Rail industry strike will stop train traffic on Monday
The strike of Railway Union Finland RAU will halt train traffic from Monday 20 March until further notice. VR will cancel all long-distance and commuter trains during the strike and refund the train tickets purchased for trips that would take place during the strike. Freight trains will also be cancelled, with a few exceptions.
Updated 20.3.2023
The train drivers' strike is linked to the current collective agreement negotiations. The strike will begin on Monday 20 March 2023 at 00:01 and continue until further notice, according to the strike warning issued by RAU. When the strike begins, the passenger and freight trains departing on Sunday evening will be driven to their destination stations, including the night trains between Sunday and Monday.
“Negotiations between Service Sector Employers PALTA and RAU will continue during the strike. We hope that an agreement will be reached soon. We are very sorry for the inconvenience this strike will cause our customers,” says Laura Ansaharju, Senior Vice President, HR.
We will refund the train tickets purchased for the duration of the strike, the tickets can also be changed without a change fee
We will automatically refund the price of single tickets purchased for long-distance and commuter traffic during the strike within about a week. For return journeys, refunds will be made for those parts of the trip scheduled for a day of strike. If you wish to change your tickets to another time, you can do so without a change fee in the VR Matkalla app, by logging in to your account in vr.fi or by our calling customer service. We encourage you to primarily use self-service channels, as our customer service can become congested.
We withdraw train journeys from sale one day at a time. On Sunday, Monday's train services will be canceled and after that you can no longer buy tickets for Monday. As the strike continues, trains will be withdrawn from sale one day at a time. The cancellations for the following day will be made during the previous afternoon, if the negotiations have not reached an agreement. We will contact customers about the train cancellations and refunds generally during the same day as their planned travel.
We will also reimburse customers for the reservation of seats for multi-tickets and extend the validity of multi- and season tickets for long-distance and commuter traffic by the number of strike days. These do not require any action from the users of the tickets.
If the train tickets have been purchased as paper tickets without logging in from R-kioski, for example, the compensation cannot be performed automatically. In that case, you can apply for compensation for the tickets at https://www.vr.fi/en/claim-for-compensation, Opens in a new tab. However, automatic compensation is possible for tickets bought from ticket vending machines.
Once the strike is over, passenger service will return to normal after a small delay
After the strike has ended, train traffic may still be subject to changes and individual cancellations on the next day due to exceptional arrangements related to the start of the service.
You can check the status of your train in real time at https://www.vr.fi/en/train-traffic-at-the-moment, Opens in a new tab.