Stevedoring strike’s ripple effects already seen in pay-packets of paper industry workers

Mediation efforts in the harbour strike continued on Wednesday, but were called off already in the early evening as fruitless.

The National Conciliator's Office saw no grounds for putting forward a proposal for a settlement at this stage.

The strike involving around 3,000 permanent stevedores at Finnish harbours has now lasted for a week.

Discussions between the two sides are set to continue on Thursday afternoon.

The payment of salaries will be suspended today, Thursday, for those 450 employees at paper manufacturer UPM’s Rauma mill, whose work has been discontinued because of the industrial action by the stevedores.

They are the first ones to suffer as the employer’s obligation to pay wages ends.

According to the law on labour agreement, wages have to be paid only for the first seven days after work has been discontinued.

The Technical Employees in Stevedoring and Forwarding Branch (AHT), which represents the foremen working in Finland’s harbours, announced that it has embarked on legal action against harbour operators in the ports of Hanko, Kotka, and Loviisa, because the operators have ceased to pay wages to the foremen.

The advice not to pay the wages was issued by the Finnish Port Operators’ Association, which represents the stevedoring field employers in the collective bargaining talks with the Finnish Transport Workers' Union (AKT).

According to the port operators, AHT has tied its collective bargaining agreement objectives to the objectives of the stevedoring field, which means there is a link of interdependence between the organisations.

According to the law on labour agreement, wages have to be paid for seven days only in the case that no such interdependence exists.

AHT chairman Seppo Heiskanen denies the existence of such interdependence. “We are in a different union; our collective bargaining contract is in force, theirs is not. The only correlation is that we have the same payer of salaries.”

In Hanko and Loviisa the paying of salaries to the foremen was suspended last Thursday, in Kotka on Saturday.

The issue concerns around a hundred foremen working for Steveco and Stevedoring harbour operators.

From the forestry industry’s point of view, the loss of reputation is the most severe of the strike’s consequences.

The industry fears that customers may be lost permanently if the Finnish producers cannot be trusted.

If companies that have operations abroad move there permanently, some jobs will be permanently lost also in the stevedoring field in Finland.

The strike that threatened the forwarding branch's warehouse terminals and the terminals’ harbour workers has been called off.

A collective bargaining agreement was reached on Wednesday.

So far the strike has led to numerous shutdowns in the pulp & paper industry.

On Wednesday Stora Enso shut down a paper machine at Anjalankoski and UPM a fine paper machine at its Kymi plant.

The PM at the UPM Tervasaari mill was stopped at 7 a.m. on Thursday morning.

There are also concerns that production will have to be halted at the Tornio Works stainless steel mill of Outokumpu. In this case it is not a shortage of storage space for finished products, but the lack of a steady supply of raw materials for the process industry.