Finish firms lower language requirements to attract foreign workers

DW (English)

Finland's economy needs immigration to fill thousands of vacancies, especially in the services sector. Language requirements are proving a major hurdle, but the country's largest retailer is going different ways.

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.

00:33But 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 ten years ago, he couldn't speak the language

00:45and had zero career options.

00:47It was hard.

00:48I 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, Hanna Lettovuori, is fully behind this policy, and the decision

01:18to feature foreign workers, including Morita-Garcia, on the cover of the company magazine, praising

01:24them 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 Sjaukonen 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, it's very strongly against refugee migration, but as a part of

02:23that antipathy towards that form of migration, very much, much harm is being done to our

02:34immigration policy in general.

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

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

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

02:52The 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.

03:18On a global survey of 12,000 expats, Finland has plunged from No. 16 last year to 51 now.

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