Programme employees at the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) have started a ban on overtime and extra hours, continuing until 15 December. The ban has come into effect because Palta, the association representing service sector businesses, has refused to negotiate the removal of the ‘Competitiveness Pact’ from the collective agreement covering broadcasting staff at Yle. The Competitiveness Pact was introduced in 2016 in an effort by the government to increase annual working time by 24 hours, thereby making business more competitive by reducing the cost of labour. “The content of the collective agreement, the texts, had already been agreed and I think that there would have been an agreement on pay. For us, though, the removal of the extra hours of the Competitiveness Pact is an integral part of the agreement as a whole. Palta was not ready to discuss this,” explains UJF president Hanne Aho. The two-year collective agreement for Yle expired at the end of November. The UJF and Palta have be negotiating a new agreement since mid-October.