European economies are taking advantage of irregular workers to lower the value of labour. This migrant workforce enters European countries to meet the needs caused by European demographic crises, but they end up being ultra-precarious and over-exploited. This has an impact on the entire European labour market.

In an interview with Esquerda.net, the MEP from the Left Alliance of Finland, former minister of education and former leader of her party, talks about the challenges in the European labour agenda, the attacks that the far-right makes on workers and the EU’s immigration model.

The European Union is going through a demographic crisis, which has been filled by migrant labour. But the right has attacked immigrants whilst exploiting them. Is there a contradiction here?

“Demographic change is a reality in the EU. If we look just at the numbers, it’s quite clear that our workforce is constantly decreasing. It will decrease by about one million per year until 2030. Of course, there are various solutions to this, because we also have under-represented people in the labour market. There are still countries in the EU where women cannot fully participate in the labour market. All EU countries face major challenges with people with disabilities, for example. They don’t fully participate in the labour market. I don’t like the discourse that associates immigration only with the need for labour in Europe. I think immigration policy should be based on respect for fundamental rights and human rights.”

In terms of labour rights, what safeguards can we give to migrant workers?

“We need to ensure that everyone’s rights are respected equally in the labour market. We have a problem in Europe with the exploitation of migrant workers, both in these cross-border situations and also within countries. We need to work even harder to strengthen collective bargaining agreements, trade unions, national inspection services, so that we can ensure that everyone who works here also has the right to a decent wage and the same respect when it comes to labour rights.”

I wanted to address the issue because it has been a campaign theme in Portugal. We have thousands of people who are in vulnerable situations, with pending processes. How do we as the European Union, in a broader and more comprehensive sense, implement these policies?

“It’s simple. The more national policies there are to ensure that people don’t live without documents or without identification, the easier it will be to combat irregular situations. In Finland, before the far-right began to change migration policy, we had a system where, if it wasn’t possible to obtain a permanent residence permit for any reason, a temporary permit was granted. Why is that so important? Because it means that when you’re in a country, you’re there legally and you also work legally. If we start restricting people’s possibilities of obtaining residence permits, for example, they still have to live somehow. They will have to eat, they will have to sleep somewhere, they will have to pay rent. In that scenario, conditions are created for undocumented work and also for labour exploitation, because it also means that people don’t have the possibility to formalise their work.”

The answer is regularisation.

“Having a residence permit system based on the idea that, if a person is here for whatever reason, they should be able to do so officially, have documents and have at least a temporary residence permit. That is also the best way to combat labour exploitation.”

In Portugal, the political agenda of the left on labour has focused on the recovery of rights lost during the Troika crisis, but also on proposals for shift workers or on the four-day week. What proposals on labour rights does the left present in the rest of Europe?

“At the European level, there are several interesting examples of countries where more progressive forces are keeping the labour agenda alive and also implementing policies. Spain is an example, where they are moving forward with a reform for a shorter working week. Poland introduced a new free day, which is not super revolutionary, but still is less working time. They are about to do an experiment with a shorter working week. In Iceland, the unions managed to approve a reform based on a collective agreement for the reduction of working hours. Actually, I think there are inspiring examples from different parts of Europe about the need for this type of progressive policy. Finland is, in a way, a terrible example, because what we are currently fighting for in Finland are the essential pillars of our entire labour market model, which the far-right is trying to dismantle. They restricted the right to strike and now they are promoting a reform that will make it more expensive to be unionised, which will lead to a drop in the unionisation rate. They are attacking unions in a way we’ve never seen in Finnish history.”

How would you characterise that attack?

“They are making a major change to the system. Taking Finland out of the Nordic context and turning it into a country more like those in Eastern Europe with regard to labour legislation. I think Finland is a frightening example of what the far-right actually does when it comes to power. What are their real policies with regard to workers? They make huge tax cuts for the highest incomes and for companies and, at the same time, limit fundamental labour rights. At the European level, we’re seeing a very big fight. It will be a huge fight during this mandate about the direction the European Union will take, for example, with regard to workers’ rights and labour market issues.”

The European peripheral economies, such as Portugal and Spain, are built on tourism. At the same time, we are training more and more people. Are we creating a brain drain system from the periphery to the centre?

“The first example that comes to mind is Greece, where there was a huge brain drain, of people with higher levels of education, after the crisis. That shows that there is that danger. One issue I have been addressing is that, now that the Commission intends to give special treatment to defence in terms of budgetary rules, we should do the same with investment in research and education, for example. We also need financial instruments and incentives for Member States to invest in research and education, which do not currently exist at European level, because, until now, the only money that has benefited from special treatment is money for defence. That would be one way, I think, to address the issue. But the biggest problem in this issue is still related to migration policies. Because the EU is building its own migration policy based on recruiting skilled workers from outside the European Union. This can already be seen in countries quite close by such as Albania.”

In Portugal, special residences have also been created to attract qualified professionals from other countries.

“Exactly. If we look at the Balkans, for example, which lose newly trained doctors that they would need in their own workforce, we realise that this really creates this periphery of the European Union. This imbalance. The real discussion we should have is that the EU sees migration as a one-way street where we can choose what we want. What is the EU giving in return? What is the relationship between the European Union and the outside world? That should be part of the discussion about the labour market.”

Maria Luís Albuquerque, European Commissioner responsible for Financial Services and the Savings and Investment Union, has suggested facilitating the use of European citizens’ pensions for investment in the military industry. Is this a threat to the EU pension system?

“I’ve heard that this idea is very popular in the European People’s Party [European political party, to which PSD and CDS belong]. The idea of using all pension money for the investment needs we currently have. I think there are better ways to get money than using people’s pension savings. My party is in favour of more revenue for the European Union, so we could have environmental taxes, we could tax the rich, there could be a real digital tax for the big social media companies. All of this could be used for the European Union’s investment needs, whether in the field of climate, energy or any other.”

Li Andersson

Daniel Moura Borges

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