Sweden Bucks Trend on Immigrant Labor
An Open Invitation While Other Nations Guard Their Jobs

STOCKHOLM -- Sweden is bucking the immigration trend in Europe by opening its labor market to foreign workers of all skill levels without quotas, despite an economic recession and rising unemployment.

Sweden's approach goes beyond the more cautious trend in Europe and most other developed economies, which generally seek to attract a limited number of highly skilled workers. Britain, for example, recently announced a new points system for assessing would-be immigrants. That system streamlines old immigration channels but raises higher hurdles for all but the most highly skilled immigrants from outside the European Union.

On Monday, Sweden begins implementing new rules that will give companies greater ability to recruit the foreigners they want to employ. The government hopes the new regulations will help the country deal with labor shortages in the near term and also support an aging population further down the line.

International employment experts said they will be closely watching to asses how the new rules work at a time when economic growth is stalling and unemployment climbs.

"People are going to be watching the Brits, who are putting everything into a point system, and the Swedes, who are doing something entirely different," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. People "will be watching to see which system gives better labor market outcomes, both for the employer but also for the immigrants themselves."

While no parties in Sweden's Parliament object to labor immigration, the new approach has been criticized by unions and some left-wing politicians for threatening Sweden's famed social model -- a system of strong worker rights and generous welfare benefits that has been a blueprint for much of post-war Europe -- by giving too much power to individual firms at the expense of Swedish workers.

Outside of Parliament, a variety of fringe groups and right-wing parties also object, mainly because of their opposition to immigrants in general.

Swedish Migration and Asylum Policy Minister Tobias Billström, a chief architect of the new rules, maintains that the policy will have a significant influence on those who want to come to Sweden to work and on Swedish companies struggling to find labor.

The new policy "will be crucial" for supporting Sweden's economy in coming years, Mr. Billström said in an interview late last month. "We can foresee that we will be very heavily hit if our industry cannot get the correct amount of workers and the correct competence in the workforce."

He said he feels the policy also will help support the economy in the longer term. Sweden, a country of 9.2 million, likely will see the portion of its population aged 65 or over climb in the coming decade, shrinking the country's labor force and straining public finances for pensions and health care for the elderly.

Swedish companies are obliged to post vacancies for two weeks in an employment-agency registry that reaches all 27 EU member countries, along with Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, before offering a job to someone not from one of these countries. This is one of Sweden's obligations as a member of the EU.

As of Monday, the Swedish Public Employment Agency is no longer required to examine, in each individual case, whether the need for labor can be met through recruitment in Sweden.

The employer's assessment of its needs "will thus be the deciding factor," the government said in a statement announcing the new rules, which it approved last month.

Anders Thambert, board chairman of Stockholm-based Indiska AB, an India-inspired retailer of fashion and interior products and a restaurant operator, welcomed the new policies. He said he is looking to hire chefs from India for the company's restaurants.
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Sweden's Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, the country's largest employers' federation, also firmly supports the new policy.

But Monika Arvidsson, an economist at Landsorganisation, an umbrella organization of Swedish trade unions, said she is concerned that the more flexible policy will give companies a way to drive down wages and working conditions. "The risk of subjective judgments is that appointments are made according to lowest wage levels instead of best competence," she said.

Mr. Billström said measures currently in place to safeguard working conditions will still apply under the new rules. Companies will still have to show to the Swedish authorities that a contract to a foreign worker meets Swedish industry requirements, established in collective-bargaining agreements between unions and employers, on salary and social insurance.

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