Helsinki (11.09.2003 - Juhani Artto) About 4,000 people work in Finnish laundries, but many of these jobs are now under threat. The low wages in Estonia, which is just across the Gulf of Finland and only a few hours sailing from Helsinki, pose a difficult challenge to Finnish workers.
Recently one of the biggest users of laundry services, the Silja Line passenger ferry company, relocated its laundry services from Finland to the Estonian capital Tallinn. This followed a successful tender from the Granlund laundry service. Dozens of jobs may be lost in Finland because of this.
In autumn several large hotel chains will negotiate new laundry service contracts. Finnish workers now fear the loss of more work to competitors in Estonia. Some of these competitors are subsidiaries of enterprises based in Finland.
The Finnish Chemical Workers Union, which organises laundry workers, has no precise details of the wages and benefits of Estonian laundry workers. It is assumed that these are little more than one fifth of the wages and benefits of Finnish laundry workers, as this is roughly the average difference between the Finnish and Estonian wage levels.
At the end of 2002 the average worker in Finnish industry earned EUR 11 an hour, while the earnings figure in Estonian industry was only EUR 2. The purchasing power gap, however, is significantly smaller, as both income tax and consumer prices are clearly lower in Estonia than in Finland.
The Estonian challenge to the Finnish workers in the laundry and many other industries is expected to grow stronger in May 2004 when Estonia enters the European Union. The growing pressure is already clear, as the daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat recently reported.
According to this story, Markku Wallin, Permanent Secretary at the Finnish Ministry of Labour, claims to receive new information almost daily concerning enterprise plans to relocate jobs to Estonia or the other new Member States. White-collar jobs are also included, with call-centres and travel agencies among the first to transfer jobs to Estonia.
Interviewed by Helsingin Sanomat, Minister of Labour Tarja Filatov argues that the loss of jobs to Estonia is no cause for alarm.
With respect to cross-border labour movements, the main focus of the Finnish trade union movement - with certain exceptions - has been on the control on immigrant labour from Estonia and other low-pay countries of the region. Efforts to tighten border control are continuing and the union organisations, especially the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions – SAK and the Construction Workers Union, are lobbying the government strongly for increased control.
The Chemical Workers Union activity in the laundry industry is a foretaste of similar action needed in the near future. But how should one argue against job relocation to Estonia, where fellow workers are in a much weaker social and economic situation than in Finland? One argument offered by the Chemical Workers Union has been the Finnish government subsidies received by the Silja Line shipping company. According to the union, these subsidies place a moral obligation on the enterprise to favour Finnish labour.
The Chemical Workers Union also appeals to the "patriotism" of certain hotel chains, as these are part of large Finnish consumer goods enterprises. The union says that these enterprises should protect their image by allowing hotel laundry to continue in Finland.
The union’s long-term vision for Estonian laundry workers, as for employees in other industries, is for them to be organised and able to fight for much better wages and benefits than at present. Hardly any Estonian laundry workers currently belong to a union.
The Finnish Chemical Workers Union has supported the Estonian Light Industry Workers Union for several years. Presently this union has some 8,000 members, most of whom work in the textile and garment industry.
Source: Stories by Tuomo Lilja, published in Reaktio 6/2003, the magazine of the Finnish Chemical Workers Union (in Finnish)