Summer is bringing an increase in the number of foreign workers in Finland. Foreign workers are being used especially in sectors susceptible to seasonal and cyclical variation, such as agriculture and the construction industry. The greatest numbers of foreign workers are coming from Estonia and Russia.

   

Depending on how the calculation is made, between 13,000 and 15,000 foreigners were granted residence and work permits for Finland last year. This was a few thousand more than in 1999.

There is still no major flood

of foreign workers to Finland. According to Olli Sorainen, a planner at the immigration section of the Ministry of Labour, about 7,000 applications for work permits were submitted by late May.

   

A working group set up by the Ministry of the Interior is currently preparing an overall reform of legislation concerning foreigners which is to come into effect in 2003. According to Sorainen, the working group will pay special heed to more flexibility in the granting of residence permits for family members of a foreign employee.

The current practice is

that a Finnish diplomatic mission in the country where the worker lives decides on granting residence and work permits. For those foreigners who already are in Finland, residence permits are granted by the local police. Residence permits for family members of a foreign worker are handled separately at the Directorate of Immigration. This procedure means that the handling of a family’s residence permits can take between one and six months.

   

"There is consensus among the working group that the procedure concerning work permits requires reform in this respect. There is some disagreement on how the reform should be carried out", Sorainen says.

   

Measures have already been taken to make it easier for foreign workers to come to Finland. Last year workers from outside the EU had to meet certain strict requirements of professional skill. Although this remains the guiding principle, Sorainen says that the rule is being applied in a more flexible manner. Meanwhile, a special work permit unit was set up in the Directorate of Immigration to speed up the processing of applications.

Foreign strawberry pickers

have been hired regularly for several years now. According to Juhani Heikkinen who has a strawberry farm in Rautalampi, strawberry picking no longer interests Finnish teenagers. About a third of the employees at the farm will be foreigners, mainly Russians and Ingrians.

While there has been much talk

of foreign professionals in the IT sector, Olli Sorainen says that statistics show that the number is smaller than many people imagine.

   

Olli-Pekka Ihalainen, the head of recruitment at Nokia, says that there has been a steady increase in foreign workers at Nokia since the beginning of Internet recruitment about three years ago. Now the company has about 1,300 foreign employees in Finland representing 85 different nationalities.

"The recruitment process for

employees from outside the EU usually takes from two to three months. After this, it might take as much as half a year for the family to come. The dragging out of the process might lead to an unwanted outcome for the employer, because the person involved might suddenly accept an offer from a country where the waiting period is not as long", Ihalainen says.

At the Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries

, labour market director Johanna Varis says that she believes that the pull of the construction business will attract sufficient numbers of Finnish employees in the future. Builders have been looking for foreign painters, heating, plumbing, and ventilation experts, and other specialists.

   

"It has been easier to get employees this year because the amount of construction work available has balanced out", Varis says. She also supports the idea of greater flexibility in working permit procedure.

   

"We should not just stare at the unemployment figures, which also contain people who are really outside the labour market. We need to look at what the situation on labour market really is."