The Nordic trade union confederations have reached an agreement through NFS (the Council of Nordic Trade Unions) to nominate a Finnish candidate – Katja Lehto-Komulainen – to the post of Deputy General Secretary in the ETUC. NFS is an umbrella organisation for the Nordic trade union movement and its affiliates represent 9 million employees. The current Nordic representative, the Deputy General Secretary Veronica Nilsson, will be resigning in December and ETUC will make choose the new Deputy General Secretary 14th of December.
Katja Lehto-Komulainen has graduated with a Master’s degree in Law from University of Lapland. She has also studied EU law at Stockholm University. Katja Lehto-Komulainen is the head of international affairs in SAK in Finland. Katja has been working with issues that relate to employees’ rights, employment and growth – nationally and in the ETUC and ITUC, as well as with the Pan European Regional Council (PERC), the Baltic Sea Trade Union Network (BASTUN) and the UN’s international labour organisation ILO. Today she has in-depth knowledge of labour market and economic policies nationally, in Europe and globally. Katja’s values can be summarised in the words freedom, equality and solidarity, and her lodestone throughout her career has always been the struggle against injustice and for emplyees’ rights.
– Katja is a very competent and impassioned candidate. Within the Nordic cooperation she has always been energetic and active and has contributed constructive and sound proposals. I am also pleased that the Nordic trade union movement has so many leading women to choose from and has once again been able to nominate a woman to the post of Deputy General Secretary in the ETUC. I wish her luck in the election in December, says Magnus Gissler, General Secretary of the NFS.
In addition to Finnish, her mother tongue, Katja Lehto-Komulainen has several other working languages: French, Swedish and English. She also speaks Russian and is studying Spanish. Katja Lehto-Komulainen’s CV is available in French, English, German and Spanish.