A few years ago, the main labor force for berry picking in Sweden and Finland were Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, and residents of the Baltic states. Every year at the end of July and beginning of August, thousands of citizens from former Soviet republics came to the European 'forest harvest,' attracted by promises of earning enough for a car in a couple of months. After all, Swedes and Finns had long refused to feed mosquitoes for a meager wage of one and a half to two euros per kilogram of berries.
Most often, Scandinavian adventures turned into drama. Police and locals searched the forests for deceived pickers to send them home at public expense. The jails were filled with foreign marginal elements who, having seen 'the price of a kilo of sweat' in the berry harvest, switched to robbing dachas and stealing cars from locals. Economic growth in Eastern European countries made berry picking in Sweden and Finland unattractive, and the introduction of an income tax on pickers virtually cut off the thin stream of workers from CIS countries. The associations of Scandinavian food producers sounded the alarm: 'Tens of millions of euros are rotting on the vine! The industry is threatened with crisis and mass layoffs!'
The embassies of Sweden and Finland in Russia and Belarus were ordered to issue work visas to pickers in a simplified manner, informing them of the possibility to bypass tax restrictions by hiring into local companies. But such an action yielded weak results. Unexpected salvation came from Thailand. The first teams of stocky dark-skinned pickers arrived in the northern forests, attracted by promises of working on harvesting... oranges. At first, everything went according to the previous scenario: complaints of deception, strikes, repatriation at the expense of the authorities. However, the Thai government announced that it would ban its citizens from traveling abroad if working conditions were not improved and taxes were not abolished. Soon the situation normalized. As a result of the diplomatic scandal, Stockholm and Helsinki gave in: after all, there was nowhere further than Thailand for the Nordic food industry to retreat.
And so, an army-style organized landing of Thai peasants descended into the Scandinavian forests. In Sweden alone this year, out of 5,000 officially registered foreign pickers, half are Thai. It turned out that Asians are born berry pickers. They are used to working at home on rice fields, and therefore break record after record. Many pick more than 100 kg per day, and no one drops below 50 kg. In two months, a Thai earns an average of €7,000. Now the calls for help from Nordic food producers have been replaced by admiring remarks about Asian pickers. 'The Thais have revived and brought the crisis industry to prosperity,' states the Finnish newspaper 'Huvudstadsbladet.'
Alexei SMIRNOV.
Novye Izvestia