Oulu outsourcing leaves former city workers facing layoffs again
Monday 12th October 2026 on 19:15 in
Finland
VRJ Finland is negotiating temporary layoffs affecting about 60 workers in Oulu, including former city employees, saying it does not have enough work. The talks cover all of the company’s Oulu units and about 130 people, Yle reports.
The company says no redundancies are planned. It is the second autumn in a row that VRJ has negotiated layoffs in Oulu. Last year, the city ordered additional work from the company after layoffs were announced.
Oulu outsourced its Infra business unit’s construction and maintenance work to VRJ in 2024. More than 80 city employees transferred to the company. The city has a five-year procurement agreement with VRJ worth 80 million euros, or about 16 million euros a year.
The public-sector union JHL had expressed concern about the transferred workers’ position under their new employer. “This is what we feared, and our fears seem to be coming true,” said Kirsi Särkelä, JHL’s chief shop steward for Oulu city employees and a participant in the negotiations.
Oulu’s director of urban environment, Marko Kilpeläinen, said the situation had come as a surprise. The contract allows the city to order a limited amount of additional work beyond the agreed value, and the city is considering doing so again, he said. The contract price was set to match what Oulu had previously paid its own Infra unit for similar work.
Kilpeläinen said he hoped the company would find more work for employees outside city projects. VRJ’s administration and development director, Tero Venäläinen, said the city would need to place orders worth an additional 2 million to 3 million euros a year to provide year-round work for all of the former city employees.
Venäläinen said the contract did not provide enough work for the employees and that the company could not pay workers when there were no jobs. VRJ also said it completes work faster than Oulu’s former Infra unit did before the outsourcing.
The company attributed the need for layoffs to seasonal fluctuations in infrastructure work, with fewer jobs available during winter. Its chief executive, Jyri Hussa, said the need for layoffs was not directly linked to the Oulu contract or whether it provided enough work, adding that all employees were now part of VRJ Finland’s Oulu workforce.