walby, 1990). In both spheres, it was in the interest of men that women remain in a subordinate role. It was also in the interest of employers, who received cheaper female labour. The gendered history of the labour market is still present in its currently gendered structures. More recently, the Finnish centralized collective bargaining system has protected male privilege in the labour market through the strong tendency to uphold gendered divisions in the market and in collective bargaining. In collective bargaining, gendered power relations operate so that women's interests tend to become marginalized in the process (Dawson, 2014). 5|DATA AND METHODS In the analysis of the data, we applied a policy‐constructivist approach, or ‘What is the problem represented to be?’, which was developed by Bacchi (1999) for studying policy responses. Bacchi argued that every policy proposal contains an explicit or implicit diagnosis of the problem. The way in which the problem is defined will offer specific kinds of solutions to solve it. According to Bacchi, social problems are constructions that are subject to a constant battle over meaning. Instead of taking these social problems as givens, we should analyse language, concepts and categories that are used to frame the issue in question (Bacchi, 1999). According to Mouffe (2000), antagonisms, divisions andconflicts are the drivingforce of a pluralistic democracy. The idea of agonistic adversaries is that agreements can be negotiated through conversation, but conflicting interests and the need for ongoing discussions remain (Mouffe, 2000). Inspired by Mouffe, Saari (2013) introduced a dimension of negotiation to Bacchi's approach that enables the analysis of potential agonistic adversaries, among whom negotiations for change could take place. These agonistic adversaries are regarded as possessing the power to change the existing situation and put the suggested measures into action. To put it simply, agonistic adversaries are central actors that have the possibility of influencing a specific question or problem to be solved, such as nurses’wage increases. Extending Bacchi's analytical framework, which focuses mainly on discourses, by adding agonistic adversaries, brings institutions and actors to the analysis. In the case under analysis, these actors and institutions are the corporatist regime, political parties and politicians, local government sector collective bargaining system, trade unions and employer organization. 638 KOSKINEN SANDBERG AND SAARI The data used in the analysis is comprised of magazines produced by the central actors of the 2007 industrial action: TEHY, SUPER and KT. The magazines were used in analysing the problem representations of unequal pay produced by the central actors. We analysed, using qualitative content analysis, the editorials and chairperson's columns (KT, N= 22; TEHY, N= 109; SUPER, N= 66) between 2006 and 2008, before, during and after the industrial action. These texts served as effective material for retrospective analysis of the 2007 industrial action, as they represent strategic communication targeted to the organizations’members as well as other stakeholders. The topics of editorials and chairperson's columns were various but, especially in 2007, many focused on nurses’wages and developments in wage negotiations; and, later, on TEHY's industrial action. In the analysis, we utilized the analytical questions developed by Bacchi (1999) and Saari (2013) to tease out the main problem representations of nurses’wages and unequal pay and identify the agonistic adversaries, actors and institutions that are viewed as having power to change the situation. Questions asked of the data are: What is the problem represented to be? What is the cause of the problem and what is the solution? Whose problem is it? Who should do something to solve the problem? In our analysis, we looked at the wording of arguments about wage increases, as well as the types of rhetoric employed. We looked at how the question of nurses’wages and arguments about increasing or maintaining them were constructed in the texts. In addition, we examined whether gender, class and ethnicity were present in the rhetoric, and whether these were mentioned explicitly or implicitly. We identified the agonistic adversaries as those whom the editorials speak to and direct their demands and wishes to. Finally, we assessed how the collective bargaining system reacted to the attempt to increase nurses’wages. 6|THE CASE: FINNISH NURSES’INDUSTRIAL ACTION IN 2007 In this section, we provide an overview of the studied case and the events that took place during the 2007 nurses’ industrial action. In the overview, we use background interviews of two informants from the registered nurses’trade union, who were central, visible actors in the 2007 industrial action. These background interviews provide valuable insights into the events of the industrial action: objectives of the trade union, lobbying before the parliamentary elections, collective bargaining negotiations, collaboration with the practical nurses’trade union, eventual threat of industrial action, obstacles for gaining wage increases and the aftermath of the industrial action. We also use our own reading of our data and earlier Finnish studies of the 2007 nurses’industrial action (Henttonen et al., 2013; Kunelius, Noppari, & Reunanen, 2010), which focused on media coverage of the industrial action. The Finnish local government sector is an interesting case for studying how wages are macro‐political. The sector is a major employer in Finland, with 435,000 employees in a nation of only five million people. A great majority (80 per cent) of these employees are women. The largest collective agreement —the General Collective Agreement, which covers wages and other work conditions for both practical and registered nurses —is especially female‐dominated. The local government sector uses five major collective agreements for different employee groups. Wage levels vary greatly both between and within the collective agreements (in 2015, approximately €6300 for physicians, €3050 for registered nurses, €2600 for practical nurses and €2100 for nurse assistants). Jobs are divided into ‘pricing annexes’and ‘pricing groups’. To put it simply, there is a price for each type of job, yet the price is not the result of analytical job evaluation but is rather due to a variety of other factors, including gendered valuations, institutional contexts, negotiations and power struggles. Wages in the local government sector carry a lot of historical baggage. Much of the undervalued and underpaid feminized work conducted in the Finnish labour market involves the local government sector. 6.1 |The struggle over nurses’wages The industrial conflict under analysis in this article took place between employer organization KT and the two trade unions, TEHY and SUPER. Political parties also had an explicit role in this rare event, when undervalued feminized KOSKINEN SANDBERG AND SAARI 639 occupations used rather drastic measures to try to negotiate for better pay. The following events highlight the macro‐ political nature of wages, as well as the power relations between the central actors and the class relations between the two groups of nurses. The year 2007 brought historic momentum for nurses as well as opportunities to demand better pay, including parliamentary elections, a new government and its platform, and the renewal of collective agreements. The trade unions’campaign for better wages for nurses acquired full force in 2006. TEHY and SUPER lobbied both in the political party arena and among TEHY's partnership organizations to gain broad support for their demands. The goal was to build up pressure to include pay increases for nurses in the government's platform and to earmark pay increases in collective agreements. The National Coalition Party made a promise in its 2007 election manifesto to aim for a centralized equality incomes policy agreement that would guarantee a pay increase for the skilled and educated, but low‐paid, women in the public sector. In addition, a budget of €150 million was allocated for this purpose. The party did not specify, however, to whom the pay increases should be allocated, which was considered problematic for the collective bargaining process. After the elections, and with negotiations about the new collective agreements imminent, TEHY set the goal of a 24 per cent pay increase over a 2.5‐year period. A period of intense negotiations with KT followed, initially together with SUPER, which represented practical nurses. Later, SUPER reached an agreement with KT, whileTEHY continued the tough negotiations alone, without support from other unions. As part of their negotiation strategy, TEHY threatened the mass resignation of nurses should their goals not be reached (Kunelius et al., 2010). At this point, the nurses’industrial action met strong opposition not only from the employers’side but also from other unions, who thought that the question of undervaluation and low wages was relevant to other occupations as well and that nurses were not entitled to higher pay increases than other types of workers. The collective bargaining between KT and TEHY made no progress for several months; then, just days before the mass resignation, a settlement between the parties was reached. Members of TEHY were given a four‐ year agreement, which differed from other local government sector collective agreements in so far as pay increases were exclusive to members of TEHY. In addition to the demand for a significant increase in pay, TEHY's other main objective was to obtain their own collective agreement. TEHY tried to follow the physicians’strategy for obtaining more wage bargaining power in the municipal sector: physicians and their union held a five‐month strike in 2001 and were ultimately able to acquire a separate collective agreement. Obtaining a higher pay increase than other professional groups is considered impossible in the context of the General Collective Agreement. Hence, a separate collective agreement for nurses had been on the unions’agenda for a long time. During the course of the collective bargaining process, a united front was shattered. This was because SUPER's practical nurses, with their already low salaries, could not afford industrial action that would be very expensive for the participants. The pay increase demanded —24 per cent —may have been another reason. TEHY's policy was to promote percentage‐based pay increases, whereas SUPER aimed for increases in euros. This represents a class dimension in the two trade unions’strategies, since percentage‐based wage increases are more beneficial for registered nurses, while increases in euros are more beneficial for lower‐paid practical nurses. After a very complicated implementation and negotiation process, the government's extra funding (€150 million) for equal pay was allocated to all female‐dominated professions in the municipal sector, resulting in one of the most expensive negotiation rounds for employers. In addition, export industries negotiated similar levels of wage increases, resulting in very significant increases for the entire Finnish labour market. Since male‐dominated occupations and industries received a wage increase as well, this result also undermined one of the goals of the nurses’industrial action —narrowing the gender pay gap. The Finnish corporatist regime reacted by maintaining the gendered division and wage relativities of the labour market. In 2008, the global economy plunged and Finland was hit hard by the economic crisis. This, of course, was concurrent with the nurses’industrial action and resulting pay increases, which had increased wages in other industries as well. As a result, Finland was stuck having to increase wages at a time of global economic crisis. The 640 KOSKINEN SANDBERG AND SAARI nurses’industrial action has been blamed for the loss of competitiveness of the country's economy ever since. It has become a story of the greedy nurse who wanted too much, shook the entire Finnish industrial relations system and caused major difficulties in the Finnish labour market by threatening the status quo. 7|RESULTS: THE PROBLEM REPRESENTATIONS OF UNEQUAL PAY In this section, we focus on the problem representations, or ways of framing the problem (Bacchi, 1999), of wages and equal pay produced by the central actors of the 2007 nurses’industrial action. In addition, we identify agonistic adversaries, actors and institutions with the capacity to change the situation, to whom the demands are targeted (Saari, 2013; Mouffe, 2000). According to our analysis, SUPER, TEHY and KT varied in their discourses on wages and their understanding of the essence of the problem in relation to nurses’wages. Next, we will elaborate our research findings on problem representations (Saari, 2013; Bacchi, 1999) of unequal pay produced by the central actors of the 2007 nurses’industrial action. The analysis also highlights how wages are macro‐political questions and how wage becomes a critical component in forming hierarchies of social class and occupational group (e.g., Mann, 2007) within the industrial action of the two groups of nurses. Registered nurses build a picture of themselves as the highly qualified white‐collar professionals whose wage is not in line with job demands, while practical nurses emphasize the physical demands of their work, the tininess of their salary and a lack of appreciation for the hard work they do. KT a powerful actor in Finnish labour market politics, acts as a gatekeeper for nurses’demands for better wages, denying that there is any inequality and claiming that municipalities simply cannot afford to pay more. In addition, they dislike party politics interfering with labour market politics. 7.1 |TEHY —The union of health and social care professionals Time to deliver what was promised in electoral campaigns. (TEHY Magazine, June 2007) The quote above refers to promises made by the National Coalition Party about wage increases before the elections. It also explicitly links nurses’wages to party politics. In TEHY editorials, it can clearly be seen that, in 2006 and 2007, the organization was implementing a strategic plan focusing on three key aspects of unequal pay, which we have called problem representations of (i) educated nurses in a wage pothole; (ii) the lack of nurses in the future; and (iii) stronger bargaining power (for details, seeTable 1). In the problem representation of educated nurses in a wage pothole, the concern was that nurses’salaries were too small when considering the work demands, education, responsibilities and skills needed in the job, the cause of which was associated with politicians’lack of courage to target nurses with earmarked pay increases. Emphasizing qualifications and job demands can be interpreted as an expression of registered nurses’identification with white collar, expert occupations with a high level of job demands. They are not claiming that their absolute wage level is low, but that it is low when taking into account the expertise that they have. In the editorials, the long‐simmering frustration among nurses was attributed to politicians who were accused of not following through on their promises; instead of political talk, nurses needed higher salaries. Unlike practical nurses, registered nurses clearly linked pay increases to the overall goal of narrowing the gender pay gap in the Finnish labour market. Higher wages for nurses would be in line with the overall gender equality objectives of Finnish society, as expressed in government programmes. 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Halvennettu työ. Pätkätyö ja sukupuoli sopimusyhteiskuntaa edeltävissä työmarkkinakäytännöissä. Tampere, Finland: Vastapaino. Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing patriarchy (ed., Vol. 20). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Williamson, S. (2012). Gendering the bricks and mortar: Building an opportunity structure for equality bargaining. Journal of Industrial Relations,54(2), 147–163. Woldendorp, J. (1997). Neo‐corporatism and macroeconomic performance in eight small West European countries (1970–1990). Acta Politica,32,49–79. World Economic Forum. (2017). The global gender gap report 2017. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/reports/the‐ global‐gender‐gap‐report‐2017 Paula Koskinen Sandberg is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Gender Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland. She has published on topics such as gender inequalities in pay systems, the institutionalized undervaluation of women's work and the social partners' role in drafting Finnish gender equality legislation. Her current research interests include gender pay equity, equal pay policy, corporatism and changing Nordic welfare states. Milja Saari is a Science Adviser at the Academy of Finland and a political scientist who studies the interplay of gender, class and corporatism. Her work is multidisciplinary and combines academic discussions about political science, organizational and gender studies, industrial relations and science of law. She is especially interested in gendered power orders and the legitimacy of gender equality policies and their implementation in a corporatist political system like Nordic countries. How to cite this article: Koskinen Sandberg P, Saari M. Sisters (can’t) unite! Wages as macro‐political and the gendered power orders of corporatism. Gender Work Organ. 2019;26:633–649. https://doi.org/10.1111/ gwao.12300 KOSKINEN SANDBERG AND SAARI 649