Finland

United Paper Mills (UPM) sacked the shop steward at its Kaukas sawmill in April 2021. The company claimed it was a legal dismissal connected with closing one production line at the sawmill and with a “renewal of the management model”.
Jorma Malinen, president of the Pro trade union, saw the move as part of the attempt to undermine the trade unions, coming not long after the announcement that UPM was going to scrap the collective bargaining system.
The shop steward’s job should have been safe, as the Employment Contracts Act guarantees protection against shop steward dismissal, as does the valid collective agreement.
The director of advocacy of the Finnish Confederation of Professionals (STTK), Minna Ahtiainen, commented that the dismissal of the shop steward showed that UPM was removing even the preconditions for company-level agreements and was part of a move towards unilaterally imposing terms by the employer.

The employers’ association, Technology Industries of Finland, announced on 25 March 2021 that it was to pull out of the national collective bargaining system. It had established a new association, which would henceforth handle all matters connected to collective bargaining.
It said this left its 1,600 member companies free to decide whether they wanted to join a national collective agreement or make their own company level agreement.
However, Jarkko Eloranta, president of the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), saw it as a clear attempt to dismantle the system of collective bargaining. Similar views were expressed by Sture Fjäder, president of the Confederation of Unions for Professional and Managerial Staff (Akava), and Antti Palola, president of the Finnish Confederation of Professionals (STTK).
Riku Aalto, president of the Industrial Union, noted that it would weaken the current system whereby a collective agreement is seen as binding on a whole sector when it covers more than half of the employees in that sector. Thanks to this system, the scope of collective agreements in Finland is relatively high. A total of 89 per cent of wage and salary earners in 2018 were covered by collective agreements.
“It is the branch-specific collective agreements that are the basis of labour market agreements. These create stability and predictability for employees and companies,” Jarkko Eloranta noted.
It was very uncertain whether the new association would be able to gather enough of the 1,600 member companies to negotiate generally binding collective agreements. It was more likely that it would negotiate company-level agreements only. Furthermore, the negotiations would be conducted directly by companies that had no experience of collective bargaining.

On 8 February 2021, the Finnish forest industry company United Paper Mills (UPM) suddenly announced it would no longer negotiate terms of employment. Instead, conditions would be determined without any collective agreement, meaning in practice that they would be unilaterally dictated by the employer.
This decision was preceded in October 2020 by an announcement by the forest industry employers’ association, the Finnish Forest Industries Federation, that it would no longer participate in collective bargaining. National-level collective agreements would end, and all collective agreements would be done at company level.
In January 2021, UPM promised to renew negotiations of the terms of employment and, furthermore, underlined how collective labour agreements are beneficial to both the employees and the business. Hence, the 8 February announcement came as a shock. Appeals from the trade unions representing the workers, the Finnish Paper Workers’ Union Paperiliitto, the Finnish Industrial Union Teollisuusliitto, and Trade Union Pro to negotiate a company-level agreement with them were refused.
On 31 August, UPM announced it would define the terms of work on the basis of “labour law, UPM practices and personal employment contracts”, as their press release put it.
According to a calculation UPM presented to their employees, pay would drop by one third from January 2022 onwards, Paperiliitto said. Many benefits agreed in the collective agreement would also disappear.
The union believes it is not only a question of pay, but that it also seems that UPM wants to undermine workers’ rights and the Paper Workers’ Union itself. Without collective agreements, the existing system of shop stewards would be badly broken, and the system of collecting union membership dues from salaries would end.

A new collective agreement for postal workers ended the escalating strike wave in late November 2019.

Posti unilaterally decided to transfer some employees to their subsidiary, Posti Palvelut, and in doing so, to another collective agreement of the Industrial Union. According to PAU, this would have meant a cut, in practice, of up to 30 per cent of their pay.

The situation became deadlocked, as Posti refused to reverse their decision to transfer their parcel sorting staff to its subsidiary. Posti Palvelut is a member of the Finnish Media Federation, which refused to negotiate on a company-level agreement based on the PAU collective agreement for Posti Palvelut, despite the fact that their member company Posti Palvelut was in favour of this.

Solidarity strikes spread and gained momentum until Medialiitto agreed that the 700 workers in Posti parcel sorting offices can return to the PAU and the Palta collective agreement. This broke the deadlock, and the postal workers collective agreement was soon in place.

Riku Aalto, the president of the Industrial Union, is satisfied with the resolution and says that his union was working actively for this agreement.

Several unions announced plans to take industrial action in support of the collective bargaining process in the ongoing postal strike in November 2019. The Finnish Post and Logistics Union PAU strike in the state-owned postal service company Posti began on Monday 11 November.

The Service Union United PAM agreed to stop the handling of parcels and letters between 25 November and 8 December in some 750 Post-in-Shop services.

“PAM does not accept employer attempts to weaken the terms of employment for those working at Posti. We see it as vitally important that terms of employment and business are developed jointly,” said PAM president Annika Rönni-Sällinen.

The Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors, JHL and Railway Union RAU, agreed to suspend freight traffic on 19-20 November.

The Finnish Electrical Workers’ Union also planned solidarity action to support the PAU strike as did the Transport Workers’ Union AKT. The Union Council said that the Posti plan to move some 700 employees to another collective agreement – so-called collective agreement shopping – is connected to a wider attack against the trade union movement.

According to the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), the Confederation of Unions for Professional and Managerial Staff (AKAVA) and the Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees (STTK), workers in the public sector face discrimination because of their union membership. For example, the Federation of Salaried Employees Pardia reported that in 2018 several shop stewards had been discriminated against (exclusion from pay raise or career advancement) after raising work-related issues with their employers.
The three Confederations further report that in the medical care sector, employers have attempted to prevent meetings of nurses at the workplace or to prohibit them from contacting their representatives during working time. They also report employers’ attempts to threaten or manipulate shop stewards.
Finally, SAK, AKAVA and STTK indicate that more and more union members prefer to pay their union membership fee directly to the union instead of applying the check-off agreement because of fear of anti-union discrimination or reprisal from their employers.

On 22-23 October 2018, the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors (JHL), which is active in different sectors like cleaning, property maintenance and catering services, held a two-day strike to protest the government’s planned legislation aimed at easing dismissal of employees. The “lay-off bill” as it has been dubbed, would particularly impact female workers who are already at a disadvantage regarding protection from collective dismissals. Indeed collective agreements applying in male-dominated sectors offer additional protection regarding lay-offs, compared to female-dominated sectors. According to JHL President Päivi Niemi-Laine: “The government is stubbornly pushing forward the bill, which would divide employees into two classes depending on how large their workplace is. The government cannot unilaterally dictate employment terms in Finland. The unions must stand up to the undermining of employment terms.”
The strike gathered more than 10,000 JHL members. However, according to the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), the Confederation of Unions for Professional and Managerial Staff (AKAVA) and the Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees (STTK), employers in the sector resorted to agency workers to replace day-care personnel and disrupt the strike.