Roughly 200 postal workers abandoned their posts and left work at Posti’s main Helsinki location Friday. The employees were protesting the company’s plans to use voluntary labour provided by sports clubs to help dislodge mail sorting backlogs caused by a postal workers’ strike.
Jani Häsä, who is head of Posti’s sorting operations, estimated that about two-thirds of workers left their positions from about 5.00 pm.
Häsä said that the fresh display of worker dissatisfaction would further complicate efforts to do away with a mail backlog and restore mail deliveries.
"It will take a little longer to address the situation," he added.
Posti said that sports and hobby clubs had approached the company with offers of assistance. Häsä told Yle that the next phase of the experiment would involve using groups of 10 – 20 persons from winter sports clubs. The volunteers would be adults who would assist in sorting mail.
First group of volunteers to start work on weekend
The first group was intended to begin working next weekend in Helsinki, where the strike by postal workers has caused the worst log jams in deliveries bound for different parts of the country. Häsä said he couldn’t yet say how to expand the volunteer trial nationwide.
"This could be useful to help deal with the strike, and since this is an exceptional situation given the strike – we need to get passengers’ deliveries on their way quickly, but we’re still facing a ban on additional and overtime work," Häsä noted.
Strike action ended in Helsinki, Uusimaa and southwest Finland on Thursday, but spread to many other parts of the country.
Postal workers’ representative union, the Post and Logistics Union described the plans to use volunteers as “gathering strikebreakers.”
"Just as outrageous as using temp workers," said PAU chair Heidi Nieminen.
Some progress in industrial talks
Meanwhile negotiations continued Friday between Posti and PAU under the leadership of state conciliator Minna Helle. Helle said Friday evening that some progress had been made and that she would be tabling a settlement in the next few days.
The talks are due to continue on Sunday. The strike has so far lasted more than one week and has spread to other sectors, as workers in other industries have declared supporting industrial action. On Friday the Transport Workers' Union said that starting next Wednesday, it would no longer process port deliveries for the logistics company Postnord.
