Ministry wants to lower foreign labor salary rules
Rules for hiring foreign labor will be relaxed under new plans proposed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Companies could employ 1,300–2,500 workers if they earn at least the Estonian average salary, depending on the economic outlook.
Foreign workers can be brought to Estonia outside the quota as long as they earn at least one and a half times the average salary. However, there is a shortage of skilled workers whose salary would be between one and one and a half times the average salary.
"Bench operators, chemical engineers, food technologists, and builders of wooden and metal structures earn an average gross monthly salary of €2,000+ in Estonia. This is definitely not about mass migration or bringing in cheap labor," Minister of Economy and Industry Erkki Keldo (Reform) said.
"We have this issue in Estonia with gross average salaries ranging from one to one and a half times the national average, or between €2,000 and €3,000. This is the capability these sectors are able to pay," he added.
The ministry wants to link the health of the economy to the size of the foreign workforce.
"Under normal circumstances, we are talking about approximately 1,000 to 1,300 additional skilled workers. When the economy performs better, these same export-oriented industries require even more labor, which increases the demand to around 2,000 to 2,500 people," Keldo said.
Roman Vinartšuk, advisor to the board of shipbuilding company BLRT Grupp, said simplifying the rules will benefit the industry. Approximately a quarter of the company's employees are from abroad.
He stressed the importance of regional competitiveness: "Our neighbors and countries in the region are still more flexible than Estonia. Finland has no salary requirement, Lithuania has no quotas, Poland has its own currency, etc. If all our neighbors take a more flexible approach to foreign labor, allowing them to work significantly more easily, and we remain constrained by restrictions, it is clear that our competitiveness will decline."
SEB economic analyst Mihkel Nestor said there is no simple fix for restoring Estonia's manufacturing industry. Relaxing labor rules will not solve all the problems.
"When we look at Estonia's manufacturing industry as a whole, it has been a declining sector, with its contribution to employment and the overall economy continuously on a downward trend. I fear that simply making it a bit easier to bring in foreign labor will not significantly change the broader picture of the industry," he said.
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Editor: Merili Nael, Helen Wright
Source: Aktuaalne kaamera
