Lauri Lyly elected SAK president

The General Council of the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions - SAK today elected Mr Lauri Lyly, the Director of the organisation&#;8217s collective bargaining department, to serve as its new President.

Lauri Lyly has broad experience of collective bargaining work in the Finnish trade union movement, all the way from individual workplace level to the role of a trade union leader. After serving in the 1980s as chief shop steward at the nuclear power plant in Loviisa, he took up a position as Bargaining Secretary at the Finnish Electrical Workers’ Union in 1989, and subsequently became President of this major SAK-affiliated trade union in 1997.

Lyly’s career in the national labour confederation began in 2004 when he was appointed Director of the collective bargaining department at SAK. Over the last two years he has also served as special investigator and project manager for the TEAM industrial sector trade union project.

The new SAK President stresses that the greatest care should always be taken to study the practical impact of workplace restructuring on the lives of ordinary employees and their families.

"We have heard so much about how Finland is doing. Maybe it’s now time to begin asking more down-to-earth questions of this kind. I believe that the answers to such questions give rise to a natural field of work for the trade union movement," Lyly commented in his acceptance address to the General Council.

The new SAK President is 56 years old and married with two children.