Finnish Paperworkers’ Unions Critical of UPM’s European Mill Closures

On 31 August, Finnish paper company UPM announced closure of two mills, the shutdown of a paper machine at another mill, the intended sale of a French mill, and the sacking of nearly 1,300 workers in total. The announcement came within months of the world’s third largest integrated pulp and paper company buying Myllykoski, another major European paper producer based in Finland.

The decision does not sit well with the blue-collar and white-collar trade unions representing workers in Finland’s paper sector, Paperiliitto and Ammattiliitto Pro. Specifically, did UPM engage in the proper and correct dialogue with European Works Council (EWC) members in accord with an EWC directive on social dialogue?

UPM said the plant closures, machine shutdown, and job losses would occur by the end of the year, leaving little time for workers and their union representatives to obtain re-training funds, seek other job opportunities, and negotiate adequate redundancy packages for the soon-to-be displaced workers.

Strike action is also a possibility. But at a Paperiliitto executive board meeting on 6 September, union leaders put that option on the back burner in order to engage the company – and Finland’s government – in obtaining the very highest re-training and redundancy packages. The union began that process on the local level at one mill – the Myllykoski mill in Kouvala County in eastern Finland – late last week.

Ammattiliitto Pro has begun connecting with victimized workers and their unions and EWC representatives on the European level to apply pressure on UPM.

Myllykoski mill

At the Myllykoski mill, an operation with three paper machines producing magazine or lightweight coated papers, the planned redundancies amount to 371 full-time blue-collar jobs, 71 fixed-term jobs, and 101 full-time white-collar jobs. In addition, maintenance contractor ABB will see 106 permanent workers leave the rural mill. Also, other Finnish jobs staffed mainly by Ammattiliitto Pro members will be eliminated at UPM workplaces in Lahti and Pietarsarri, bringing the total job loss in Finland to 650.

UPM will also shutter the Albbruck mill in Germany that produces uncoated magazine papers, costing 557 jobs. It will shut one of three paper machines that make uncoated paper and newsprint at Germany’s Ettringen mill, as well as temporarily shutting one paper machine producing uncoated fine papers at the Nordland mill.

In France, the company will seek a buyer for its Stracel mill that makes coated magazine papers and specialty newsprint. In total, UPM intends to take 1.3 million tonnes annually of paper out of the marketplace and it is now clear that the company’s spring 2011 purchase of the Myllykoski company was all about capacity reductions and job curtailments.

The ICEM will assist the two Finnish unions, as well as German and French unions representing workers at UPM, in all ways possible. A major tenet to ICEM’s Pulp and Paper Sector work plan, adopted at the Uruguay conference in 2008, is to extend full practical support to paperworkers of the global North who are victimized by the rampant shutdowns or paper operations in developed nations. The priority will now be to exert as much pressure as possible on UPM in order that job losses the company has created through consolidation do not escape correct and ethical social treatment.