Agreement reached in stevedores' strike

Conciliator Esa Lonka drafted settlement proposal in early hours of Friday morning

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The two-week strike by stevedores that has paralysed Finnish ports and brought much of the forest industry and the country's foreign trade to a standstill is over, and ports will gradually get back to work as quickly as possible, and by Tuesday at the latest, depending on the situation with specific stevedoring firms. Work at some ports will begin immediately.
     
The news service of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) had earlier quoted the Transport Workers' Union AKT as saying it would approve the settlement proposal drafted by National Conciliator Esa Lonka in the early hours of Friday morning after protracted discussions between AKT, representing the 3,000 stevedores in the dispute, and the Port Operators' Association.
      Lonka set a deadline of 13:00 for a reply from the two parties. The conciliator did not make the contents of his proposal public.
     
The intensive negotiations of the past few days, stepped up still further with the arrival on Wednesday of reinforcements in the shape of Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK) director Eeva-Liisa Inkeroinen and Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK) President Lauri Lyly, started to break down the standoff between the two sides that had existed since the industrial action began on March 4th.
      Thursday's session lasted a full seventeen hours.
      The major stumbling-block in the talks between the two sides concerned severance pay agreements, working-hours, and subcontracting of labour.
     
The settlement reached is a two-year one, and offers the same relatively modest wage increases as were set out in the road transport workers' deal cut a few weeks ago. There will be an increase of 0.6% in April, a further 0.7% increase in October, and 0.6% in April 2011
      The new contract addresses the stevedores' grievances over severance pay and security by improving local agreements or alternatively extending the period of notice in the case of dismissals.
      The employers' side nevertheless rejected the idea of a categorical and automatic severance package for those made redundant.
     
National Conciliator Esa Lonka thanked the leaders of EK and SAK for their contribution to breaking the deadlock between the two sides in the final stretch and bringing to an end the two-week dispute.
      The stoppage at ports had already hurt the domestic forest industry, causing widespread mill shutdowns as finished goods could not be shipped out, and it was threatening to spread its negative influence into other sectors of the economy, which is heavily export-dependent.
     
The strike posed a serious obstacle to Finland's recovery from what is seen as the biggest economic downturn since independence and the Civil War of 1918, and according to the Confederation of Finnish Industries it was costing the country an estimated EUR 110 million each day in lost foreign sales.
     

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