TALLINN - Finnish ship workers held a two-day boycott against the Tallink passenger ferry company for alleged violations of labor rules and pay disputes. However, the Finnish Sailors' Union, which organized the boycott, was forced to end the action after a Finnish court threatened it with a hefty fine.
The union launched the boycott at the Port of Hanko on May 31, and later extended it to cover Tallink's freight ship, the Regal Star, which sails between Tallinn and Helsinki. The union demanded that Tallink raise sailors' wages.
During the boycott, harbor workers in Hanko refused to unload 35 trailers from the Superfast VIII fast ferry, Tallink officials said. There were no hindrances to trucks or cars, nor passengers.
Later members of the AKT transport union supported the sailors, and refused to service Tallink's Superfast ferries, which sail to Germany.
The Tallink Group said the boycott was illegal as it restricted competition. "The boycott doesn't hinder the movement of passengers and cars, buses and trucks, but is partially paralyzing the transportation of trailers, an operation in which Tallink is in very tight competition with the Finnish carriers Finnlines and Transfennica," the company said on May 31.
The group immediately turned to a Helsinki court to have the action declared illegal. On the evening of that same day, the Finnish court ruled the boycott illegal and slapped the union with a fine of 300,000 euros unless it was immediately called off.
Prior to the ruling, Keijo Mehtonen, Tallink's operations manager in Finland, told the STT news agency that Tallink had nothing to discuss with the Finnish Sailors Union since it had a valid collective agreement with the Estonian union signed in accordance with international rules.
Previously Tallink had turned to Finland's Raasepori court for protection against union action, but the court didn't accept the application on the grounds that the trade union was registered in Helsinki. "In matters related to trade unions, the Finnish court is acting not on the basis of law, but of political preference," Mehtonen said.
Overall, Tallink has refused to negotiate with Finnish, Swedish and German trade unions, all of which have demanded that the company discuss employee contracts of the three Superfast class ferries that it recently bought from a Greek shipping group, as well as of the Fantaasia ferry shifted to the Riga-Stockholm route.
The three Superfast ferries currently sail between the Baltic ports of Hanko, Paldiski and Rostock.
The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), of which the countries' sailors unions are members, has demanded that labor regulations on ships plying between the ports of different countries must apply. The leader of the Finnish Sailors Union, Simo Zitting, has described the conduct of Tallink with the Superfast ships as "shameful." The crews, made up of Finnish and German workers, were dismissed and lower-paid Estonian crews hired instead.
The Estonian Independent Seafarers' Trade Union signed an agreement on basic wages with Tallink that is valid until September 2008. The union is a full member of ITF.
The Estonian Employers Confederation has said it views the boycott of Tallink ships as an unreasoned measure of force and argues that the action constitutes a violation of the principles of free competition.
Finnish trade unions said they hoped to contest the court's decision, the Postimees daily reported. The unions say no one had asked them about why the boycott was organized.
Zitting told the paper that he had heard about the court's decision only from television.
The trade union expects the decision to be temporary, in the making of which the other side was not heard. "It can only be a temporary decision," Zitting said. "A final decision can be made only after the trade union has laid out its case, too."
The chief of investor relations at Tallink, Peeter Roose, said the court's decision was in line with expectations as the unions had no grounds to resort to action.
In the midst of the crisis, Tallink CEO Enn Pant appealed to Prime Minister Andrus Ansip for help in ending the boycott. "We request that you submit a protest to the Republic of Finland with regard to the actions and ask Finland to do everything within its powers to end the actions," Pant said in a written statement.
He dismissed the Finnish unions' demand as blackmail that would send Superfast crew wages skyrocketing. Under such a scheme, the monthly wage of a cabin cleaning personnel member would be 25,370 kroons (1,621 euros), according to one report.
Pant said the Finnish trade unions' actions were motivated by three goals: First, that Tallink would stop operating on the Rostock-Paldiski and Paldiski-Hanko lines. Second, that it would operate on the route unprofitably, which would give an advantage to its Finnish competitors for whom it is easier to pay higher wages to ship crews. And the third: that Tallink would adopt the Finnish flag.
"Tallink does not consider changing flag as a right thing to do, as it would result in Estonian sailors losing their jobs," Pant said.
Two years ago Finnish and German seamen's unions threatened the Estonian Shipping Company with a boycott, demanding that wages for its Lembitu and Lehola sailors working on the Helsinki-Tallinn-Rostock route be raised. The company met the unions' demand, as a similar action by Danish and Finnish unions in 1998 had forced it to abandon the Arhus-Copenhagen-Helsinki-Muuga route.