A new report has revealed that ethnic discrimination is not widespread in the Finnish workplace. The news comes via a survey conducted last month by the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), which revealed that only around eight percent of respondents had been in the presence of workplace discrimination. Similarly, more than three quarters of shop stewards said that a worker’s ethnic background has no effect on their presence in the workplace.
However, the report also revealed that Finnish enterprise has done little to promote equal treatment of ethnic workers, with only 20 percent of businesses having such schemes in place.
Eve Kyntäjä said on behalf of the SAK, “The results are very positive. It is, though, worrying that there is very little activity aimed at countering discrimination in the workplace. In fact, it sounds realistic that nearly half of respondents consider on the job relations between native Finns and immigrants as good, and that the other half takes the view that sometimes there are misunderstandings,” the YLE news agency reports.
Discriminatory incidents against workers with an ‘immigrant background’ that were reported included the use of derogatory comments, bullying, excluding individuals from workplace circles and not informing ethnic workers of work-related events, according to the survey.