The Finnish Paperworkers' Union Paperiliitto informed UPM today that the strike at UPM's Finnish mills will be extended by three weeks until 12 March 2022 if no agreement has been reached by then.
The Paperworkers’ Union’s strike at UPM Pulp, UPM Biofuels, UPM Communication Papers, UPM Specialty Papers and UPM Raflatac units in Finland started 1 January 2022. Currently, approximately 200 union members are working in tasks critical to society, such as power plants and water treatment facilities, according to UPM.
UPM announced it would service its customers from its mills outside of Finland to the extent possible. At this point, UPM does not disclose estimates of the economic impacts of the strikes.
It is unclear how the situation will pan out and whether an agreement can be reached quickly. At the moment it seems hard for UPM and the union to even launch negotiations: UPM informed that it received an invitation to negotiations concerning UPM Pulp on Monday 7 February. The invitation indicated that the negotiations would be carried out with the CLA advisory board of the union. The board includes members of other forest products companies which means that discussions could be conducted on a very general level. Due to anti-trust compliance, genuine negotiations on UPM’s business-specific issues, however, cannot be conducted.
“It is impossible for us to have representatives of our competitors attend our negotiations. (...) To minimise the significant damage caused by the strike, all five negotiation tables need to be opened,” says Jyrki Hollmén, Vice President, Labour markets, UPM.
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