Expensive socialism – Finnish stevedores make 50K EUR annually

EXPENSIVE SOCIALISM - FINNISH STEVEDORES MAKE 50K EUR ANNUALLY

Finland – Finnish stevedores’ strike is over and labour returns to work. No information on salaries given, but a reference was made to last year salaries, according to which a stevedore made already 50.000EUR per year.
In Finland this blue-collar salary is as high as surgeon’s annual salary. What we can say for sure is, that packing or unpacking a ship is something we all pay, when reading a newspaper made of Finnish paper.
We are also entitled to ask, how come private sector executive salaries are so much behind some of these key area salaries.
If we were to import freely workers from abroad (or Europe) – without Labour Union interfering, then our salary cost would be only 2/5 of the days cost. Labour Union representatives seem to know what they have done in Finland. It is really no wonder, why some of then are using prostitutes and having a nice salary too.
They rather miss anything in Finland, except original priest’s (divine) service, which they are not entitled to enter as sinners.
Costs has to be multiplies by 6, which was the factor of EUR-currency, when we got involved. Inflation is high and I do not think Finland is able to keep up raising the living costs, especially when such big names like Nokia has stated of moving out from Finland sooner of later. It will be a demanding experiment to observe how Nokia HQ’s transfer is affecting into Finnish economy.


(*) Source: Half Nine News at YLE (SDP) channel 1 on April 18, 2005.