Today is a fateful day for maritime traffic, writes Finland's main daily Helsingin Sanomat, as negotiations continue in the labour dispute over the contracts of eight ice breaker workers and their employer, state-owned Arctia Shipping. If an agreement is not reached in Wednesday's discussions, maritime traffic will come to a standstill starting on Thursday at 2 pm, as the ice breaker workers strike will be joined by a support strike by the Finnish Seamen’s Union and the Finnish Engineers’ Association. This would affect tens of thousands of Easter long weekend travellers and bring sea cargo shipments to their knees as the labour action would extend to every cargo ship sailing under the Finnish flag and include passenger cruise ships of Viking Line, Tallink Silja and Eckerö Line.
State icebreaker company Arctia Shipping has been negotiating with its striking crew members for months without a settlement. Arctia Shipping indicated its willingness to accept the state mediator Minna Helle’s settlement proposal a few days ago, but the employees are still not satisfied and refuse to settle.
Helsingin Sanomat leads its financial pages with the strange saga of Seppo Remes, a well-known businessman in Russia, who is on the board of directors for 20 significant Russian companies including the majority state-owned power company Rosseti. Remes was recently denied entry into Russia on March 22 when he tried to return to Moscow, where he is based and told he was "persona non grata" and no longer welcome in Russia. According to Remes, he has not had any conflicts with Russian officials in the 22 years that he has been doing business there. Russian officials say that he was gathering information on current and future power company leaders that should not be given to other countries. "Complete nonsense," said Remes, responding to the allegations. Referring to the situation, Remes told the newspaper: "This says something about Russia's current atmosphere."
Helsingin Sanomat's sister paper tabloid Ilta-Sanomat mines the personal tragedy recently suffered by Centre Party leader Juha Sipilä for a cover story about how his 22-year old son died in February 2015 from unexpected complications during routine surgery. This and other revelations are highlighted in a two-page spread taken from a new book about Sipilä by journalist Risto Uimonen.
Iltalehti also features a Sipilä cover with sell copy about the tragic phone call that Sipilä received in the middle of the night informing him that his son had unexpectedly died.