Berry sector | All companies that hire foreign natural berry pickers fail in official inspections

Authorities have intervened in the problems that occurred in the berry sector even after preliminary investigations into the operations of companies in the natural berry sector have been started due to, among other things, suspicions of human trafficking.

STT’s report shows that, according to the supervising authority, illegal activities have occurred widely in berry companies last year as well. STT went through the occupational safety inspections carried out by the regional administrative agencies on operators in the natural berry sector after July 2023.

From the inspection reports concerning twelve different operators, it appears that the authority has considered the treatment of foreign berry pickers to be widely illegal in terms of, among other things, working hours and familiarization with the pickers’ legal status.

Northern Finland occupational safety inspector of the regional administrative agency Sari Suorsa confirms that illegal activity was found in each of the 28 inspections carried out last year in accordance with the Berries Act.

“The situation is that deficiencies were found in all inspections,” says Suorsa.

The pickers’ working conditions have been monitored both according to the so-called berry law and the more traditional labor relations regulations. The majority of natural berry pickers are classified as pickers according to the so-called berry law, in which case labor legislation does not apply to them.

This means that they are not subject to, for example, working time legislation as long as they are not employed. So in the eyes of the law, they can work as long as they want. Regarding these pickers, the actual working conditions have not been monitored in the way that working conditions are understood in occupational safety.

In addition to monitoring according to the Berries Act, labor relations monitoring has been carried out in berry companies. According to Suorsa, deficiencies were found in “almost all” of these inspections.

Employment supervision was carried out only for persons who have been in employment. Most often, this meant support staff working at the berry pickers’ accommodation, for example cooks, but in at least one case also Thai berry pickers.

Shortcomings in working time arrangements and working time accounting are one of the serious problems emerging from the documents. For example, the rest periods prescribed by law have not always been adhered to.

According to one inspection document, the Thai berry pickers who worked for a company in Joensuu said that they start their work day at six or seven in the morning and that they return from the forest to their accommodation only at eight or nine in the evening. They said they do work every day of the week.

“In more than one inspection last year, it turned out that employees have been working long hours without weekly rest days,” says Suorsa.

Monitoring of working hours has been difficult in some cases, because shortcomings have also been found in the accounting of working hours for several operators.

“Working time records have not been kept at all or have otherwise been incomplete,” says Suorsa.

To Oulu In the inspections aimed at Tessacraft, the inspector made observations of illegalities, e.g. regarding working hours and employee training.

One audit report states that according to the time records, the two employees who worked as scribes worked every calendar day for 2.5 months. Therefore, the rest period required by law was not fulfilled.

Chairman of the board of the company Risto Isohätälä accuses the regional administrative agency’s inspector of incompetence. According to Isohätälä, the employees have had enough rest time.

“Accountants work 5–6 hours a day in the evenings, otherwise they have a lot of free time,” says Isohätälä.

Isohätälä’s wife from Thailand works as the company’s CEO. According to the man, this has replaced scribes when necessary.

“We split it so that one was away every other weekend so that the wife went there to take care of those chores,” says Isohätälä.

Authorities found deficiencies in training berry pickers and guaranteeing legal protection in several companies. During some inspections, the pickers said that they are prohibited from selling berries to other than the company under inspection.

According to the Berry Act, the operator must familiarize the collector in a language he understands about the collection of natural products and the conditions in Finland, the legal relations between the operator and the collector, the rights and obligations of the collector in Finland, the rights of everyone, the bodies that provide advice and legal protection, and other matters relevant to collection. The operator must also keep the contact information of certain authorities available to the collectors.

by Tessacraft regarding this, the authority stated that the collectors had not been sufficiently informed about the bodies that advise them and provide legal protection in Finland, so that the collectors would know which body they can turn to when they need advice or help in possible problem situations.

Isohätälä denies that the collectors were not trained enough. He says that a training session has been organized for the collectors in Thailand before coming to Finland.

The authority also pointed out to Tessacraft that the health protection authority’s contact information was not visible to the collectors, and some of the contact information was in an incorrect format.

“For example, the e-mail address of the rescue authority was presented in the form [email protected] without information about the names of the persons. Therefore, the collector has a chance to contact the wrong email address by mistake,” the inspection report states.

According to Isohätälä, it is possible that a single contact information could have been missing.

“Perhaps it could have been that Traficom’s information was missing from the wall, when the law has said that the information must be there. But no one calls Traficom,” says Isohätälä.

According to him, the pickers who worked for the company are his wife’s relatives and they have been treated excellently.

In occupational safety inspection reports several other grievances are also noted, related to, for example, the organization of occupational health care, the prohibition of discrimination and other working conditions.

In one case, the operator arranged accommodation for the gatherers with the main purpose of getting the wild berries they collected to be bought from the gatherers. The operator should therefore have applied for a decision on reliability from the Employment and Economic Affairs Office, so that the operation could continue. The follow-up inspection showed that the decision had still not been applied for, even though the operation had continued as before.

According to the documents, several collectors said that the purchase prices of the berries and the expenses charged to them were only told to them in Finland and not in advance in the country of origin.

Several according to the inspection reports, the overtime worked had not been recorded in the work time records. In addition, the company from Joensuu had deducted more expenses related to travel, accommodation and food supply from the employees’ wages than what was agreed in the employment contracts.

According to Suorsa, the regional administrative agency, clear deficiencies in the payroll were found for two companies.

“The salary has been lower than what should have been paid in the industry according to the collective agreement,” says Suorsa.

The regional administrative authority cannot comment on whether the violations that occurred last year have led to preliminary investigation reports being made to the police.

“Yes, they are made as needed,” he acknowledges.

According to STT’s information, there are no pending investigation requests related to natural berry pickers in the police departments of Lapland or Eastern Finland, which were recorded last year.

Last until 2018, most of the berry pickers recruited from Thailand arrived in Finland with Schengen tourist visas, which allowed them to stay in the country and collect berries for a maximum of three months. Due to problems in the field, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suspended the reception of visa applications in Thailand in March of this year. For this harvest season, companies can recruit pickers from abroad for employment, in which case they come to Finland with an employee’s residence permit.

According to Suorsa, the employment relationship does not necessarily solve all the problems that have arisen in the sector, which is also evidenced by the fact that a lot of deficiencies were found in the inspections of employment relationships last year.

“However, if the natural berry picker is employed, we then supervise the employment”, in which case we still have several methods at our disposal to deal with the deficiencies revealed in the inspections.

Questions evokes where the pickers will arrive this year.

“Now we don’t know which pickers are coming to us. In previous years, they have mainly been from Thailand, and the socioeconomic status has been weaker in the country of origin. There has been illiteracy and lack of language skills, and Finnish society has also not been known. This has been one of the central problems”, Suorsa sums up.

According to Isohätälä, the announcement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs came too late and makes it impossible for the pickers to arrive in Finland. Isohätälä feels that they have not received sufficient instructions for their activities from the authorities in recent years. This year, Tessacraft does not employ berry pickers at all.

“Now let’s close the doors. This state is crazy,” the man acknowledges.