Estonian Railway searches for strike-busters

  • 2004-09-29
  • From wire reports
TALLINN - Eesti Raudtee (Estonian Railway) announced that it had struck a deal with train drivers on Sept. 28, thereby avoiding a continuation of the strike that began on Sept. 23.

Company officials said they agreed to give transit train drivers a 10 percent raise to 42.75 kroons per hour (2.73 euros) and other train drivers a raise to 38.5 kroons.

Details of the bargain were to be announced on Sept. 29, when The Baltic Times went to press.

The deal came after Estonian Railway had said on Sept. 27 that it was taking steps to replace strikers with foreign engineers. Union leader Heino Ruutel said he had received information from the border guard that the company wanted to bring in three engine crews from Russia.

Estonian Railway Board Chairman Juri Kao had said earlier that he was waiting for Oct. 6, when the EU's transport committee would discuss whether to introduce common engineer permits.

"In that case we could hire engineers from Latvia or Poland as well," he had said.

Kao also said that no one should give into "blackmailers" easily, since this would create a bad precedent for the Estonian economy. "There would certainly be followers," he said.

Previously the engineers had agreed to an 11 percent pay raise instead of their earlier demand of 15 percent and to making the pay raise retroactive as of April 1. Eesti Raudtee, however, was only prepared to raise wages by 9 percent.

Koff said the Railway Engineers Trade Union at the beginning of the year demanded raises for engineers of up to 97.5 percent. So far, however, Eesti Raudtee has raised engineers' wages by 15 percent since the start of the year.

Over the past three years Eesti Raudtee engineers' salary have increased by an average of 14.1 percent per year. In the second quarter of this year the average pay of an engineer was 13,631 kroons (871 euros), nearly double the average wage in Estonia.

The strikers' threat to disrupt traffic turned out to be hollow.

Koff said on Sept. 27 that rail traffic was proceeding without disturbances, and the company had condensed its train schedule for the day.

"Train traffic is operating, with 29 trains received and 25 trains handed over [Sept. 26]," Koff told the Baltic News Service.

It was unclear, however, whether Estonian Railway's possible poaching tactic would work.

Latvia's Railway Trade Union Chairman Savelijs Semjonovs said that local engineers would not replace striking Estonian engineers. Stressing that a solution would be found within Estonia, he added that the trade union would ensure that Latvian engineers did not replace those of Eesti Raudtee.

Latvia's state-owned railway company Latvijas Dzelzcels spokeswoman Biruta Sakse said she doubted if Latvia's railway engineers would want to change their place of residence and work for an unspecified term. She said Latvian engineers are busy and that there are no "spare engineers" due to constantly growing cargo volumes.