Supervision of the use of foreign labour revealed bogus self-employment and the vulnerable position of students

In 2025, the occupational safety and health authority carried out more than 1,800 inspections of companies using foreign labour. There were many shortcomings in the minimum terms of employment, such as pay and in the record of working hours. Masking employment as self-employment has become more common. This information is available in the recent report Supervision of the use of foreign labour in 2025.

Shortcomings in pay, record of working hours and the right to work

Last year, the occupational safety and health authority carried out over 1,800 inspections of the use of foreign labour. The inspections supervised the right of foreign workers to work in Finland and the fulfilment of the minimum terms of employment. In about one in ten inspections, a worker was found who did not have a permit to perform the work in question in Finland.

Shortcomings in pay were discovered in nearly 40% of the inspections that supervised the minimum terms of employment. The shortcomings ranged from a single unpaid evening pay supplement to situations where the worker had not been paid at all. In most cases, the occupational safety and health authority obligates the employer to correct the shortcomings found in pay. In more serious cases, the occupational safety and health authority also submits a report to the police.

More than one in two inspections revealed shortcomings in working hours documents. The correctness of pay could not always be supervised if there had not been any record of working hours or the hours actually worked by the worker had not been shown.

Based on observations made in the supervision of the use of foreign labour, the occupational safety and health authority made 10 reports to the police of work-related exploitation. The offences were extortion and extortion-like work discrimination.

Students vulnerable to work-related exploitation

The number of students coming to Finland from third countries has increased significantly in recent years, according to the European Migration Network's statistical publications ‘Key Figures on Immigration’. According to supervision findings, many students lack the financial resources to live in Finland and they have very inadequate knowledge of the rules of working life in Finland. This puts many students in a vulnerable position on the labour market.

Employer obligations were circumvented in different ways

As in recent years, situations were found in supervision where the employer and the worker had agreed on unpaid on-the-job training, in which the worker worked unpaid in return for a promise of being hired by the company after the training period. In addition, many cases were found where there was a suspicion that employment had been masked as self-employment in an attempt to circumvent statutory payments payable by the employer.