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10 March, 2008
ICEM affiliate Toimihenkilöunioni TU has taken the global forestry company Stora Enso to a Court of Law in Finland over a breach of the country’s statutes. The salaried workers’ union of Finland is holding the Nordic-based company responsible for violating the Act of Cooperation Within Untertakings, a 1978 statute and part of the country’s labour code.
That is according to TU News, the union’s newsletter. The suit alleges that Stora Enso began unilaterally cutting back operations at its Summa paper mill in southeast Finland before statutory consultations with stakeholders had begun. This related to Stora’s harsh restructuring announcement in October 2007, in which the company said it would close mills in Finland and Sweden, and cut jobs elsewhere in Europe as well.
Toimihenkilöunioni notes that the mandatory consultation process began in early November 2007, and ran until January 2008. Yet, Stora’s marketing team was told in October not to book any further orders from the newsprint and book papers mill, and the company cancelled all raw material orders then as well. The newsletter states that no 2008 budget for the mill was ever in planning.
Union President Antti Rinne was astonished that the Finnish government, a sizeable stockholder of Stora Enso, was not informed of the company’s abrupt curtailments. The alleged illegal actions by Stora surfaced when Finnish Defense Minister Jyri Häkämies, the statutory head of all enterprise ownership, admitted at a union forum in Helsinki on 29 January that the government had not been given advance notice.
A day later, Stora shut one paper machine at the 450-worker Summa mill, and then the next day – 31 January – the company switched off the mill’s other paper machine, effectively closing the operation.
“During negotiations, it was no longer a question of a plan to close the mill,” said the newsletter, but it became evident in talks that “the decision itself” had been “implemented simultaneously with the negotiations.” Finland’s Act on Cooperation Within Undertakings is intended to improve work conditions and to further cooperation between employers and staff.
Under Finnish law, the suit brought by Toimihenkilöunioni on behalf of its members, if successful, could mean pay-outs of up to €30,000 for each worker who was sacked.