Interviews and Project Findings:
Work in Kuusankoski

"My work is based on the interview I made with my 72-year-old grandmother. She has worked as a teacher in the primary level of Pilkanmaa comprehensive school. She worked there for 38 years.

EDUCATION

My grandmother studied in the seminar of Heinola. The training lasted only four years. She remembers that after the World War II when the baby boom generation was at school age, some of her colleagues studied only two years because there was a pinch of teachers. If you wanted to become a primary school teacher, you didn't have to be a secondary school graduate. If you want to become a teacher nowadays, you have to graduate from a sixth-form school and then study for seven years at university.

EARNINGS

When my grandmother went to school herself, her teachers got their payments in cows. When my grandmother was a teacher, she got a piece of land and a small sum of money for a pay. They were also allowed to use the sauna and live in the teachers' apartments without charge. But later things changed and they got all their pay in money.

HOW THE TEACHERS' WORK HAS CHANGED

Back in those days teachers had good relationships with their pupils and parents. They had regular meetings with the parents in the fall and in the spring. They also organised common happenings with the pupils and their parents. Sometimes the pupils were invited to a teacher's home for a cup of coffee. I think that kind of situation is not very common practice these days.

CONCLUSIONS

My grandmother said that she doesn't think that a teacher's work has changed so much. It has always been basically just teaching, only time and methods are different."



"My granny's name is Irja J. She is now about 77 years old, but she still remembers her workdays like yesterday. I interviewed her about her job. She's now on retirement, but she said that she still would like to be in working life …

Q: How long have you lived in Voikkaa?

A: Me and my mother moved here when I was 13 years old and now I'm 77 years old, so I have lived here over 60 years now.

Q: Where did you live before you moved to Voikkaa?

A: I lived in Iisalmi with my mother.

Q: What was your first job, how did you get it and how old were you?

A: My mother was a cook. She worked in a café-restaurant called 'Tähti' (the star). I got a summer job there when I was about seventeen. And when the summer was over, they gave me a full-time job. I did everything they wanted me to do. I cleaned up places, helped in the kitchen, I did almost everything!

Q: How long did you work in that place?

A: About five years. Then I got married. I've got six children.

Q: Did you work in any other place?

A: Yes, I worked in an other restaurant called Kymensilta (the bridge of Kymi-river). There I worked as a cook, just like my mother had done.

Q: How did you get that job?

A: They asked me if I wanted to stand in for someone who was ill and I said 'Yes'. Later on they wanted to hire me.

Q: How long did you work in that place?

A: Oh, so many years, I don't even remember … over 30 years!!

Q: When did you get retired?

A: I don't remember how old I was, over 63 anyway, but I did it only because my husband died.

Q: How much did you study for your occupation?

A: I have only done the compulsory education, something like comprehensive school these days. I'm more like self-taught and of course my mother taught me sometimes. But when I was working in Kymensilta, they sent me and some other girls for a few weeks' training to Helsinki.

Q: How much and how often did you get paid for those jobs?

A: I got paid once a month. I don't remember how much it was but… nowadays it wouldn't be much but at that time it was enough. I got more money from my second job because there I was a cook and I did more demanding things.

Q: How long were your working days?

A: I worked six days a week. Sometimes I had a morning shift and sometimes a night shift. The morning shift started at 8 am and it was over at 4 pm. The night shift started at 16 pm and it ended at 12 at night.

Q: Did you have any benefits from those jobs?

A: Well, not really. I always got the dinner from the restaurant.

Q: Did you have any vacations?

A: Yes, I had the summer vacation and it wasn't really long.

Q: Nowadays there are lots of different machines to help the workers in a restaurant. Were there any machines, when you were working in a restaurant?

A: There were a few but not so many as there are these days.

Q: Was it hard to work without helping machines?

A: Yes, it was and all the work I had to do I did almost always without any help. I was the only worker in the kitchen. On some busy days the waitresses helped me.

Q: Did you like your job?

A: Yes, I liked it a lot, even though it was sometimes really hard for a woman.

Q: What was the hardest thing you had to do or what did you hate the most?

A: I don't remember what the hardest thing was but I always hated it when I had to cook the crayfish. All crayfish were in a box and they were alive! I had to take the crayfish from the box and put them in a kettle with boiling water. Then they died. I hated that so much! I didn't want to kill any animals. I always told to the crayfish before I put them in the hot water how sorry I was because I had to kill them. But of course I had to do it whenever someone had ordered crayfish.

Q: Was that your dream job or did you want to do something else?

A: I think that was my dream job. I have always been satisfied with my career choice.

And now, at the end I want to tell you that I'm really happy about my granny having been a cook. You can't even imagine how good food she makes. I think that some day I might do the same kind of work like my granny and her mother and a few of my cousins because my other dream job is being a cook. So, in my family cooking is in our blood."



"The theme of my work is “How Working Life Has Changed”. I wanted to find out about some changes in working life so I interviewed my grandmother.

At first I tell you something about her. Her name is Irja J. and she is 80 years old. She lives in Kouvola in a studio apartment. She doesn't have to make the dinner on her own because she lives in some kind of service house for old people. Despite my grandmother's high age she is very energetic and she is very healthy for her age. I think I really can say that because she has never been in hospital on her old days.

My grandmother's husband died when I was eight years old, I'm now sixteen, so sometimes she is quite lonely but she enjoys it in her own way.

There were some facts about my grandmother.

MY GRANDMOTHER'S JOB

My grandmother and grandfather had a small clothes shop in Jaala. Before the building became a shop it had been a rectory. My grandparents started having the shop in 1955 and they finished in 1980 when they decided to retire. Grandmother is my mother's mother. My mother has a twin sister and a big brother.

The clothes shop was called 'Jaalan vaatetusliike Jokinen', and it was successful enough to support a family of five.

The shop was a family business and my uncle helped his parents with the shop. When the twins (my mother and her sister) were small they had a babysitter, it was somebody from the neighbourhood. My grandparents didn't have any debts from the shop so their situation was quite good.

They lived in the same building where the shop was.

Later they moved to Kouvola in the year 1981. When my aunt's son was born, they started looking after him while his parents were at work. When I was born I went there, too, when my parents were at work.

SPARE TIME AND HOLIDAYS

Because my grandparents had the shop they didn't have so much spare time or holidays. When the shop was closed, for example on Sundays, they went to church and they sometimes visited their relatives.

If they needed a holiday, it was easy to arrange because it was their own shop and there were five members in the family. It wasn't easy actually to keep the shop closed because Jaala is such a small community and there weren't so many people to buy their clothes and other things from the shop.

One of my grandparents' weekly routines was going to the sauna. A thing that amazes us is that their toilet was not in the same building where they lived.

CONCLUSION

As a final statement we can say that many things have changed since my grandmother's working days, for example education. My grandmother didn't have any education for her job whereas these days you can't have any kind of job without proper education."



"I interviewed my grandmother Suoma about changes in working life. Because she hasn't worked so much I talked with her about my deceased grandfather Leo, too.

Suoma was born on 10^th October, 1927 so she is 72 years old now. She is the eldest of seven children. They lived in a farmhouse in Voikkaa. She has no more education than primary school and three years in the vocational school of Kymi-company.

When Suoma was 18 she got her first job in a plastic factory. The factory made all kinds of plastic products, mainly toys. First Suoma did all kinds of lower jobs there, like cleaning, packing and so. Later she became the person who put plastic grains into the machine and she also controlled the casting. Working there was quite hard, because the temperature was high and the smell was awful. She worked there only in winter because in summer she had to work on the farm. They grew for example rye, oats, rutabaga and potatoes. After the World War II there were hard times in Finland and rutabaga was always a very wanted vegetable.

When Suoma got married she stopped working in the factory and became a housewife. In those days it was normal to quit from work after having children. She had also two other boys to look after so she didn't work until the children were grown-up. Later she worked as a cleaner and a saleswoman in a kiosk.

My grandfather Leo, Suoma's husband, was a mason. He worked as a mason all his life. It was hard work and masons had to work on Saturdays, too. Winters were hard time for masons because then there was no work for them to do. Later it became easier when the unemployment benefits came.

I think that working life is nowadays a lot easier than 50 years ago. Working hours are a lot better and holidays are longer. Many jobs contain different advantages which make the working morals higher. New inventions and machines have made work less exhausting. Working life has changed a lot, but to a good direction."



"For this treatise I have interviewed my grandfather. The main goal was to find out how working life has changed in 60 years. My grandfather's name is Viljo L. and he is 73 years old.

Viljo L. was born in Sortavala. It is a small town by Lake Ladoga in present Russia. He started working for the first time when he was 13 years old. He walked around in the town and asked if there was anything to do. After a while he had found some places where he started to chop firewood. The pay was one Finnish mark per day plus food. When he was 14 years old they had to leave Sortavala because the Russians had won the war. So he and his father moved to Liminka. There they both got a job on a farm. The day started at 5 o'clock in the morning. First they had some breakfast and then children like my grandfather went to feed the animals, men went to dig drains or do something in the fields. They had luch at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and after that working continued. At 8 o'clock in the evening they stopped working and those who wanted were allowed to go to the sauna. My grandfather got paid 3,50 marks his father got 15 marks per day.

In the year 1944 my grandfather turned 17 and he had to join the army. After getting away from army in 1947 my grandfather moved to Voikkaa where he went working in the cement factory. The working hours were from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and on Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. He was paid by the piece which means that he got paid by the number of for example drainpipes he had made during the day. He worked there for 40 years and after that he got retired."



"My work is based on the interview I made with my aunt Anja V.. She has lived all her life in Kouvola. She has moved eight times in that town and now she lives in Käpylä. She is 69 years old now and she is a widow. She has got three sisters and she had a brother, too.

Q: Where have you worked?

A: I worked in the cafeteria of a car firm, I was the cafeteria manager there. Now there's McDonald's in that place. My job included serving the customers, ordering the supplies for the cafeteria and making the work lists. I didn't have to go to any school to learn that work.

Q: What about working hours and holidays?

A: I worked in shifts, about eight to ten hours a day. I had two days off in a week and my annual holiday was four weeks. I spent holidays travelling around in Finland. Often I stayed at home helping my mother or my sisters and my brother at their housework.

Q: And the pay? How did you spend it?

A: The ordinary pay was regulated by the labour union, there were no extra bonuses. I spent the money on clothes, cosmetics, food, furniture etc. There is not much difference in the ways of spending money.

Q: What did you do in your free time?

A: Well, I did housework at home and with my friends I used to go to a club nearby. My hobbies dancing, reading, walking and playing outdoors.

All in all we can say that working life hasn't changed so much. In the days gone by young people used to spend their free time and money like we do nowadays."



"I interviewed my 72-year-old Grandmother. She worked for 12,5 years at the station restaurant Siipipyörä from the age of 44 till the age of 57. Before that she worked as a janitor for 14,5 years. In that time professions didn't need any education or training, all you needed was experience. The work wasn't taught to you at “the scene” so you had to learn it for yourself. Working was hard. People who had the restaurant education didn't work only as chefs, cleaners or waiters, the work was shared with everyone. One day you worked in the kitchen, the other day you were serving drinks.

My grandmother worked as the cashier, in the kitchen and she cleared the dishes from the tables.

The restaurant was very popular. At that time there was no “Wait a minute, sir, I'll bring you your food to the table”. There was food queue, which means that you took the food from the counter and paid at the cashier. The food queue was quite similar to the system we have at the lunch room of our school. Sometimes the queue reached right out to the street.

At that time there was no such thing as unemployment. There was need for workers.

The workday was quite as long as it is nowadays. My grandmother's days were eight hours long and she worked in two shifts (from 6.00 till two o'clock pm or from 2 pm till 10.00 pm.). My grandmother also had some vacations. You could have your lunch or dinner at the work and it was reduced straight from your paycheck.

Comparing to these days, many things have changed in working life."



"I wanted to find out about the changes in working life and I also wanted to know how entertainment, free-time, jobs etc have changed. That's why my work is based on the interview I made with my granny.

Her name is Terttu N. and she is 75 years old. When she was a child she lived in Hamina and she has done a lot of hard work, including housework. Now she is living in Voikkaa.

First I asked her a number of questions about working life. She has done a lot of hard work and housework, as I mentioned before. She had to work in a farmhouse when she was a child. She recalls that she started working outside home in the region of 25 years.

She has been working as a cleaning lady, she has cleaned buses and she has been cleaning in building sites. She has also been working in a brick factory.

At that time, people didn't need any kind of education, they just went to work somewhere.

Her working hours at the building site were from 7 am to 4 pm and when she cleaned buses it was from 7 am to 3 pm or from 5 pm to 00.30 am. She had free time only on Sundays and of course after work.

Then I found out about the free time. She was into horticulture in summer and in winter she made needlework. She also had to take care of household and children. She lived in a detached house. They didn't have extra money and they weren't able to afford a car.

After that I asked her about the changes in working life. She told me that work was harder than nowadays. They did a lot of work by themselves, there weren't as many machines and industry as these days. Nothing was easy.

The services were about half a kilometre away from her house. There were also clothing stores and cinemas.

After all these questions I asked if there are any dreams that she would have wanted to make come true but she couldn't. She said that she would have wanted to travel around and that kind of things.

Finally, to conclude this work I would like to say that everything has changed. Our society is going to turn out modern. At different professions robots will be used, people won't be needed any longer and I guess that could be a catastrophe for anyone. Unemployment will increase and there will be many unemployed in the society. Or when the baby boom generation retires, workforce will be needed everywhere. Who knows?"



"This work is based on the interview which I made with my father because I think that he is, at the age of 53, qualified for this purpose.

Q: Where did you work the first time and what did you do?

A: My first job was in our neighbour's fields and I was the at the age of nine but my first real work was in the farm of the Pekkonen family in Mallasjoki. I worked there in 1965-1966 and my job was to take care of the pigs, which were the main product of the farm.

Q: What kind of sums of money did you make?

A: I was paid 360 marks per month, and the value of the Finnish mark was quite high in those days. A litre of milk cost then 70 p, and with one mark you could buy three or four loaves of dark bread.

Q: Did you get any education for that job?

A: I had to take a two-week course which taught me to know all about pigs and their soul lives. And this is the only education that I have after elementary school.

Q: What kind of working hours did you have?

A: The days were 8 to 12 hours long plus overtime.

Q: What kind of changes have you noticed in the working life over these past years?

A: Work is not so hard any more because there are computers which do some of the work for me. And the pigs are bigger these days.

Q: Are you happy with your job?

A: Yes, I am. Pigs are great animals and I think that people have a lot to learn from the pigs."



INTRODUCTION

"In this project we researched the working conditions today comparing to what they were sixty years ago. That's why we interviewed Tuomo's grandfather, Pärttyli P. He has lived here in Kuusankoski all his life, and worked in many different jobs. In his youth he earned his living working where ever he could. Back in those days experience or training wasn't important and no one had even heard of insurances. We will also compare the amount of the monthly salary check back then and now.

THE STORY

Pärttyli started working when he was 13 years old, in the year 1940, with his father. It was doing lumbering and transporting the lumber back to town. He had to ski twenty kilometres per day. When he was fifteen, in 1942, he started in a local shop as a shop assistant.

The salary was 150 Finnish marks per month which today wouldn't be very much. He worked there for two years until he turned seventeen and he was drafted and was sent to the World War II.

After the war he went back to the shop. His salary was now 600 Finnish marks and the year was 1944. He worked there for another two years. When he was twenty years old, he married Kati and became a farmer. He was again drafted to the army, where he was a battalion's scribe for nine months. After the army he continued as a farmer until 1959. He worked part-time in a bakery. He sold his share of the bakery to his son. Finally he decided to be a farmer for the rest of his life.

CONCLUSION

Nowadays you need many years of studying and experience to get work, but the work is easier and the hours are shorter. And you get more money. It is harder to get a job because the machines take care of most of the work."



"I interviewed my father, Heikki H. His first job was some kind of an assistant in a sawmill. The owner of the sawmill was somebody my father knew, that's why he got a job there. His pay was FIM 3,71 per hour. That sounds very funny but the value of money was different then. He worked eight hours a day and five days a week. He thinks the work was nice.

Nowadays he is unemployed but he's got a lot of experience from different jobs."



"For my project I interviewed a man who lives near us. His name is Lauri A. He was born in 1932 and is now retired.

Q: What kind of jobs have you had during your life?

A: Because I was born in the country I learned to work hard. In my everyday life I had to work as hard as I could. At home I learned how to cultivate the field and how to take care of the woods. I started lumbering when I was 14. I went to the forest with adults and I learned from them how to do it. And my first job outside home was a forest worker. I was then about 20 years old.

Q: How much did you earn?

A: I can't say the salary was good but those were hard times and nobody had much money.

Q: Did you have any other jobs?

A: When I was 28 years old both my parents died. I was the only child and I had to take care of the homefarm. I could say that then I became a farmer. Like I said I learned it when I was younger so it didn't cause any trouble. And I still kept on doing lumbering for extra money.

Q: How has working changed by the years?

A: My first years doing hard work were literally hard. I didn't have any kind of equipment that came later. All the work in the fields had to be done with horses and in the forest people only had frame saws. It all became easier when tractors and chain saws came, but it was still hard.

Q: When did you retire?

A: I retired when I was 60 years old. I made a transfer of my farm to my oldest child.

Q: How were the children taken care of?

A: They were at home. It was the women's job to take care of the house and children in addition to their other work. Then the children went to school and after that they looked for some work.

Q: How did you use your spare time?

A: I can't really say that I had spare time. All the spare time went doing things that hadn't been done. In the winters things were easier when I didn't have to do any work in the fields.

Q: How did you relax?

A: The most popular way was to go to a smoke or regular sauna. After a hard day it did really good. Sometimes we stayed there even for three hours. And of course spirits were an essential part of relaxing in those days. That habit has preserved down to these days, I suppose."



"My work is based on the interview I made with my grandmother Maija R.

First of all I asked her where she has worked. She told me that she has worked in an post office as a cleaner and helped people in their homes. She has especially been taking care of people's children as a babysitter.

She didn't really get any education for her job. She learned her work basically practising at the workplace but she has taken one course for cleaners. She told me that her working hours were from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the post office and the salary was 3000 marks. The babysitting was more irregular and so was the pay for it.

She got her working outfit from the post but she didn't get any meals or an apartment from there. I guess that's because the work didn't demand living on the workplace. The employer hadn't organised any day-care for the workers' children so they just had to get along with each other and older children were looking after the younger ones. I think that may have gone better than it would these days.

She also told that working with other people was nice and peaceful. When the technique went forward and all kind of new machines were invented, the workplaces cut down the number of their employees because those new machines took their places.

The rest of her was quite regular, making food, looking after children, doing the laundry and so on. I guess it was pretty close to what life is nowadays, although life is easier now.

To conclude this work I would like to say that just because life was different in the old days from what it is now, I don't say that it was easier or harder than now. I just think that the difficulties were different."



"I wanted to find out about the changes of working life. That's why I interviewed my 83-year-old grandmother. It was a really great experience to me. Before that I hadn't really realised how hard life was back then.

My grandmother Rauha has worked at different sorts of jobs, so it was really hard to know where to begin. Her first “job” was in her own home.

She was only eight years old when her mother had to go to hospital and her mother's two-month-old baby was left to my granny to be taken care of. My granny said that it was a teaching experience.

Soon the neighbours noticed that Rauha was able to manage with young children. After that her summers were full of baby-sitting. But back then it was different. Imagine: you are nine years old and you have to go away from your home to baby-sit somebody else's children. And on top of it all, there were all kinds of little children, my granny told me it was “like living in hell”.

Rauha's youth was war time. I presume it was the hardest time for her because she didn't want to tell me about it. When Rauha was fifteen she worked on a log boat. She doesn't remember how she got there or how long she worked there, but as you can guess, it wasn't fun.

After sailing she worked in a plywood factory. “There was lack of employees and that's how I got working there although I was only sixteen”, Rauha said. It was her first shiftwork. Sometimes she had to work over night. Nowadays shiftwork like that is against the law, when you are sixteen.

Rauha said that the most stupid job in her life was being a cleaning lady at the war hospital in Viipuri. “I think it was some kind of adventure trip with my best friend”, she remembers.

After all these jobs, Rauha's career as a waitress begins. First she was a dishwasher and then she got a promotion to a waitress. It was shiftwork, too. The working hours depended on whether you had night or morning shift. They didn't have many holidays, only in summers and sometimes on weekends.

At that time waitresses earned pretty well. She lived in an old hotel with her workmates. Usually she was so tired after a long, exhausting workday that all her spare time went sleeping. Of course, she sometimes went to the movies and met with her friends, just like we do now.

At that time she also met my grandfather. My granny didn't have a proper education for any work where she has been. She said: “Life teaches you the best”.

Life has been changing these past years. Now education and schools are very important. If you don't have education, you won't have a job, either. Now children are allowed to be children and they don't have to go to find themselves a job when they are young. We haven't lived in the wartime and we haven't seen the misery. People's lives have certainly become easier than back in those days. We have all sorts of machines and our society has changed. But it was easier to get a job than it is now.

Like I said earlier, this interview was really an “eye-opening” experience. I think we should learn something about our grandparents and remember that no matter how good education you have “life teaches you the best”."



"We wanted to find out about the changes in working life. That's why we interviewed Antti's grandfather Aatu N.

He was born in 1928. He has been working in Voikkaa paper mill. He grew up in Joensuu and he moved to Voikkaa in 1955. He went to a job interview and he got a job.

First he worked at paper processing. It was three-shift work. He had been working in the paper processing department for only a year when he got his promotion to the foundry. The working hours there the normal from seven to four. Antti's grandfather loved to work in the foundry but they closed it down in 1960. He went to work in the repair shop. He had no education for that job at all. The older workers taught him the main things of that profession. He did all kind of repair work. He, for example, repaired the paper machines whenever they broke down.

The salary was quite good. He got five marks per hour. With that salary he supported a wife and two children. The workers had to buy their own workclothes. The atmosphere in the factory was good and it was a great pleasure to work there. The factory offered good basic service facilities like a laundry and a sauna. Antti's grandmother stayed at home to look after her children, when they were small. She went to work in the post office in 1962 and the children went to Voikkaa kindergarten.

Voikka was a much bigger place then. There were lots of small shops, a bookshop, a chemist's, a cinema a shoe shop and many other shops. Antti's grandfather retired in 1976 because he had a back injury and he couldn't go back to work again.

As a final statement we can say that the workers could manage with their salary back then, but nowadays it seems that workers do a lot better but there is a downside. That's the taxes. Everything costs much more than it used to cost. Inflation was high then and that influenced the wages. For example, Voikkaa paper mill will increase in its value and so will the workers' wages but we strongly believe that the tax rate will rise as well."



"How has working life changed? That's the question of the day. To find some answers I interviewed my father, Pekka H. Now I know.

Name of the interviewee: Pekka H.
Age of the interviewee:58 years

Q: What's your occupation?

A: I'm a socialworker. I work with the elderly in our community.

Q: How long have you been in working life?

A: 37 years.

Q: A lot of things can happen in 37 years. How has working life changed in the past 37 years?

A: It has developed to a better direction in many ways. For example, the workers have much, much greater possibilities to affect their work. The employer very often gets good ideas from the workers and these ideas are for the success of everybody.

Q: How have the working conditions changed?

A: All in all, they have changed for the better. For example, the employer has taken responsibility for the health of the workers. Working places have also become better. We, for example, have finally got enough space and good furniture.

Q: Have the working hours changed?

A: Yes, they have but only very little. The working hours are shorter nowadays than they used to be, but the change is small. Nowadays we work 38 hour fifteen minutes per week. In the seventies it was 40 hours per week. But still, the days can be too long sometimes.

Q: has the salary changed?

A: If we look at the social sector, the development of the salary has been very small. But since this is human work, we cannot always think of the salary. But we hope that the direction would be better in the future.

Q: Did the employer offer any benefits to you, like cars or something?

A: No, in small communities the employer has no possibilities to give the workers any benefits. Perhaps sometimes the community takes the workers to a picnic, concert or theatre. But this is not all free, the workers pay 2/3 of the expenses. Of course, the communities have all kinds of projects to take care of the employees' health, and they offer the workers a possibility to go swimming or playing tennis or football, and that is free.

CONCLUSION

It seems that working life has gone to a better direction in every way, at least in the social sector. But there are still many things which don't satisfy the workers. The salary hasn't developed the way it should have. And working days are still too long. My father didn't mention anything about things like burnout which is quite a common topic when discussing the problems in the working life. It seems to me that burnout is not a problem at his workplace.

Anyway, it is wonderful to hear that working life is going to a better direction. I must remember that I'm going to be there, too, some day."



"Q: have been working when you were young?

A: I worked for Hankkija corporation. I was a mechanic so I fixed and serviced trucks, excavators and all kinds of vehicles. Before I went to Hankkija, I worked for many years in a boat carpentry. There I painted and varnished boats.

Q: Your salary - was it good or bad?

A: The salary in the boat carpentry was not so good. That is why I went to Hankkija. There I got a much better salary.

Q: Did you have any advantages in your work places?

A: I did. Once, I had collided with my car and the rear axle went broken. I managed to tow the car to the Hankkija bay. There I ordered the new parts for the axle. A few weeks later the parts arrived. Then I just fixed the axle and all other parts of the car that had gone broken. I got the spare parts at a much lower price because I had ordered through my employer, who also was the importer of those spare parts.

Q: And how did you live?

A: I lived in a block of flats in Helsinki. I didn't have enough money to buy a house of my own. My employer didn't pay for my apartment. There was a room and a kitchen in my apartment and the rent was quite reasonable, I think. I got along quite well.

Q: What were your working hours and holidays?

A: My typical work day was eight hours but sometimes I worked overtime. They paid quite well for the overtime. I got double the money that I got for the regular hours. I got a two months' holiday in the summer and some weeks in the winter.

Q: What is your work nowadays?

A: I'm a mechanic at Toyota Industrial Equipment. My work is moving around all the time from one place to another fixing and servicing forklifts. I have been working for this company since 1994. I'm satisfied with this work environment and with the work that I have now."



"I was given the task to find out about the changes in working life. That's why I interviewed my father, Tapani L., who has observed the working world relatively closely for about thirty years now.

I started the interview by inquiring him about the work he did as a small child. As he grew up in a farm, there were many chores and real work to be done. The actual work started when he was around twelve, and there was plenty to go around, even though he had three brothers and a sister. He told me that the winter was mostly studying, and there were only small chores to do. Tapani said that the real work started in May, and after the holiday began, they started lumbering, and worked in the forest for the month of June. The hay harvest lasted whole July, because the hay had to be dried on the poles in the middle of the field and this lasted for weeks. This was followed by wheat harvest and that took until late September. He came to that conclusion that country life was focused in the summer, as they then gathered the wood and food for the following winter.

Tapani had the first job he got paid for at the tender age of 24. It was a summer job at a nearby paper mill, sorting out delivery schedules in the delivery room. During that time he had finished his first year in business school. He said that the job was somehow arranged by the school. The pay wasn't good, in fact, his exact words were: ”Nothing, even if compared to my other summer job pays”.

My conclusion of this interview is that nowadays getting a job is much harder, especially for young people, but once you get the job, the work isn't so physical and exhausting. In the days gone by, there was money out there for young man who was willing to work for it."



"We interviewed Rainer K. (Ville's old man … he's real old, he's going to retire next year). The interview was kind of phlegmatic, meaning that we couldn't get much out of him. Anyway, here it goes.

Rainer works in UPM Kymmene Kuusankoski paper mill, which is the largest employer in this area. The company has three factories in south-eastern Finland employing thousands of people, which leads us to the subject. Kuusankoski paper mill used to have approximately 10,000 employees, but nowadays the number of workers has decreased dramatically. There are only 2,000 people working there. When we asked Rainer about the reasons for this phenomenon, he told us that the development of technology has gone so far that there is no need for that many people any more.

Rainer studied at a vocational school, and he graduated from there as a mechanic. His first job was in a hardware store. He mainly drove the van there. After he had had enough of that he walked for unknown reasons to Kuusankoski paper mill and asked for a job there. Surprisingly, he got hired as a truck driver for the paper warehouse and that's the job he's been having ever since. When he started working, he had regular working hours from eight to four. He worked that way for ten years, and then he changed it for a three-shift work.

Other things that have changed in his working life are for example vacations, salary and working environment. When he started working he only had five weeks holidays per year: four weeks in the summer and one week in the winter. Nowadays the situation is much brighter: for example the day we interviewed him he just wandered around endlessly in his underwear. Well, he wasn't working that day because they were on strike that day. To get back to the real vacations: he has much longer vacations and more days-off these days.

Salary is always an interesting subject. Rainer says that his salary has increased pretty decently. Here's an example: when he started working, he had an old, bloody Vauxhall. Nowadays he's cruising with a brand new Volvo. The biggest change in his working environment is that there are more female employees there these days.

At the end of the interview we asked him what he has gained from his work during these years working for Kuusankoski paper mill. The answer was very straight: “Quite frankly, I've gained nothing but a huge pile of money.” We can respect his integrity and his career that has lasted for almost forty years."



"In order to get some information about the changes in working life I decided to interview my grandmother. She has worked as a cleaner at UPM-Kymmene company. She cleaned office rooms, corridors etc.

As a final statement we can say that the cleaner's job is not very beneficial, but someone has to do that job.