Débat en Finlande sur l'immigration d'infirmières philippines

Une entreprise finlandaise spécialisée dans les soins aux personnes âgées a décidé de faire travailler une centaine d'infirmières en provenance des Philippines.
Juhani Artto publie dans son blog une synthèse des nombreuses réactions.

Finnish company employs a hundred practical nurses
from the Philippines

Helsinki (19.09.2007 - Juhani Artto) The Finnish company Esperi Care has decided to hire a hundred practical nurses from the Philippines. In Finland, this is the latest development in efforts to tackle the growing shortage of health and elderly care professionals.

Last year the Ministry of Labour, with several concerned organisations, targeted, in their recruiting campaign, Finnish nurses who work abroad, mainly in Norway and Great Britain. Results, however, remained modest.

Several thousand Finnish nurses work abroad. Last year the authorities estimated the number exceeded 6,000. Many of these nurses are motivated to work abroad by the higher pay levels outside Finland. Another motive often is the opportunity to get a permanent job instead of fixed-time employment which still, despite the labour shortage, is widely used in the Finnish public health care system.

Emigration for jobs in foreign countries is only a small part of the loss of educated nurses and other health care professionals. Many more have switched over to other industries. They argue that the pay they are offered in jobs that correspond to their education is much too meagre for the
physical and mental strain of the work.

Esperi Care has discussed its plan to recruit Filipino practical
nurses with the trade unions, Tehy and Super, which organise nurses and practical nurses in the private sector. Naturally, it is important for the unions that the immigrant labour will have the same working conditions as Finns.

When Esperi Care publicised its plan to employ Filipino practical nurses, it gave an assurance that this principle will be respected. In the construction industry workers from Estonia, Russia and other former socialist countries often are seriously exploited and their earnings fall below the minimum level set out in national collective agreements.

Nurses and practical nurses, both in the private and public sectors, are covered by national collective agreements of a generally binding character.

Mixed reactions among Finns

In the last few years Finns have been constantly reminded that, in the future, Finland needs to lure thousands of professionals and other employees from abroad annually. When outlining and explaining its plan to employ Filipinos Esperi Care were at pains to point out once again the alarming estimates on the labour market development by 2017.

Around 69,000 employees from municipal care organisations will retire (29 per cent of the total municipal care personnel) together with 725,000 retiring from the Finnish workforce as a whole, which will mean a rapid increase in demand for care personnel.

These two phenomena will rapidly exacerbate the labour shortage of elderly care organisations, Esperi Care warned.

Still, for many Finns the plan to recruit practical nurses from the Philippines is not acceptable. The main argument against the plan is that by raising salaries and improving other working conditions for health care personnel one could attract thousands of Finnish professionals to return to jobs that correspond to their education.

It is no wonder then that many commentators have highlighted, in the Filipino discussion, the issue of working conditions as in the last weeks bargaining on new collective agreements have been under way. And much of the public interest has focussed on how and whether nurses and practical nurses and their unions will succeed in their efforts to win substantial pay rises.

Another argument against recruiting Filipinos has been to point out the fact that these trained people and their skills are needed in the Philippines. Others contest this saying that in the Philippines, there is an oversupply of health care professionals.

In many messages, on various net discussion fora, writers worry that an inadequate knowledge of Finnish, let alone its dialects, may cause serious problems. This claim has not directly been denied but language problems should not be exaggerated has been the spirit of many messages.

In several messages people profile Filipinos as industrious and conscientious employees. "They have right kind of attitude towards work", one commentator claimed.