The Estonian Seamen's Independent Union (EMSA) on Friday withdrew from the collective agreement concluded with Riigilaevastiku AS, which means that the labor peace in the company will no longer apply from the moment of cancellation, but the parties must still fulfill the terms of the collective agreement in force for another six months.
https://majandus.postimees.ee/8506306/emsa-loobus-riigilaevastiku-asiga-solmitud-kollektiivlepingust
BNS,10. juuli 2026, 08:57
EMSA juht Jüri Lember. FOTO: PILT VIDEOST
The collective agreement in question concerns the working
conditions and wages of employees providing pilotage services for the Republic
of Estonia, sea pilots and pilot boat sailors.
EMSA Chairman Jüri Lember said that the cancellation of the
collective agreement and the break in the labor peace were caused by the
state's rigid and unreasonable attitude towards the employees' salary demands.
«A state institution and its management have very limited
possibilities for indexing salaries, i.e. keeping them in correlation with the
cost of living, or for salary increases. The salaries of pilots and boatswains
of a relatively new state agency have increased by only 2 percent over the past
few years, while the salaries of our union's private sector have increased by
more than 5 times, and the cost of living has increased by almost 4 times. The
salaries currently in force for ship crews are even below the average Estonian
salary. This is unacceptable for employees who work at sea and have received
specialized training," said Lember.
"On April 13, when negotiations with the company's
management had reached a deadlock, EMSA sent an official letter to Kuldar Leis,
in which we outlined all the facts regarding the State Fleet's salary policy,
since its establishment in 2023, and asked him to forward it to the government
so that the requests of our membership to eliminate the shortfall in salary
increases would be taken into account during the processing of the 2027 state
budget. The Minister’s signed response came on June 4, stating that no
additional budgetary resources have been provided for state institutions for
either 2026 or 2027 due to the difficult state of the state budget.
EMSA believes that regardless of the situation with the
state budget, men working in state offices at sea every day, like other state
employees, must be paid a decent wage and it is unacceptable to force these
people to work elsewhere due to low wages. Instead, the current government
continues to finance such hopeless follies as the financing of the expensive
and pointless Rail Baltica route, and this is not prevented by any limited
possibilities of the state budget.
In this situation, EMSA, together with the pilots and the
crews of their boats, has no choice but to prepare seriously for legal actions».
