Protest stoppage silences Finnish shipyards

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The employees at the three Finnish shipyards of Aker Yards walked out of their workplaces at noon on Wednesday. Their protest was made against the company’s dismissals and out-sourcing plans. The shipbuilder intends to reduce the workforce at the three yards by around 700 people in all.
      According to the employees, the company is working out a concept of an assembly yard, which would mean that more and more work would be taken away from Finnish shipyards and subcontractors and transferred over to countries with cheap labour.
     
As a protest against the plans, around 350 people walked out of the Helsinki yard on Wednesday, about 1,500 in Turku, and some 200 in Rauma. They will come back to work on Friday morning, but further walk-outs are possible still in the course of this year.
      The number of the planned dismissals in Helsinki is 350. Currently, the yard has the lowest number of orders compared with Turku and Rauma. Only one ice-breaking service vessel and a container ship for Arctic waters are under construction, while the yard’s product range includes large, over 300-metre vessels, icebreakers, and special technology vessels.
     
Many employees walking out were in surprisingly good spirits. According to chief shop steward Mikko Mielonen, the decision to walk out was unanimous. He said that the employees have just had enough.
      "A total of about 600 people have been dismissed in the Helsinki yard alone in the course of the last 18 months, and there is reason to doubt whether the yard has the capacity left to continue building passenger ships", said Mielonen.
     
A group of men gathered at the gate, many of them veterans of working at the shipyard for several decades. They are afraid that Aker’s plans will endanger Finnish shipbuilding know-how and ruin the shipyards’ good reputation.
      While the employees are well aware of the yard’s poor order-book situation, they do not understand why no other solutions have been sought. Furthermore, they find no sense in the behaviour of the market. On Tuesday, when Aker announced its plans to reduce the workforce at the three yards in Finland, the price of the company’s shares turned upward.
      Moreover, the employees say that they do not understand why the owners of the company are not willing to take their share of the losses.
      The largest owner of Aker Yards is the Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Rökke. The company has 13 shipyards, 14,000 employees, and its target is to save some EUR 20 million by the cutbacks.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Aker Yards warn of dismissals for 700 staff in Finland (10.11.2004)

Helsingin Sanomat