Fast track to integration

The Swedish labour market partners Hotel & Restaurant Workers' Union (HRF) and the Swedish employers' Association Visita in collaboration with public authorities have launched a new project aimed to integrate immigrants educated as chefs or with experience from cooking and catering quickly into the labour market.

It is important to take advantage of the skills and competences among the refugees that have been arriving to Sweden recently. Normally it take about 7-10 years for a refugee to fully integrate into the Swedish labour market.

Shortage of skilled chefs

The tourist industry in Sweden has been growing at a fast pace in the past 5 years and the industry has been experiencing shortage of skilled and experienced chefs in Sweden. The sector estimate that the hotel and restaurant sector needs employee around 5000 skilled or experienced chefs.

However, according to unemployment statistics there are many skilled and experienced chefs born outside Sweden that are registered as unemployed. According to the official unemployment statistics in Sweden around 2700 individuals with experience from the hotel and restaurant sector are registered as unemployed, whereof around 300 have skills or experience as chefs.

Validation program adjusted to immigrants

One of the reason they are not being employed is lack of certain skill that the industry requires such as the Swedish language. The project is based on a validation process, that HRF and Visita have been developing for couple of years in Malmö, where vocational competences and skills within the sector can be validated. As there is already a validation system in place for chefs, which can easily be translated and adjusted for use for refugees and migrants,

The validation process takes place in various settings,where individual skills are evaluated and validated resulting in a qualification recognised by the sector. If the individual does not fully qualify an individually based educational and training plan will be drawn up, eventually leading to a qualification.

The initiative named fast track to integration will at the beginning only apply to chefs, but at later stages the validation tools will be developed to cover all professions within the hotel and restaurant sector. The future plan is to transfer the knowledge and experience from the validation project to other sectors. The model focuses primarily on immigrants and refugees that have been in Sweden for less than 24 months.

Unions can make a difference

The initiative illustrates how the social partners can be tremendously beneficial to asylum seekers, already during their refugee status. 'We call it fast track to integration', said Therese Guovelin president of HRF and EFFAT, when addressing the ETUC's congress last week, and added: 'If a refugee says he/she used to work as a chef, we assess relevant skills throughout two weeks in a work place with a collective bargaining agreements in the asylum seekers' own language, so that equal pay and conditions are also respected. If extra training is needed then it is carried out at the expenses of the government.

The European trade unions have been discussing the refugee crisis and how the social partners can contribute to imminent crisis. It is clear that similar solutions can be found, if jointly discussed on European, national or plant level. Best practices and more social dialogue is what trade unions need to act as a key player for the mitigation of this crisis.