Abject living conditions, salaries
below the minimum wage, illegally long hours and health and safety
breaches leading to accidents. This is the reality for many in the
relatively large group of Eastern European workers in the Nordic
countries who do not know enough about their social rights. That’s the
conclusion in a new report from the Nordic Council of
Ministers.
The report maps the existing knowledge on foreign workers’ work
environments and working conditions in each of the Nordic countries. It
concludes there is widespread social dumping in the Nordic region even
though this is politically unacceptable in all of the Nordic countries,
as well as a serious hindrance for attracting necessary labour from
abroad which the Nordic countries soon will need a lot of because
of their ageing populations.
“The report exposes the great challenges we have with integrating
foreign workers,” said Bo Smith, permanent secretary at the Danish
Ministry of Employment. He was speaking at the launch of the report
during at the conference ‘Labour Migrant’s Working Environment and
Conditions in the Nordic Region’, hosted by the Nordic Council of
Ministers in Copenhagen.
Mr Smith appealed to the other Nordic countries to let the report’s
bleak conclusion be the catalyst of a joint drive to make the Nordic
countries more attractive to foreign labour. This is necessary if the
Nordic economies are to compete among the most innovative economies, Bo
smith said.
Polish majority
The report forms the first part of a project called ‘Foreign Labour
in the Nordic Countries’. This is a globalisation project under the
auspices of the Nordic Council of Ministers which aims to make more
foreigners come to the Nordic region to work.
All Nordic countries have a political focus on recruiting highly
skilled foreign labour. Yet in reality most foreign workers in the
Nordic countries are low earners from Eastern Europe according to the
report written by Nordic working life researchers on commission from
the Nordic Council of Ministers.
The report maps what is already known about foreign workers in the
Nordic region and their working conditions. Because of a lack of
comparative figures across the Nordic countries, nobody knows exactly
how many foreign workers there are. It remains a fact, however,
that in both Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland Polish men make up the
majority of this group. In Iceland more than six in ten foreign workers
come from Poland. In Finland most labour immigrants are from Russia and
Estonia.
Eastern European workers in the Nordic region mostly work in low
paid jobs within agriculture, plant nurseries and forestry. Some work
as builders or carpenters and many work in the cleaning industry or as
taxi drivers, servants or earn a living washing dishes for
restaurants.
Uninformed about rights
The report shows temporary workers and stationed Eastern Europeans
in particular risk ending up working in unacceptable conditions. The
report also busts the myth that Eastern Europeans come to the Nordic
region to live off social welfare. A large number of Eastern workers
know nothing at all about their rights as salaried workers and know
very little about welfare systems.
“Stationed and temporary workers especially lack language skills and
knowledge about their rights and tend to be more willing to accept bad
and dangerous working conditions because their expectations are low,”
says the head of the project Mari-Ann Flyvholm, senior researcher at
Denmark’s National Research Centre for the Working Environment.
Representatives from the other Nordic countries’ working environment
authorities delivered the same message. Although most Nordic countries
have improved controls in recent years, national working environment
authorities often uncover illegal conditions when inspecting work
places with Eastern European workers. Their living conditions are often
unacceptable and many are involved in serious accidents which result in
serious injuries and sometimes death.
Supervision is complicated, partly because foreign workers often
work for foreign employers on a temporary basis in a given Nordic
country. It can be very difficult for Nordic authorities to get in
touch with these workers and their employers to form a dialogue. Many
of them speak no foreign languages.
A need for knowledge
The Nordic Council of Ministers wishes to follow up the mapping of
existing knowledge in this area, and has asked Nordic research
institutions to bid for a phase 2 of the project to further highlight
the extent and character of social dumping within various trades, and
to gather more information about how Eastern European workers get their
information about salary levels and working conditions in the Nordic
region.
Some Nordic employers use private recruiting firms to get workers
from Eastern Europe. One task for the researchers will be to uncover
what these firms tell Eastern European workers about what they can
expect from working in the Nordic region.
The EU Commission welcomed both the mapping and the coming research
project during the conference.
“Results so far show the same pattern in the Nordic region as for
the rest of Europe – that immigrants suffer worse conditions compared
to other groups in society. It is very important that we prevent
discrimination against this group,” said Joanna Serdynska, policy
officer at the EU Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment,
Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities.
She works on EU projects against discrimination and highlighted the
need for better data collection and exchange of experience as important
tools in this work.
More will arrive
The Confederation of Danish Industry (DI) also sees the need for
better knowledge about the problems faced by Eastern European workers.
They will arrive to the Nordic region in greater numbers in the future,
predicted Martin Steen Kabongo, senior adviser at DI.
“In future we will see far more foreign workers in the Nordic labour
markets, and this is a good thing because we need their labour.
Generally things go well, but especially within the building industry,
plant nurseries and forestry we see problems in terms of salary levels
and working conditions for foreigners who are stationed here. We need
more focus and knowledge about this,” said Martin Steen Cabongo during
the conference.
The project ‘Foreign Labour in the Nordic Region’ is part of a total
of seven ongoing globalisation projects commissioned by the Nordic
Council of Ministers. The projects will analyse health and welfare
issues and propose measures to prepare the Nordic countries for a
rising global competition for labour, by improving people’s health and
make the Nordic labour force larger and better educated. The projects
run until 2012.
