Merger in Finland will create largest union

Six industrial unions in Finland may merge, if they accept the proposals made by an external expert that they commissioned to examine their future.

Their merger would create the largest single union in Finland with around 360,000 members. The six unions, covering employees in the chemical, electrical, media, paper, woodworking and metalworking industries, began talks on their future in early 2006, although the metalworkers union - the largest with 165,000 members - only became involved at a later stage.

In December 2006 they asked an expert, Lauri Lyly, from the union confederation SAK, to make proposals on how to move forward, in particular, whether it would be better to go for full merger or just closer co-operation. Last month he recommended a full merger.

Lyly explains that one of the key reasons for the full merger is that at present unions are not large enough to help their members face industrial change through retraining and other measures. "At present unions are not able to perform this widely enough," he said.

If the merger goes ahead, the new union, which Lyly suggest should be called TEAM, will have 360,000 members and will be the largest union in the manual union confederation SAK, accounting for just over a third of all its members.