The effects of the programme only started to be seen in 2007. When state employees retired, jobs were not filled at the same rate as in the past. Three years later, the National Audit Office says it has not achieved what it was intended to do. The programme has not increased productivity, while cutting staff has taken over as a goal in itself.
Parliament's Audit Committee has taken the stand that the whole programme should be wrapped up.
"It's not even a productivity programme, only a programme to reduce the number of man hours. We want to cut off this mechanistic model," says Audit Committee chairman Matti Ahde.
Tomi Hytönen, the official at the Finance Ministry who has run the programme, doesn't accept the criticism for ineffectiveness it has received. He says that the National Audit Office used the wrong evaluation criteria when it found that the productivity in the state sector declined in 2009. He argues that what needs to be looked at are the long-term trends.
"The productivity programme has worked. The state is using a smaller workforce and I haven’t heard that the level of services would have somehow collapsed," says Hytönen.
Fewer jobs all round
The number of people employed by the state has fallen from around 90,000 to 82,000 and another 5,000 jobs are expected to be cut during the next few years. Most of these will be the retirees who will not be replaced. On the other hand, the state hires around 2,500 new people a year.
The Finance Ministry argues that the programme is needed to help avoid a shortage of qualified employees in the private sector, as well. Antti Palola, who chairs the Federation of Salaried Employees Pardia, doesn't buy that argument.
"I really can't believe that the private sector will be facing a massive labour shortage. It's been repeated over and again for almost thirty years that there will be a labour shortage," says Palola.
Heikki Taulu, an advisor on labour policy for the Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals Akava, sees the timing as being bad. The private sector reduced recruitment during the recession at the same time as the productivity programme weakened employment prospects in the state sector.
"It would be good to just freeze the productivity programme for the time being, until unemployment falls," is Taulu's view.
