Employees of Estonian Air have threatened to hold a short warning strike on Jan. 28 between 5:30-6:30 a.m. if their demands for higher pay are not met. The strike will affect ground service personnel, including check-in, ramp service and cargo planning. Management has offered to raise basic wages by 12.1 percent on average with additional bonuses for productive workers. Staff is demanding a 15 - 16 percent increase. Estonian Air flies six aircraft and transported 689,747 passengers in 2006.
Prime Minister Andrus Ansip is planning to hit the slopes in a ski marathon which will take place in Turkey in mid March. The race is the first of its kind in Turkey and will be organized by the Estonian ski coach Jaanus Teppan in classical style over 40 kilometers. Ansip will also make time to meet with Turkish leaders the following week. Last year Ansip participated in the 90-kilometer Vasaloppet race in Sweden, finishing 3,634th out of 20,000.
An elderly woman was accidentally imprisoned in the toilet of the Estonia Opera House for nearly a full day after a worker locked the doors, turned off the lights and exited the building. The 84 year-old attendee of Rossini's opera "Cinderella" went to the WC following a Sunday matinee and was not discovered until close to 20 hours later. She was led out of her confinement and taken to an emergency medical station as she had hurt her face groping through the darkness. An in-house inquiry has been launched to avoid future unwitting internment.
The Parliamentary Culture Committee scrapped a proposal to fly the Estonian tricolor from Pikk Hermann Tower around the clock. The Reform Party had backed amendments to the State Flag Act, which currently stipulates that the flag be lowered at sunset to the tune of "My Fatherland you are my Love." "Many foreign visitors have asked… whether anything had happened in the country that there was no flag flying from it," said Helmer Jogi of the Culture Committee.
