French paper workers stage protest against Stora Enso in Paris
Meeting at Finnish Embassy called "constructive"
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Several dozen paper workers and local officials from the north of France gathered together in front of the Finnish Embassy in Paris on Wednesday to demonstrate against the paper manufacturer Stora Enso.
Stora Enso plans to shut down its factory in Corbehem, and the demonstrators were calling on the Finnish Embassy to pressure the company to agree to sell two machines at the factory to the employees themselves, and a company called Green recovery.
An association formed by the employees and Green Recovery want to buy the machines in order to start manufacturing packaging paper and paper shopping bags out of hemp.
The Finnish and Swedish-owned Stora Enso decided about a year ago to shut down two production lines at Corbehem in the north of France. About 400 jobs hang in the balance.
According to the workers, Stora Enso had initially agreed to sell the machines to them and to Green Recovery for about EUR 5 million.
"We had a preliminary agreement on September 8th, and on September 12th it was cancelled", says Dominique Bouvelle, a paper worker and a member of the board of the association during Wednesday's demonstration.
Stora Enso maintains that there was no agreement.
"We have put forward fair conditions on how such an agreement might be reached, and we have stuck to it", says Kari Vainio, head of communications for Stora Enso. He would not discuss details about the contract or the price that came forward in the negotiations.
Vainio added that discussions are still going on with Green Recovery.
The Stora Enso plant is an important provider of jobs in Corbehem, and its fate has attracted widespread attention among politicians in the area.
"The game that the management of Stora Enso seems to have been playing for several weeks is that of a massacre of workers' rights. It does not correspond at all to the image that we have had about Finland and Sweden", said Edmond Gazel, Mayor of the small community of Ecourt-Saint-Quentin, who also took part in the demonstration.
The Corbehem paper workers and politicians in the region arrived in Paris in three buses. According to the workers, there were about 150 demonstrators who visited both the Finnish and Swedish embassies, and met with representatives of the various political groups of the French National Assembly.
After a meeting with representatives of the demonstrators, Juha Virtanen, the second in command at the Embassy, told the crowd that the Embassy would "draw the attention of Finland's Ministry of Trade and Industry" to the dispute at the paper factory.
"We will let them know that a visit like this has occurred", he said. About 12 percent of the shares of Stora Enso are owned by the Finnish state.
The representatives of the workers of the paper mill said that they were pleased with the meeting.
"It was much more constructive than the visit to the Swedish Embassy", said Daniel Morel, deputy chairman of the workers' association. The message at the Swedish Embassy was that the state cannot interfere with matters concerning a private company.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 28.9.2006 - TODAY |
 French paper workers stage protest against Stora Enso in Paris |
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