Authority allows foreign hires at Kotka battery plant despite local unemployment

The Southeast Finland regional employment centre has allowed the Kotka battery-materials plant to recruit workers from outside the European Union and European Economic Area, despite unemployment in the sector and new training programmes in the region, Yle reports.

The decision has surprised the Finnish Industrial Union and the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions, SAK. The Chinese-Finnish company Easpring Finland and its partly state-owned partner Finnish Minerals Group have said the plant’s approximately 270 production jobs would be filled mainly from Finland.

The centre’s regional labour permit policy states that the availability of workers in the chemical process industry has worsened in the Kymenlaakso region. As a result, companies have been allowed to recruit workers from outside the EU and EEA since the beginning of June. The policy is in force at least until December.

Easpring Finland says the plant will initially create 215 to 220 jobs, about half of which have been filled. Commercial director Vesa Koivisto said 65 of those hired so far are from Finland.

The company and Finnish Minerals Group maintain that their plan to employ mainly local workers remains unchanged. About 80 per cent of the plant’s production jobs are expected to be filled from Finland.

The plant’s new technology also requires experience from similar facilities in China. Easpring has hired 42 experts from China.

“Our plan is to hire about 100 more workers from Finland by spring, and only five or six from China,” Koivisto said.

Once the plant reaches full capacity, around 270 people are expected to work in production.

The plant will manufacture cathode active material for the electric vehicle industry. Trial production has been delayed and is expected to begin this autumn, with regular production scheduled to start early next year.

The Southeast Finland centre asked SAK in the spring for an assessment of labour availability in the chemical sector. The Finnish Industrial Union prepares the organisation’s statements.

The union questioned why the policy applied only to Kymenlaakso, even though the centre’s area covers three regions. It also said the information provided was limited: the start date, number of jobs and employer were not initially known.

“We did not know when the work would begin or how many people were to be hired. We also did not know the employer,” said Anu-Hanna Anttila, the Finnish Industrial Union’s head of research.

The union concluded that the policy was connected to the Kotka battery-materials plant because no other large number of jobs was known to be planned elsewhere in Kymenlaakso.

According to Anttila, there were dozens of unemployed jobseekers in the chemical process industry in Kymenlaakso and nearby areas when the policy was being prepared. There were 140 such jobseekers across Finland. The union also said there had been no open vacancies in the sector in Southeast Finland at the time.

Koivisto rejected the claim that the plant’s jobs had not been publicly advertised. He said several positions had been posted on the company’s website and had attracted a good number of applications.

The Finnish Industrial Union said the jobs should also be listed in the public employment service register and on major job platforms, since jobseekers may not follow individual companies’ websites.

The union said the case raised concerns that workers already in Finland could be overlooked and that foreign workers could be exploited through employment.