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12 April, 2010
Tonight at 18h00 European time, the Swedish Paperworkers Union (Svenska Pappers) begins job actions at 62 pulp and paper mills over a national collective agreement in Sweden still not in place.
The union needs your support and messages of solidarity and they need it now. Please send, in your own words, a note of encouragement, in your own language, to Mikke Sterbeck at [email protected].
The union has told the ICEM that all messages will get to the local branch unions. Not only that, but Pappers tells the ICEM that such messages already received to date have greatly buoyed the rank-and-file, 18,000 union members at some ten pulp and paper companies.
The industrial actions that begin tonight, 12 April, include a ban on all overtime and a plant blockade on contract and agency workers from coming into any mill to perform work. If no resolution comes by this Friday, 16 April, the union will begin selective strikes at six mills: Billerud Skarblacka (a kraft sulphate pulp mill that makes packaging and kraft papers, including flute papers); Holmen Braviken (a mechanical pulp mill that makes newsprint, and printing and writing papers); the Holmen Iggesund mill in Korsnas (a kraft sulphate pulp mill that produces boxbard/cartonboard); Stora Enso’s Skoghall Mill (a kraft, sulphate pulp mill making containerboard, boxboard, and white-top, mottled paperboard; SCA Packaging in Munksund (a kraft sulphate pulp mill making containerboard and kraft linerboard; and Sodra Cell Varo (a pulp mill).
The bargaining situation is this: the union and Employers’ Industry Association (SFIF) met until 20h on Saturday night, 10 April. A three-panel paper industry mediation board submitted a proposal, but Pappers rejected it, while employers approved it. The proposal fell short of the union’s wage demands. It was for 22 months, with a 0.9% increase proposed for 1 June 2010, and 2.1% effective June 1, 2011. The contract expiration was 31 March 2010, and Pappers is insistent that a wage increase above Swedish cost-of-living take effect on 1 April 2010. The cost-of-living in Sweden for first quarter 2010 exceeds 1%, and Swedish paperworkers should not have to accept anything less. Other issues unresolved are aspects to retiree pension scheme, and the fact that employers are not willing to adjust upward the salaries of the lowest paid workers. Employers are also unwilling to give Pappers the same language regarding use of short-term contract workers and workers coming through labour agencies that other employers in other Swedish work sectors have given unions.
Representatives of the employers’ association were to meet today amongst themselves, with the strategy to impose lockouts on Pappers members at certain mills. That meeting was postponed, perhaps because public opinion in Sweden is clearly on the side of the union. The union will now go ahead with the overtime ban and the blockade on contract and agency workers. They have also written to the employers’ today and requested that bargaining resume on Tuesday, 13 April, in the offices of Pappers, an unprecedented venue.
It is very clear that the momentum in this contract dispute is with the union. But please write a short message to Svenska Pappers c/o [email protected] and express that notion, and that your union is with them in this critical week. Again, these messages will get to local branches and make them even stronger than they are today!