Seafarers' Union disagrees with report on future of merchant shipping
Published: 16 January 2003
December 2002 saw the publication of a report on Finland's merchant shipping strategy, commissioned by the Ministry of Communications and Transport. One of the conclusions is that Finland should adopt policies used elsewhere in the EU, which would mean the use of foreign labour on Finnish vessels. The Seafarers' Union disagreed with this and other conclusions of the report, not least because it was not permitted to participate in the preparatory work. Employers took a somewhat more positive view of the report.
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December 2002 saw the publication of a report on Finland's merchant shipping strategy, commissioned by the Ministry of Communications and Transport. One of the conclusions is that Finland should adopt policies used elsewhere in the EU, which would mean the use of foreign labour on Finnish vessels. The Seafarers' Union disagreed with this and other conclusions of the report, not least because it was not permitted to participate in the preparatory work. Employers took a somewhat more positive view of the report.
In December 2002, the centre for education and research on Finnish merchant shipping submitted a report on the sector's strategy, commissioned by the Ministry of Communications and Transport. The purpose of the report is to define the central goals to be set for Finnish merchant shipping policy and to outline the sector's future.
The Seafarers' Union (Suomen Merimies-Unioni, SM-U) states that it was among those organisations that had originally presented the initiative for carrying out this project. The union believes that measures of this kind should be realised on a tripartite basis, but claims that the Ministry of Communications and Transport decided to start the project in such a way that the unions were not able to participate in the discussions and in the working groups involved in the strategy work. For this reason, the SM-U has dissociated itself from the contents and conclusions of the report.
The key point of the report is arguably the recommendation that Finland should take the same subsidy measures that its nearest competitors have taken within the framework of EU regulations. This would include approving the use of foreign labour on Finnish vessels, which has so far been prevented by SM-U (FI0209106N).
According to the Confederation of Finnish Industry and Employers (Teollisuuden ja Työnantajain Keskusliitto, TT), the report sets out a survival strategy for the merchant shipping sector. In its view, the government's current subsidy policy is important, but TT had expected that the whole logistics chain and its development would be taken into consideration in the report. The Finnish Shipowners' Association (Suomen Varustamoyhdistys, SVY), a TT affiliate, has strongly advocated that foreign labour should be allowed on Finnish vessels.
Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (2003), Seafarers' Union disagrees with report on future of merchant shipping, article.
