Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

POLITICS

Election Q&A: How do you want to decrease unemployment among foreigners?

The Local asked Sweden's eight parties to answer a number of questions relevant to internationals living and working in Sweden.

Published: 7 September 2018 18:06 CEST
Election Q&A: How do you want to decrease unemployment among foreigners?
The Swedish Public Employment Agency. A familiar sight to many job hunters. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

There is a significant gap in unemployment between native Swedes and foreign-born workers. Even skilled international job hunters report that it can be difficult to break into the Swedish labour market.

We asked the parties: How do you want to decrease unemployment among foreign-born residents in Sweden? Do you believe that foreigners are being discriminated against in the jobs market?

Click here to read more questions and answers that matter to YOU.

The Social Democrat Party

“Yes, there is discrimination. More foreign-born people are entering the labour market at a faster rate. For some groups it is now taking half the time to get a job. In the Swedish labour market it is important to learn Swedish and to have an education. That's why the Social Democrats want to boost opportunities for education so that more people can get and keep a job. It is also important to increase knowledge and work through the attitudes of the country's employers. We as Social Democrats strongly believe in the power of positive examples.”


The Social Democrats are Sweden's biggest party and part of the centre-left coalition government. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

The Moderate Party

“Those who have recently come to our country have to quickly get into work and be able to support themselves. We then have to have stronger incentives to work. That's why the Moderates will cut taxes for everyone who works, and in particular for those on lower incomes. We also want a benefit ceiling, so that total benefits are never higher than the salary for a real job. By introducing entry-level jobs – a kind of apprenticeship – we want to give more new arrivals the opportunity to get their first job.”

“The fact that discrimination occurs in the labour market is well established, but at the same time, studies show that the fact that foreign-born people work to a lesser extent [than native-born Swedes] is primarily due to a difference in skills and language skills.”


The Moderates are Sweden's second-biggest party and part of the right-wing bloc. Photo: Stina Stjernkvist/TT

The Sweden Democrat Party 

“We do not think structural discrimination exists in the labour market, however there may be individual cases. The Sweden Democrats have no special solutions for foreign-born residents; the same rules apply to them as to everyone else in Sweden, i.e. get an education and make yourself attractive in the labour market.”


The Sweden Democrats are Sweden's third biggest party and run on an anti-immigration platform. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

The Green Party 

“The time taken to get established on the Swedish labour market has decreased, it has almost halved since 2007, thanks to shrinking unemployment figures and good government policies.”

“The Arbetsförmedling – the Swedish public employment service – is focusing its efforts to help those farthest from the labour market to find work. Discrimination is a problem on the Swedish labour market, rules and regulations exist to rectify this problem but an important aspect is stronger norms among companies hiring. The Equality Ombudsman (DO) is a government agency that works on behalf of the Swedish parliament and government to promote equal rights and opportunities and to combat discrimination. There are a number of different educational routes, vocational training and work support programs to help foreigners to improve their skill sets and make it easier for them to find work. Establishment jobs is one such reform that the government has introduced. While on the job it is possible to continue study SFI and other suitable vocational training with the agreement of the employer.”

 


The Green Party is part of Sweden's centre-left coalition government. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

The Centre Party

“Discrimination occurs and needs to be eliminated. Yet discrimination is not necessarily the biggest hurdle for foreign-born residents to enter the labour market. The greatest challenge is to make people who haven’t previously held a job in Sweden more attractive on the labour market. The thresholds to entering the labour market need to be lowered and the costs of hiring must be reduced.”

“The Centre Party, together with the other parties in the “Alliance” (Moderates, Liberals, Christian Democrats) have jointly proposed the introduction of (a new form of) entry-level jobs. The entry-level jobs is a new employment form which means that new arrivals, as well as youths who don’t hold a high school diploma, are given the opportunity to take a job with 70 percent of the normal starting salary, while the employer is relieved from paying any social fees. The employment is valid for a maximum of three years.”

“Running a business is a way for many to establish themselves in Sweden.”

“We also want to move the responsibility of establishment from the Swedish Public Employment Service to the municipalities and civic society to get a more functioning establishment in place with stronger ties to the local labour market.”

“It’s also important that foreign-borns quickly can get access to the right education. Both higher education for those that need it, but also vocational and complementary programmes.”


The Centre Party is part of the centre-right bloc in parliament. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT

The Left Party

“The most important step to reduce unemployment among foreign-born Swedes is to reduce overall unemployment – we need policies for full employment. That's why our economic policy focuses on increasing employment in the private as well as public sector by investing in housing construction, green infrastructure and more employees in the welfare sector.”

“Education is key to entering the Swedish labour market. Investment in qualification programmes is therefore important, but it is not good enough. We are strongly against all proposals for lower starting salaries for new arrivals.”

“Today, one in five foreign-born residents is in insecure employment. Discrimination against foreign residents has been well surveyed. So-called correspondence tests – where you send off two identical job applications where only the name is different – effectively demonstrate how discrimination works when it comes to hiring.”

“The results of such tests in Sweden are frightening. All in all, a person with a Swedish-sounding name has a 50 percent greater chance of being called for an interview than a person with a name from the Middle East or North Africa. In some studies, this difference is 100 percent. Anonymized application procedures are one way of dealing with this problem, but it is not enough. It also has to cost more to discriminate, with harsher punishment for those employers who do discriminate. In order to really get to grips with discrimination, systematic and long-term work is needed. The Left Party wants to appoint a crisis commission against discrimination that will take advantage of extensive academic knowledge of issues of discrimination and occupational safety and formulate specific and foresighted policies.”


The Left Party is part of the left-wing bloc in parliament. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

The Liberal Party

Foreign-born people are today affected by discrimination and the structural problems in the Swedish labour market. The biggest problem with the Swedish labour market is that the thresholds are too high. A Swedish secondary-school diploma is often required today to get your first job. That hits many new arrivals very hard, especially those with low education. It has to be cheaper and easier to hire and more basic jobs are needed. Then more new arrivals can get their first job, their own salary and more freedom.


The Liberals are part of the centre-right bloc in parliament. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

The Christian Democrat Party

“The Swedish language is key to integrating into Swedish society. Through language, everyone is handed knowledge of common rights, duties and opportunities. Quality teaching in Swedish is therefore crucial for the individual and benefits society overall. We want to implement attendance requirements for Swedish courses from day one, and include information about society with a focus on laws and values, combined with a requirement to be available for work. We know that discrimination exists and this shall not be tolerated. This is very important.”


The Christian Democrats are part of the right-wing bloc in parliament. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won’t spark a government crisis

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here. 

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

SHOW COMMENTS