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25 April, 2011
Pressure on the Finland Forest Industries Federation (FFIF) ratcheted upward last week, even as a two-week strike by Ammattiliitto Pro – representing 1,000 white-collar, technical, and clerical workers – ended at 20 workplaces of leading Finnish paper producer, UPM.
That pressure was mainly caused by Stora Enso, which has tried to bully shift managers and others in breaking an overtime ban by the ICEM affiliated salaried workers’ union, Ammattiliitto Pro. If there is no result from national conciliation talks set for tomorrow, a second two-week strike will start on Tuesday, 26 April, a day earlier than originally planned because of employers abusiveness, and will target Stora Enso and Metsäliitto, which include the latter’s partly-owned paper companies – Metsä-Botnia, M-real, and Metsä Tissue.
Some 1,500 Ammattiliitto Pro are prepared to take legal stop-work actions this week in this second full strike.
Top-level supervisors at Stora Enso have proven to be the serious offenders in this month-long dispute. After attempting to force overtime on salaried personnel at the Imatra mill ten days into the lawful overtime ban of 1 April, 350 white-collar employees of Stora Enso and maintenance contractor Efora walked off jobs for two days on 14 April. That was repeated by 100 Pro members of Stora and Efora at the Oulu mill on 21 April when supervisors threatened and coerced workers to break the overtime ban.
Stora Enso Imatra
The problem started when management verbally attacked and then threatened Pro shop stewards who were trying to enforce the overtime ban. In Finland, it is illegal to apply pressure or sanctions on workers over lawful industrial actions. Pro’s job actions were legally certified by the Finnish government in March.
“We have zero tolerance when a company attacks our shop stewards over actions that are legal,” said Ammattiliitto Pro's chief negotiator for Pulp and Paper, Jukka Hämäläinen. “These actions have only hardened our members’ desire to get what they justly deserve.”
The dispute, with Stora Enso now the antagonist, was compounded last week when Stora management at its global financial service centre in Kotka ordered 35 clerical workers to train replacement workers brought in from Tallinn, Estonia, in preparation for the two-week strike starting now on 26 April. Workers refused and on Wednesday morning, 20 April, the Pro members began their Easter weekend early.
Although FFIF did offer a token national pay increase in government talks on 19 April, that offer still falls short of what Pro and 4,000 of its members employed in pulp and paper demand. That is a pay package structured on current work skills and work requirements in a sector that has seen rampant job losses in Finland.
Considering the egregious actions by one employer, the labour relations climate in this sector is pitched, traditionally an aberration in Finnish labour relations but something occurring more and more frequently. The growing discontent of Pro members caused by the heavy-handedness of one company, in turn, has put pressure on FFIF to reach satisfactory terms to end the dispute.