Government rejects calls for action against wildcat strikes

Minister Filatov says "positive interaction in working community" best way to prevent illegal industrial action

Tarja Filatov

Seppo Riski

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The government does not plan to take issue with illegal strikes, or take action to prevent them.
      "The government has not had any kind of discussion over the situation", said Minister of Labour Tarja Filatov (SDP).
     
The most stringent demands for restricting the right to strike have come from the Confederation of Finnish Industry (EK), most recently after local stoppages by stevedores stopped work at Finland’s largest export harbours.
      Seppo Riski, head of labour market affairs at EK, emphasises that he specifically wants to stop illegal striking.
      "The fines paid to compensate for illegal strikes are not in any way commensurate with the consequences of violations by business. They have become museum pieces from the point of view of prevention of illegal strikes", Riski says.
      Fines levied against trade unions or local trade union organisations for calling an unauthorised strike have an upper limit of EUR 25,300.
      Riski feels that the upper limit should be raised, and that unions should be required to pay damages for harm caused by such a strike to outsiders as well.
     
Tarja Filatov counters by saying that money cannot prevent strikes.
      "If we think about the recent situations, in which administrators are given stock options, and employees are offered layoffs, there is no point in imagining that any fines would have prevented people from expressing their feelings", she says.
      Filatov says that illegal strikes take place when employees feel that they have no other way to influence events.
      "The best way to prevent strikes is through good interaction in the working community."
     
Riski warned that illegal strikes erode the collective bargaining system.
      He also asked if other wage-earners can accept a situation in which "a group that has opted out of the broad-based incomes agreement is able to take advantage of its strong position and blackmail wage increases that are two to three times higher than those in the broad-based agreement".
      Ben Zyskowicz, chairman of the Parliamentary group of the opposition National Coalition Party, introduced a proposal on Wednesday that would make strike compensation paid to workers by their unions subject to income tax if the Labour Court declares the strike illegal. Now strike pay of up to EUR 16 a day is tax-free.
      Zyskowicz and Riski feel that it is ridiculous for the state to give financial support to illegal action.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Transport workers to vote on possible harbour strike (20.4.2005)

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