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Hiring foreigners ‘good for business’: study

Employing foreign workers can mean a boost for businesses in terms of increased trade and competitiveness, a Swedish study has found.

Published: 6 September 2012 13:59 CEST
Hiring foreigners 'good for business': study

According to the report, published on Tuesday in the Swedish journal Ekonomisk Debatt, a typical Swedish manufacturing company can increase export sales by over 2 million kronor ($300,000) by hiring a foreign-born worker.

The study, which is based on on data from 7,000 Swedish manufacturing companies from over a ten-year period, also found that hiring a foreign-born worker can increase imports by 12 percent.

“Our study indicated that employing people from outside of Sweden can help overcome barriers to trade with countries where that migrant comes from,” said researcher Magnus Lodefalk of Örebro University to The Local.

Just one extra percentage point of diversity in the work place equates to 9 percent higher export sales, the study shows.

“As a result, the foreign worker brings more information for the firm in terms of how to do business with that person’s home country, the culture… having more foreign-born workers basically leads to more knowledge.”

Furthermore, Lodefalk explains that the ‘migrant’ workers provide firms with a larger network within which to trade, as the hiring of a foreign worker opens the doors to connections with relatives, friends, and former school mates in their home country.

“It becomes a valuable way to monitor new markets,” Lodefalk explains.

The results of the study could even be used to fight what Lodefalk refers to as potential discrimination in the workforce.

“If you look at foreign-born people in Sweden versus native Swedes, there can be cases of discrimination in the workplace. There is historically a problem of matching work with the level of education,” he said.

In terms of whether the results can be used more widely outside the area of manufacturing, Lodefalk explains that the team was researching uncharted territory and that it would be hard to see where things will go from here.

“We were the first to publish a study on this topic at the level of a firm – it’s deeper and more serious than other similar studies. Now, we can look deeper into our findings and analyze what the results may mean in a broader context,” he told The Local.

Oliver Gee

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WORK

Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil

Switzerland's prestigious Bejart Ballet Lausanne company faces a probe as allegations of drug use, harassment and abuse of power raise the question why nothing apparently changed after an earlier investigation raised similar issues.

Published: 13 June 2021 12:07 CEST
Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil
Bejart Ballet dancers perform at Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, on April 3, 2013. credit: YURI KADOBNOV / AFP

The company, founded by the late legendary French choreographer Maurice Bejart, was placed under audit on June 4 over allegations touching on its “working environment and inappropriate behaviour”.

The Maurice Bejart Foundation announced the audit just a week after revealing that the affiliated Rudra Bejart ballet school had fired its
director and stage manager and suspended all classes for a year due to “serious shortcomings” in management.

While the foundation has revealed few details of the allegations facing the two institutions, anonymous testimonies gathered by trade union
representatives and the media paint a bleak picture.

Swiss public broadcaster RTS reported that a number of unidentified former members of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne (BBL) company had written to the foundation, describing the “omnipresence of drugs, nepotism, as well as psychological and sexual harassment”.

Many of the accusations allegedly focus on Gil Roman, who took the helm of BBL when its founder died in 2007.

Roman did not respond to AFP requests to the foundation or BBL seeking comment.

‘Denigration, humiliation’

The French choreographer faced similar allegations during a secret audit a year later, but was permitted to stay on and continue as before, according to RTS and the union representing the dancers.

“We cannot understand what might have been in that audit that would have allowed them to clear him completely,” Anne Papilloud, head of the SSRS union that represents stage performers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, told AFP.

“The accusations back then were word-for-word the same as today: harassment, denigration, humiliation, insults, temper tantrums, drugs,” she said, citing former company members who had contacted the union in recent weeks and had said they were around during the 2008 audit.

One dancer told RTS on condition of anonymity that it was common for Roman to publicly humiliate dancers who made a misstep, while another said he often asked dancers to bring him marijuana.

“Drugs were part of everyday life at Bejart Ballet,” the broadcaster reported her saying.

Papilloud meanwhile told AFP that the “vast majority of the testimonies I have heard have been about psychological harassment”.

Drug-use had been mentioned, mainly linked to how the drugs “provoked outbursts of anger”, she said.

She said she had also heard a small number of complaints about sexual harassment, although not involving Roman.

‘Terror’

But what stood out most in the dozens of accounts she had heard in recent weeks was the sheer “terror” people described.

Their reaction to what they had been through was “extremely strong”, she said, “almost at the level of post-traumatic stress”.

Papilloud said that as a union representative she had long been aware that BBL was considered a difficult place to work, with low pay compared to the industry standard and little respect for working hours.

But the recent revelations of “an extremely toxic working environment” had come as a shock, she said.

Over 30 current and former BBL members had contacted the union following the upheaval at the Rudra Bejart ballet school, she said.

The school, which halted classes and fired its long-time director Michel Gascard and stage manager Valerie Lacaze, his wife, was reportedly fraught with psychological abuse and tyrannical over-training.

One student described how she had found herself surrounded by teachers and other students who “humiliated and belittled” her, the president of the foundation’s board, Solange Peters, told RTS.

One teacher present at the time reportedly compared the scene to a “lynching”.

The revelations about the school appeared to have “opened a Pandora’s Box”, spurring alleged victims of similar abuse at BBL to come forward, according to Papilloud.

“We have really been inundated,” she said, adding that many hope that “this time, things can change”.

Following close communication with the foundation, the union too is hopeful that the current audit will be handled differently than the last one, with more openness and independence, Papilloud said.

“I think this will not be an audit where things are swept under the carpet.”

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