Some freight shipments may be delayed by one day
Updated June 24, 2014, at 4:45 p.m.
Some transport and terminal workers belonging to the Transport Workers' Union AKT did not come to work this morning at 3 a.m. According to information received by Itella, the strike will be over by midnight between Thursday and Friday.
The illegal strike will not cause delays in
- the delivery of letters, magazines or newspapers, direct marketing items or domestic parcels
- deliveries related to health and safety, such as Finnish Red Cross blood deliveries and laboratory samples
-meal deliveries
Based on the current estimate, the strike may cause delays of a maximum of one day in freight shipments this week. If parcels and freight shipments coming from abroad cannot be unloaded at the ports due to action in support of the strike, this may cause delays in the delivery of items and shipments that travel by sea. Itella is making special arrangements to minimize the delays.
Other Itella personnel working in, for example, mail delivery, at the Posti outlets and other Posti service points, customer service, parcel services and warehousing services are at work as normal.
The causes of the protest are changes in operations, job descriptions and therefore terms of employment related to Itella's objective of making line haulage more efficient.
"It is my opinion that this protest is excessive as the changes affect the job descriptions of only about 20 people. Unfortunately, as a result of the co-operation negotiations in Domestic freight, some jobs for line haulage drivers were discontinued. We have done our best to try to find replacement work for these people, but some of the tasks are very different compared to the former tasks. In the new jobs, the terms of employment and pay correspond to the collective agreement," says Vice President in charge of domestic freight operations Timo Kinnunen.
"It is very unfortunate that this illegal strike causes problems for our customers, which is mirrored throughout Finland, especially in the midst of the recession, when everybody should be working together as agreed to boost the economy," says Timo Kinnunen.
The next status update will be published June 25 at about 11 a.m.
Further information for the media:
Itella Logistics, Domestic freight, Vice President Timo Kinnunen
Itella MediaDesk, tel. +358 20 452 3366
