Finnish postal workers strike to protect contract

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Finnish postal workers strike to protect contract with liberalisation

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PAU, the UNI Post & Logistics affiliate in Finland, is taking strike action over the collective contract negotiations with the Finnish postal company, Itella


PAU, the UNI Post & Logistics affiliate in Finland, is taking strike action over the collective contract negotiations with the Finnish postal company, Itella. PAU advises that their collective agreement ended on the 15th of October and they have been negotiating since. On the 20th PAU set an overtime ban and announced (by Finnish law they have to announce two weeks beforehand) that there are going to be spot strikes if we don't manage to get a new agreement. The strikes so far have been spontaneous walkouts because of employers attempts to break the overtime ban.

PAU have announced so far spot strikes on the 3rd and 4th of November in Turku (the main postal centre, then post offices and transportation and then delivery), on 8th of November in Jyväskylä and Seinäjoki (workers in postal centres are on strike), on 9th
Rovaniemi and Tampere (again workers in postal centres are on strike), on 10th workers in postal centres are on strike in Oulu and Kuopio, on 11th workers in delivery in the capital region are on strike.

The union reports that the situation is really interesting because the Finnish parliament just started to handle the postal services bill. In the bill USO product will no longer be first class mail but second class mail (which takes two nights to be delivered). Because of that the bill makes it possible to combine newspapers delivery (which happens at night-time) and postal delivery which would mean that about 7000 workers would transfer to night work against their will. The bill also does not have any solution how the universal postal service is going to be financed in future. In PAU's opinion the bill have many issues that are going to weaken their members working conditions so they have to try get regulations to their collective agreement about night work, subcontracting etc. PAU are still hoping that they will be able to have some influence so that the bill would change during the handling in the parliament.

PAU are also asking that unions can send solidarity messages to them and also if any unions have information on the USO product, particularly they would be interested to know if any other country has done a similar kind of change so that USO product is no longer the first class mail. The union (Katja Heikkilä) can be contacted at; katja.heikkila@pau.fi