FINNISH UNION ACCUSES POHJOLA OF MANAGEMENT FAILURE

Finland's financial sector employees trades union FSEU has blamed locally based insurance group Pohjola’s management board for its failure to work with the company's union representatives to meet new market challenges. Pohjola’s board has approved management plans to reduce staff numbers by 150, bringing to 500 the number of personnel laid off by the group since the beginning of last year. FSEU negotiator Sirpa Komonen said that the union and the insurer reached an early retirement agreement with Pohjola last year and said that this further reduction “could have been avoided had management and union officials entered talks at an earlier stage. This is management's failure”. Pohjola, which currently employs 2,850 people, said that its latest corporate trimming reflected the company’s goal of concentrating on its core non-life insurance business. Pohjola has estimated that the latest staff reductions will yield cost savings of 10m euro a year.