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IMMIGRATION

Migrant workers reportedly among victims of fatal elevator crash in Stockholm

The five people who died this week when a construction elevator crashed 20 metres to the ground in Sundbyberg, north of Stockholm, came from Sweden, Russia, Ukraine and Afghanistan, writes Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

Migrant workers reportedly among victims of fatal elevator crash in Stockholm
An elevator crashed 20 metres at a construction site in Sundbyberg on Monday. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Relatives named one of the victims as Anton Runsvik, 26, from Sundsvall.

“Anton had the biggest heart both on and off the rink. He was a humble, kind and calm guy, wise and mature for his age,” Aftonbladet quotes his local floorball club as writing.

The names of the other four have not been publicly revealed and they are still being formally identified, but Aftonbladet reports that there’s much that indicates that one of them was a young man from Afghanistan, who arrived as a child refugee a decade ago.

“He’s been working in the building industry and is now missing. Police have retrieved DNA samples from his apartment, among other things from his toothbrush,” an unnamed source told the tabloid.

A Russian national in his 50s, who first came to Sweden in 2011 and received a Swedish residence permit in 2017, is also believed to have died.

“He loved his work and liked Sweden a lot,” a friend of his told Aftonbladet.

The other two men came from Ukraine, according to the syndicalist trade union SAC.

“We have more than 300 Russian-speaking construction workers among our members. Immigrants are not valued as Swedes when it comes to salary, security or safety. If a Swedish builder earns 200 kronor an hour, an immigrant earns 95 kronor,” Pamela Otarola of SAC Stockholm told Aftonbladet.

“Ukrainian builders have been exploited for many years in Sweden. They arrived even before the war and sometimes work without food and pay.”

The construction elevator collapsed at a site for a 14-storey apartment building on Monday morning. Investigations are under way to determine what caused the accident and whether anyone should be held responsible. Some 50 builders were working at the site.

The victims were working for a subcontractor to the main construction company Andersson Company.

A total of 52 people have died in workplace-related accidents in Sweden in 2023, the highest number in a decade.

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WORK PERMITS

Business leaders: Work permit threshold ‘has no place in Swedish labour model’

Sweden's main business group has attacked a proposal to exempt some jobs from a new minimum salary for work permits, saying it is "unacceptable" political interference in the labour model and risks seriously affecting national competitiveness.

Business leaders: Work permit threshold 'has no place in Swedish labour model'

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise said in its response to the government’s consultation, submitted on Thursday afternoon, that it not only opposed the proposal to raise the minimum salary for a work permit to Sweden’s median salary (currently 34,200 kronor a month), but also opposed plans to exempt some professions from the higher threshold. 

“To place barriers in the way of talent recruitment by bringing in a highly political salary threshold in combination with labour market testing is going to worsen the conditions for Swedish enterprise in both the short and the long term, and risks leading to increased fraud and abuse,” the employer’s group said.   

The group, which represents businesses across most of Sweden’s industries, has been critical of the plans to further raise the salary threshold for work permits from the start, with the organisation’s deputy director general, Karin Johansson, telling The Local this week that more than half of those affected by the higher threshold would be skilled graduate recruits Swedish businesses sorely need.   

But the fact that it has not only rejected the higher salary threshold, but also the proposed system of exemptions, will nonetheless come as a blow to Sweden’s government, and particular the Moderate Party led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, which has long claimed to be the party of business. 

The confederation complained that the model proposed in the conclusions of the government inquiry published in February would give the government and political parties a powerful new role in setting salary conditions, undermining the country’s treasured system of collective bargaining. 

The proposal for the higher salary threshold, was, the confederation argued, “wrong in principle” and did “not belong in the Swedish labour market”. 

“That the state should decide on the minimum salary for certain foreign employees is an unacceptable interference in the Swedish collective bargaining model, where the parties [unions and employers] weigh up various needs and interested in negotiations,” it wrote. 

In addition, the confederation argued that the proposed system where the Sweden Public Employment Service and the Migration Agency draw up a list of exempted jobs, which would then be vetted by the government, signified the return of the old system of labour market testing which was abolished in 2008.

“The government agency-based labour market testing was scrapped because of it ineffectiveness, and because it was unreasonable that government agencies were given influence over company recruitment,” the confederation wrote. 

“The system meant long handling times, arbitrariness, uncertainty for employers and employees, as well as an indirect union veto,” it added. “Nothing suggests it will work better this time.” 

For a start, it said, the Public Employment Service’s list of professions was inexact and outdated, with only 179 professions listed, compared to 430 monitored by Statistics Sweden. This was particularly the case for new skilled roles within industries like battery manufacturing. 

“New professions or smaller professions are not caught up by the classification system, which among other things is going to make it harder to recruit in sectors which are important for the green industrial transition,” the confederation warned. 

Rather than implement the proposals outlined in the inquiry’s conclusions, it concluded, the government should instead begin work on a new national strategy for international recruitment. 

“Sweden instead needs a national strategy aimed at creating better conditions for Swedish businesses to be able to attract, recruit and retain international competence.”

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