TALLINN — Swedish construction company Skanska gave up its plan to hire Estonian construction workers on a state-run building site two weeks after the of Rovaniemi local of the Finnish Construction Trade Union protested.

It wasn’t the union’s objections that swayed the Skanska, though, but instead national security requirements that would have overly delayed the project. Skanska was planning on hiring the Estonians to construct an information technology center of the Ministry of the Interior’s HALTIK agency, which deals with classified information. Therefore all the construction workers have to pass a background check. For the Estonian workers it will allegedly take up to three months, but for the locals only seven days.

HALTIK’s project manager Pekka Rautio told Finnish television channel YLE that the building company does not have time to wait.

“As soon as we informed Skanska about the issue, the company made a quick decision that they cannot afford to wait for the answers for the security clearance of the foreign workforce,” said Rautio.

The building is set to be finished by the end of August 2011, and the agency should be moved in by the end of 2012.