Pipe welders and pipefitters — which agreement, which group

Cooling is what a data centre is built around, so pipework and pipe welding are among the trades that stay on site from first fix to commissioning. The pay question here has one extra step compared with electrical work: which collective agreement applies at all.

The agreement follows the employer and the work

We build our scenarios for pipe welding and pipe installation on building-services systems — heating, cooling, water, drainage — for an employer in the building-services sector. For other welding, such as structural steel, pressure equipment or shipyard work, a different agreement may apply, and the pay table is then a different one. The job title on your CV does not settle this; the employer and the scope of work do.

This is why the calculator asks what kind of welding you do, and sends anything but building-services pipework to a manual check instead of showing you a number that might belong to the wrong agreement.

EN ISO 9606 opens the work; it does not set the group

A valid EN ISO 9606 qualification for the process, material, position and pipe range of the order is what lets you make the first production weld. It is an access requirement, not a pay group, and it does not by itself move you up the table. Pressure equipment adds its own rules about who may qualify the work.

The group still comes from the classification of the work: which piping you install or weld independently, how many areas of competence you cover, and whether you handle complete installations on demanding projects.

Two practical details people ask about. The qualification is bounded: a certificate for one process, material group, position and diameter range does not cover a different combination, so an order can require a new test even from a welder with a thick folder of certificates. And it has to be kept alive — revalidation every two years, with confirmations of continuity every six months, or the three-year non-renewable scheme. A test day at a Finnish provider is published at 650 € plus VAT, with 250 € plus VAT per additional qualification, the test itself taking one to three days and the certificate one to three weeks.

Section 11.8 — a floor for a temporary stay

If you are posted to Finland, or come here temporarily while your permanent home stays abroad, section 11.8 of the building-services agreement sets a floor for the first three months: at least group 2. A higher group can be set from the start if the work calls for it. Lowering it afterwards requires the employer to name what is missing and a period to learn it.

A floor is not a range and not a promise of group 3. If your work already compares with a higher group, the floor changes nothing for you. And whether the section applies is a question about where your permanent home is and how long you are here — never about your nationality, your language or which country issued your passport. Our calculator asks you directly, and when the answer is "not sure" on a low pair it stops and offers a manual check rather than guessing in your favour.

What else this agreement adds to an hour

Evening work adds 1.21 € an hour and night work 2.47 € an hour; in this agreement the evening window runs from 17:00 to 23:00 and the night window from 23:00 to 06:00, and neither supplement is paid on overtime hours. A Finnish further vocational qualification adds 0.60 € an hour and a specialist qualification 1.11 €. An installer acting as foreman on a time-rate site above a hundred standard hours gets at least 0.68 € an hour. Pipe insulation work carries a tool allowance of 2.12 € a day.

Travel and accommodation have their own section: where the work is in another locality from which you cannot return home for the night, the employer pays the journey home–locality and local travel, pays travel time at the entry-group hourly rate, and pays a daily allowance at the Tax Administration maximum — 54 € full and 25 € partial in 2026. As always, two questions: is it due under the agreement, and is it tax-free?