Posti workers begin 4-week strike across country

The Finnish Postal and Logistics Union PAU has begun strike across the country from Monday morning and will continue till December 8.

Although the union earlier announced to go for strike from November 11 to November 24, on Sunday it extended the tenure of the strike till December 8.

PAU said that it announced the additional two-week work stoppage in a bid to speed up negotiations with the employer, reported national broadcaster Yle.

The strike will hamper mail carriers as well as employees working in mail sorting, deliveries and others works. It however, will not affect deliveries of newspapers.

Service Sector Employers Palta and Posti earlier announced during the negotiations on the collective labor agreement on the Communications and logistics sector that they want to replace the provisions of the current collective labor agreement with the provisions of the collective labor agreement regarding delivery negotiated by Finnmedia and Industrial union.

“In practice, this means wrecking the salaries and other working conditions of low-paid workers,” said PAU Chairperson Heidi Nieminen.

Posti claims that almost every page of the current collective labor agreement should be torn and replaced by the provisions of the cheaper collective labor agreement.

Accepting the employer’s demands would mean that the already low-paid, physically demanding work would be done with even lower wages, longer working hours and working patterns that make it hard to balance work and personal life. The employer's demands are unacceptable and lead to widespread industrial actions in the sector.

At the end of August, Posti announced that it would transfer its parcel sorters to Posti's 100 % owned subsidiary, Posti Palvelut Oy, which is organized in a different employer association (Finnmedia) than the parent company. Based on the organization of the employer, the aim is to obtain wages and working conditions that are clearly cheaper than in the general collective labor agreement in the sector. The employment terms and conditions of office employees will also deteriorate if the collective labor agreement changes.

Thus, Posti wants cheaper working conditions for the parcel sorters and for the office employees of the parcel business unit through a business transfer, and now Posti is trying to also cheapen the working conditions of other postal workers too through collective labor agreement negotiations.

In September, PAU announced that there would be no work peace in the postal sector after the end of the collective labor agreement term until the parcel sorters will be transferred back to the collective labor agreement for the Communications and logistics sector.

After the business transfer, the board of Posti promised a transition period of about two years to parcel sorters during which the salaries would remain unchanged, at least in part.

Other postal workers have also been promised a pay guarantee of the duration of the collective labor agreement term, that is about 1 to 2 years in terms of personal wages and evening and night supplements. However, postal workers should be able to live on their salaries also after two years, so the proposed transition period cannot be accepted.

PAU doesn’t demand anything extra in the collective labor agreement negotiations, only to maintain the current terms of employment and the level of salary according to the general salary increases.

PAU has requested support from other SAK unions in its fight against the deterioration of working conditions. The transport unions have long had a mutual cooperation agreement on mutual support between the unions and most previously in 2015 the support actions of other transport unions forced Posti to abandon drastic cuts in the working conditions.