Working Life Barometer in the Baltic Countries 2002 (pdf) - mol.fi

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Entrepreneurs in the Baltic countries have not, generally speaking, been overly
eager to invest in developing the know-how of their personnel. On the whole,
in all the Baltic nations, work-related training concerns quite a small proportion
of the wage earners. In Latvia during the past year, one-quarter of all
working women and one-fifth of the men had attended training or courses either
partly or completely paid for by the employer. Of the private-sector wage
earners, only 15 % had attended training. The average duration of such training
is typically 6-7 days.
In general, Latvian workers see their possibilities for influencing their work
tasks as rather good. Half of all the working people felt that such possibilities
for them were either extremely good or rather good. Furthermore, in this aspect,
working life is quite democratic, as no differences of any kind were noticeable
between public- and private-sector wage earners, or men and women,
or workers of different ages. As regards possibilities of influencing one's job
tasks, therefore, Latvian working life is in good shape and the situation has
developed in a positive direction.
Job satisfaction has dropped a little since the last study. A majority still consider
the workplace atmosphere and solidarity between colleagues to be good,
but the percentages are no longer as favourable as before. This is linked to the
fact that all types of disagreements and conflicts at the workplaces have become
more widespread and their frequency has increased in the last few years.
One-quarter of the working people said that there were either a lot or quite a
lot of conflicts at their workplace between superiors and those under them.
Competition between employees has also intensified, and this has led to a
definite increase in disagreements between them. The more frequent disagreements
and somewhat diminished job satisfaction have not, however,
meant that going to work has lost any of its meaningfulness. Over half of the
working people feel that having a job is becoming more meaningful than before.
The Latvian nationals are clearly more positive in their evaluations than
are the Russians.
LITHUANIA
Working life in Lithuania is problematic in many respects. In the previous
Working Life Barometer for the Baltic countries, we predicted that there were