Estonia Railways, who have recently signed a cooperation agreement with global Chinese Logistic company Sinotrans Shipping, agreed with trade unions to increase their bonus rate to 7% and, due to lay offs last year, to raise monies paid to railway employees who’s work load has increased as a consequence.

Mining subsidiary of Eesti Energia, Eesti Energia Kaevandused has recently signed a two year agreement to increase wages; 5% for piece work and 11% for time-work. Eesti Energia Kaevanduseds main activity is oil-shale mining in the north-east of Estonia. Last year, 2010, the company mined 17 million tonnes, 3 million more than in 2009, which was all the more remarkable as the company currently employs around 3,000 people, the last time a equivalent amount of oil-shale was mined was in 1992 when the company employed approximately 9,000 workers!

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Eesti Energia has made the headlines recently with their large international oil shale companies in Jordan and America. Large Baltic and Nordic energy companies such as Dalkia and Fortum are already supplying the larger towns and cities in their regions. Eesti Energia intends to make the most of the government subsidies on offer in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to build combined heat and power plants (CHP) which will have an electricity capacity total of 100 MW and be ideal to directly serve smaller local communities.

Head of Power Generation Development Department at Eesti Energia, TimoTatar, commented that there are plenty of towns in the three Baltic States where the boiler houses of central heating systems are dilapidating and local companies don’t have investment capacity.

CHP is the process where by the by-product heat created in the generation of electricity is then distributed for use locally by residence and local business instead of being dispersed into the environment through cooling towers.

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