Finland's hunt for skilled labor

DW (English)

Even highly trained foreign workers have a tough time on Finland's job market. That's also because Finnish is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. But some companies are looking to make Finland more attractive to newcomers.

Transcript

00:00At this Helsinki restaurant, good burgers and fries, and goodwill, are more important

00:09than fluent Finnish.

00:12The parent company of this restaurant, S Group, Finland's largest retailer, wants to make

00:17this country more attractive to job seekers, and does not require them to speak Finnish,

00:22one of the world's most difficult languages.

00:25But elsewhere, this is part of a divisive question in Finland.

00:28This economy needs an estimated 44,000 immigrant workers every year, but are they welcome?

00:34The experience of Francisco Morita-Garcia, a former lawyer from Mexico, shows how the

00:39situation is evolving.

00:41When he moved here with his Finnish wife 10 years ago, he couldn't speak the language

00:45and had zero career options.

00:47It was hard.

00:50I would say that I applied like a hundred.

00:54I applied a hundred times.

00:55I didn't even have any single interview.

00:58Morita-Garcia learned Finnish and changed careers, starting at the bottom in the fast

01:02food industry.

01:03Now he's a manager, and S Group's decision to drop the language requirement allows him

01:08to hire people whose situations he understands.

01:12S Group's human resources chief, Hanneletto Vuori, is fully behind this policy, and the

01:17decision to feature foreign workers, including Morita-Garcia, on the cover of the company

01:24praising them as valuable assets and urging customers to be more tolerant of newcomers.

01:30We know in the future there will not be enough people to work in service sectors, in care,

01:37and so we definitely need to improve and learn how to bring people from different countries

01:45to work in Finland.

01:47But the Finnish government is not on that same page.

01:50It's currently considering a law that would force most foreign workers to leave the country

01:54within three months if they lose their job.

01:57Pasi Sjaukunen is a migration expert with the city of Helsinki.

02:01He laments that the current government, pressured by the right-wing Finns party, supports positions

02:06like the three-month rule, which confuse policies of immigrant workers with asylum seekers.

02:12The Finns party is actually very strongly against refugee migration, but as a part of

02:24that antipathy towards that form of migration, much harm is being done to our immigration

02:34policy in general.

02:37This drop-in Finnish class is aimed at helping foreigners, both with language and with confidence.

02:42Accountant Lucia Indran, originally from Indonesia, is unemployed for the first time in two decades

02:48and says every application still requires fluent Finnish.

02:53The situation is not easy, but then I cannot just give up.

02:58So I don't mind to work in restaurant or cleaning or anything.

03:05With birth rates continuing to fall, Finns need to get real about how they're going to

03:09maintain their economy and social system.

03:12In the meantime, though, the country's image as an attractive place to live and work is

03:17suffering.

03:18In a global survey of 12,000 expats, Finland has plunged from number 16 last year to 51

03:25now.

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