Finland - Mail Delivery Problems Foreseen in Capital Region

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Major problems are expected with postal deliveries in the Helsinki and Kuopio areas on Thursday. Nearly all night-shift workers at a large sorting centre in Pasila walked off the job around 11 p.m. Wednesday. Meanwhile talks in a paper industry dispute resume on Thursday.

The morning shift arrived for work at 7 a.m., but most of them immediately joined the walkout.

The centre's shop steward says that employees were reacting to management's attempts to get non-union fixed-term employees to do extra shifts. That in turn is the result of understaffing due to a ban on overtime and extra work imposed last week by the postal workers' union PAU. The ban is aimed at speeding up contract negotiations.

Jarmo Välimaa, a representative of the postal company Itella, says the walkout is an illegal wildcat strike as it was not discussed with management in advance. He also firmly denies the use of non-union scab workers.

Altogether about 1150 people work at the Pasila postal centre. Some 250-300 of them took part in the walkout, about 95 percent of the night shift workers.

Although management is trying to take up the slack themselves, a large amount of mail from elsewhere in Finland intended for delivery in the south has been left unsorted. Välimaa said it is impossible to say how big a backlog there is or how long it will take to resolve it.

Contract negotiations are scheduled to resume by the end of the week. PAU has threatened local walkouts next week if there is no progress in the talks.

Meanwhile the union says some 15,000 households in Kuopio, eastern Finland, will also be without mail delivery on Thursday. Some 400 members of the city distribution staff walked off the job on Thursday morning -- also to protest employers' efforts to break the overtime ban. The union says they will return to work on Friday.

On Wednesday, staff at a postal terminal in Rovaniemi, Lapland, downed tools because of perceived efforts by management to break the overtime ban.

Paper Sector Talks Re-Start

Meanwhile negotiations aimed at fending off a strike in the paper industry are to resume at midday on Thursday. State labour mediator Esa Lonka is leading the talks between the white-collar union Federation of Professional and Managerial Staff (YTN) and the Forest Industry Association.

On Friday the YTN staged a half-day walkout. It threatens to begin a four-day strike by some 3,000 mid-level employees on Friday if no agreement is reached by then. The biggest dispute in the contract talks involves compensation for overtime work and travel time.