Strikes begin in the paper industry

Collective bargaining negotiations in the paper industry had still not advanced by early May 2005. Instead, the bargaining deadlock had resulted in lock-outs, a four-day national work stoppage and numerous selective strikes. A strike warning and a lock-out warning had also been issued by Paperiliitto and Metsäteollisuus respectively. These actions are to take place in the latter half of May. The conflict may even spread abroad as Sweden’s Pappersindustriarbetareförbundet and the EWCs of Stora Enso and UPM have promised their support to Paperiliitto.

The negotiations in the paper industry over a new collective bargaining agreement for blue-collar workers continued to be in deadlock in early May 2005. Talks were formally ended by the Finnish Paper Workers’ Union (Paperiliitto) in March (FI0504202N) but were restarted in April. Paperiliitto continues to maintain that it would be content with an agreement that is in-line with the centralised agreement for 2005-7 (FI0501203F). It has also expressed its readiness to negotiate over the demands of the paper industry employers’ organisation, the Finnish Forest Industries Federation (Metsäteollisuus), of scrapping production stoppages during holidays and using more sub-contracted labour. Nevertheless, Paperiliitto still strongly opposes some of the demands of Metsäteollisuus such as the abolishing of the payment of wages during the first two days of sick leave, the splitting-up of summer holidays and the partial installation of 12-hour shifts. It argues that these would constitute major cuts in workers’ attained benefits. If it gave these up, Paperiliitto fears that employers may try to institute similar measures in other sectors and countries. Metsäteollisuus maintains its position that such measures are needed to counter the falling profitability of the Finnish paper industry. It also insists that Paperiliitto is not in reality even prepared to negotiate over the holiday stoppages and the use of outside labour.

The bargaining deadlock resulted in Paperiliitto setting an overtime-ban for blue-collar paper workers starting on 30 March. Moreover, according to Metsäteollisuus, as many as 45 selective strikes were held by paper workers during April. The stoppages led the management of a couple of factories to require written promises from workers that production would not again be stopped. As these were not issued by the workers, the employers locked them out of factories. Paperiliitto considers these actions illegal, while Metsäteollisuus argues that the stoppages by the workers were unlawful. Neither party accepts the other’s argument that they did not co-ordinate the strikes or lock-outs centrally. The lock-outs resulted in extensive sympathetic strikes that paralysed nearly all paper production in Finland for four days or so starting on 27 April. On the following day, Paperiliitto issued a warning of a two-day national strike, which is to begin on 15 May if no agreement has by then been reached. This measure was, according to Paperiliitto, done in order to receive the help of the national conciliator, Juhani Salonius, in the negotiations. His mediation is conditional on either one of the social partners to have issued a warning of a strike or a lock-out. As desired by Paperiliitto, Salonius started negotiations with the two sides on 2 May. On that day, Metsäteollisuus responded to Paperiliitto’s strike announcement by giving out a warning of a two-week national lockout of blue-collar paper and electrical workers. This is to start on 18 May when the paper workers’ strike would come to an end. Following the announcement of the lock-out, Paperiliitto extended its strike warning to cover various sectors of blue-collar work at paper factories from 18 May onwards.

Paperiliitto has received extensive support for the negotiations from abroad. The Swedish Paper Workers' Union (Pappersindustriarbetareförbundet) already announced in March that it would not allow any production to be moved from Finland to Sweden because of the overtime ban that had been put in place by Paperiliitto or because of possible future strikes. Following Paperiliitto’s strike warning, Pappersindustriarbetareförbundet promised to uphold this decision during the prospective strike in May. It is also contemplating the holding of sympathetic strikes in Sweden. The European Works Councils (EWCs) of two major paper companies, UPM and Stora Enso, also recently announced that they are prepared to put pressure on Metsäteollisuus. They did not announce the adoption of any concrete measures but promised that Paperiliitto would receive their support.

White-collar workers in the paper industry also continue to be without a new agreement and negotiations have advanced little. They have not taken industrial action but the Union of Salaried Employees (Toimihenkilöunioni, TU) is currently considering the issuing of a strike warning.

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