Eliminating the exploitation of workers through hard and long-term work

“Although stud­ies have shown that there is a lot of racism in Fin­land, this rarely comes up in my work as my focus is on the over­sight of employ­ers. Racism in the more broad form of unequal treat­ment, how­ev­er, is some­thing that I do see in my work,” says Kat­ja-Pia Jenu, Senior Offi­cer at the Divi­sion of Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health of the Region­al State Admin­is­tra­tive Agency for South­ern Fin­land.

“At the Divi­sion of Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health, we have a sep­a­rate helpline for well-being at work and dis­crim­i­na­tion cas­es that peo­ple can con­tact if they have per­son­al­ly encoun­tered dis­crim­i­na­tion or racism.”

In her role, Jenu over­sees that employ­ers using for­eign labour com­ply with the min­i­mum pay and oth­er terms of uni­ver­sal­ly bind­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments. Among oth­er things, this means that the wages and oth­er terms of employ­ment of for­eign work­ers must be in line with those of oth­er employ­ees of the com­pa­ny or oth­er com­pa­nies in the same indus­try.

Accord­ing to Jenu, she rarely comes across sit­u­a­tions in which the exploita­tion of for­eign work­ers in the form of sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er pay or longer hours, for exam­ple, is done for pure­ly ide­o­log­i­cal rea­sons.

“Dis­crim­i­na­tion at work takes many forms. Peo­ple who have per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced dis­crim­i­na­tion can con­tact us through the helpline. In my work, I encounter dis­crim­i­na­tion as part of work-relat­ed exploita­tion, with finan­cial gain the under­ly­ing rea­son in near­ly all cas­es.”

ISSUES WITH WAGES ARE COMMONPLACE

Accord­ing to the over­sight report by the Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Admin­is­tra­tion, last year, region­al state admin­is­tra­tive agen­cies car­ried out more than 2,200 inspec­tions of com­pa­nies using for­eign labour in Fin­land.

About half of the inspec­tions con­cerned the enforce­ment of min­i­mum terms of employ­ment. Many short­com­ings were observed. Inspec­tors of region­al state admin­is­tra­tive agen­cies report­ed prob­lems with wages in near­ly half, or 47%, of inspec­tions where the issue was under eval­u­a­tion.

Issues relat­ed to wages var­ied in their degree of sever­i­ty. In some com­pa­nies, the short­com­ings were minor, such as unpaid evening sup­ple­ments, while oth­ers had evi­dence of seri­ous work-relat­ed exploita­tion.

“The results clear­ly show that prob­lems with the pay­ment of wages are com­mon­place. Still, it should be kept in mind that the com­pa­nies were select­ed for inspec­tion based on risk esti­mates, which means that we are either aware of prob­lems in the indus­try or have received an inspec­tion request from a third par­ty or anoth­er pub­lic author­i­ty or some oth­er kind of tip-off.”

In addi­tion, Jenu stress­es that prob­lems with the pay­ment of wages come in many shapes and forms. Minor short­com­ings are clear­ly more com­mon that seri­ous vio­la­tions.

Work-relat­ed exploita­tion is almost always dri­ven by finan­cial gain.

Last year, inspec­tors also mon­i­tored com­pa­nies’ com­pli­ance with the pro­hi­bi­tion of dis­crim­i­na­tion. This means that employ­ees can­not be dis­crim­i­nat­ed in terms of pay based on their ori­gin or nation­al­i­ty.

The author­i­ties issued a total of 113 injunc­tions relat­ed to the ban of dis­crim­i­na­tion. In oth­er words, vio­la­tions of the ban were observed in 11% of inspec­tions. The num­ber of injunc­tions was at the same lev­el as in 2022.

In the super­vi­sion of sea­son­al labour, region­al state admin­is­tra­tive agen­cies car­ried out a total of 69 inspec­tions relat­ed to the ban on dis­crim­i­na­tion. Of these employ­ers, 9% were issued an injunc­tion for fail­ing to com­ply with the ban.

“Sit­u­a­tions in which an injunc­tion has been issued are clear cas­es of dis­crim­i­na­tion, where the employ­er has not been able to dis­prove the pre­sumed dis­crim­i­na­tion detect­ed by the inspec­tion. Some­times, the sit­u­a­tion is not that clear. There are work­places where dis­crim­i­na­tion is sus­pect­ed to have tak­en place but can­not be proved due to the employer’s fail­ure to keep track of work­ing hours, for exam­ple.”

“In seri­ous vio­la­tions of the law and crim­i­nal offences, the inspec­tor is required to report the mat­ter to the police. Last year, region­al state admin­is­tra­tive agen­cies filed 24 police reports for dis­crim­i­na­tion and extor­tion in employ­ment and 5 reports for human traf­fick­ing.”

AT-RISK INDUSTRIES UNDER SCRUTINY

Most of the inspec­tions per­formed by the author­i­ties last year focused on hos­pi­tal­i­ty and food ser­vice com­pa­nies. Con­struc­tion firms made up a slight­ly small­er per­cent­age of the total. Indus­tri­al com­pa­nies account­ed for 6% and com­pa­nies that employ sea­son­al work­ers 8% of the inspec­tions.

Jenu says that the indus­tries cov­ered by the inspec­tions are based on obser­va­tions from pre­vi­ous years, tip-offs received and the degree to which for­eign labour is used in the indus­try. How­ev­er, no indus­try is out­side the scope of the author­i­ties’ inspec­tions.

“For exam­ple, we receive very few requests for inspec­tion and tip-offs for indus­tri­al com­pa­nies. The num­ber of inspec­tions in indus­tri­al sec­tors could be high­er if more requests for inspec­tion were filed. It’s good to keep in mind that the author­i­ties can also be tipped off anony­mous­ly.”

LONG-TERM WORK IS NEEDED

Jenu believes that pre­vent­ing exploita­tion in employ­ment requires diverse and long-term efforts.

“Inform­ing work­ers about the terms of employ­ment in Finnish work­places is one method. An exam­ple of this is the Indus­tri­al Union’s Her­mes app. It is also impor­tant that there are chan­nels through which peo­ple can report prob­lems. This requires ensur­ing that author­i­ties and non-prof­its have the nec­es­sary resources,” Jenu says.

“In addi­tion, if and when prob­lems arise, vio­la­tors must be held crim­i­nal­ly liable. A suf­fi­cient num­ber of prece­dent cas­es are need­ed in which the employ­er is penalised for exploita­tion. Prece­dents help pre­vent exploita­tion and encour­age the report­ing of sim­i­lar prob­lems in the future.”

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