Unions condemn exploitation at Kotka battery materials plant

Finnish trade unions have welcomed an investigation into serious labour violations at a battery materials plant construction site in Kotka, Yle reported. Workers were allegedly threatened, employment contracts were transferred without consent and hundreds of workdays went unrecorded.

“This is serious labour exploitation,” said Toni Laiho, head of the chemical sector at the Finnish Industrial Union.

The investigation found that workers had been treated in ways that violated Finnish law and that their employment conditions had significant shortcomings. Finnish Minerals Group, a state-owned company that owns part of the battery materials plant company, commissioned the investigation after Yle reported on problems at the site.

The Construction Trade Union said it was not surprised by the findings but praised FMG for acting quickly. The union said it regularly encounters violations of employment terms on large construction sites, but described the scale and systematic nature of the alleged exploitation in Kotka as exceptional.

Chinese workers were brought to Kotka through a simplified procedure that did not require an assessment of the availability of non-EU labour. The Construction Trade Union is calling for staffing agencies to lose access to this procedure.

According to an investigation by law firm Castrén and Snellman, employment contracts were transferred from a staffing agency to subcontractor Jiangsu Installation Finland, known as JSI, at least partly without the workers’ consent. Workers were threatened with termination, financial consequences and consequences for their residence permits. The staffing agency had interpreted the contracts as transferable without the workers’ approval.

Some workers also signed employment contracts governed by Chinese law, and some returned part of their wages. Despite requests for information, the law firm did not receive comprehensive records on working hours. JSI separately reviewed records of overtime and work carried out on public holidays and found unrecorded hours equivalent to 800 working days. Some of those hours have already been compensated.

“What happens at the site from now on is decisive,” Laiho said. He added that similar problems sometimes return, but said he hoped conditions would improve. FMG has said supervision will be tightened.