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The recent study highlights that it is central for all workers to have the same conditions of employment and chances to advance their career.
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Foreigners are reluctant to find fault in work conditions because residence permits require an employment contract.
An ethnic divide between native and immigrant fields of employment is threatening to form in Finland, according to a study by the Finnish Work Environment Fund. “In the interest of competitiveness the labour market has been made more flexible. Contractual terms and conditions have weakened. Immigrants are in a particularly vulnerable position,” says the director of the research project Sirpa Wrede of the University of Helsinki.
Short-term contracts, poor orientation practices and employees’ unawareness of their rights are common in many workplaces. Immigrants are most intensely confronted with this uncertainty, according to an expert working for the City of Helsinki. “A person can be ready to do anything to hold on to their job. In some cases the welfare of the entire extended family depends on them,” says planner Olga Silfver of the Immigration Division.
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Immigrants get a raw deal on the job
A young Turkish kebab restaurant owner:
“There is no other work. You can’t just be idle all the time. You have to do something.”
An East Asian restaurant owner:
“We have no days off, if we have a “day off” we go to the store to buy groceries and clean up here. Only during the midsummer celebration did we have three days off. Also during Christmas we had two days off.”
A cleaner from Estonia:
“I’ve been taken advantage of a lot in terms of working conditions, wages. Often long workdays are demanded. Last year I didn’t get a vacation.”
A Turkish entrepreneur:
“Yes, I’ve made some friends. Of course they regard self-employed people more positively than unemployed foreigners. Entrepreneurship gives a kind of advantage.”
Quotations from the report published by the Finnish Work Environment Fund and written by Wrede & Nordberg (Palmenia), entitled Vieraita työssä. Työelämän etnistyvä eriarvoisuus (Aliens at work: The ethnifying inequality of working life).
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In the greater Helsinki area cleaners and kitchen staff are more and more often people from immigrant backgrounds. Many of them are asylum seekers. “This is not a problem as such,” says Silfver, herself of an immigrant background. “What’s central is whether the employee has the chance to advance in his or her career and whether they receive the same wages for their work as a native Finn would.”
Occupational protection should be more active and work conditions should be better monitored, the report states. When an immigrant person’s residence permit depends on an employment contract, the employer in practice grants the residence permit. This leads to a reluctance to question the practices of the workplace, Wrede notes. “The occupational protection districts are important agents. The occupational protection delegates should clarify to employees in detail the legal conditions that apply to the terms and the execution of work,” she says.
The report does not take a stance on whether immigrants should be welcomed in Finland to make up for the labour shortage. The group of researchers moves ahead of the current political debate.
“Finnish working life has changed,” Wrede says. “The situation of immigrants in today’s working life has to be understood. Immigrants’ need to improve working life is often the same as that of any other person entering the labour market.”
“The public discussion benefits Finns, for example young employees, as well. The enhancement of communication and the improvement of orientation practices are in the best interest of everyone in Finnish working life.”
HEIDI EKDAHL – STT
ALEKSIS TORO – HT
Krista Sihvonen
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