Foreign labour inspection in Finland: what the inspector checks and what failure costs

Supervision of foreign labour in Finland belongs to the occupational safety and health authority, which operates within the Regional State Administrative Agencies. An inspection can be carried out with no prior notice. The inspector compares the people present at the workplace with the records the employer is obliged to keep under the Aliens Act 301/2004. A missing record of the right to work is a failure in its own right.

What the inspector asks to see

The Aliens Act 301/2004 places two separate duties on the employer, and they are routinely confused. The first is verification: the employer has to establish the worker's right to work before the work begins, not when the inspector is at the gate. The second is retention: the employer has to keep records of the foreign nationals in its employ and the ground on which each of them works, for inspection by the occupational safety and health authority.

In practice the inspector asks for a list of the people on site, the residence permit or other ground for the right to work of each person, the employment contracts and the payroll records. These are compared with each other and with what the employer has reported to the Finnish Immigration Service. Migri states at migri.fi/en/for-employers that the employer is responsible for reporting the terms of employment in the Enter Finland for Employers service. That report is the reference point for the inspection, not a formality that expires with the application.

Three findings recur. The first is a right to work checked once during recruitment with no follow up on the expiry date, so the worker continues on a lapsed permit. The second is a change of duties: the permit was granted for one occupational field and the worker was moved to another without a new permit. The third is a gap between the salary paid and the terms reported, covered in the post on the salary requirement and collective agreement.

Two authorities, two consequences

Supervision runs on two tracks that proceed independently. The occupational safety and health authority (tyosuojelu.fi) handles the administrative side: it issues an inspection report, requires the defects to be corrected and follows up on the correction. The criminal track runs separately, because chapter 47 of the Criminal Code 39/1889 makes the use of unauthorised foreign labour a punishable act. One inspection can therefore produce a correction order and a criminal report at the same time.

Two of those consequences carry published figures. Migri states at migri.fi/en/if-an-employer-neglects-their-obligations that an employer who has hired a person staying in the country illegally is liable for a financial sanction of 1,250 to 37,530 euros, imposed by Migri under the Employment Contracts Act, and that the employer may also be required to cover the cost of returning that worker. The same page sets out the second sanction: Migri can decide to refrain from granting work based residence permits for that employer, and such a decision runs from three to twelve months. For a company with a hiring plan the second is the heavier of the two, because it closes the route rather than pricing it. An application filed for that employer during the period receives a negative decision on that ground alone.

The rest of the cost rarely arrives as a single payment. It arrives as three items at once. The first is the retroactive wage claim, calculated against the collective agreement for the whole employment relationship. The second is the production stoppage while the worker cannot continue until the permit situation is fixed. The third is the weight the employer's earlier conduct carries in later applications for the same company. The third item lasts longest and is the hardest to repair, because it does not end when the inspection report is signed off.

Preparing for an inspection in advance

Preparation is documentation, not explanation on the day. Keep one file per foreign worker containing the ground for the right to work, its validity period, the employment contract and the report submitted to Migri. Set a reminder at least three months before a permit expires, because an extension is not processed in a week and continuity of the right to work depends on when the application was filed.

Name one person who knows the file and can produce it the same day. The occupational safety and health authority inspects without prior notice, so the material has to be reachable when the managing director or the payroll clerk is on leave. Store it so that it can be produced at the site rather than only from the head office archive, because the inspection happens where the work happens.

Subcontracting is where a careful employer is still exposed. Subcontractors' workers on the site are part of the inspection even though they are not on the client's payroll. Agree in writing that the subcontractor supplies the same evidence of the right to work, and check it yourself rather than relying on an assurance. The permit chain that precedes all of this is set out in the employed person permit and availability consideration, and accommodation duties in the post on accommodation for migrant workers.

An inspection is part of using foreign labour in Finland rather than an exception to it. An employer whose documents are in order spends a few hours on it. An employer who assembles the file after the request spends weeks, and answers questions along the way that would otherwise never have been asked.