Helsinki bus operator recruiting drivers directly from Eastern Europe

Shortage of drivers has led to cancelled departures this autumn; one in three Helsingin Bussiliikenne drivers are now immigrants

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By Emmi Sjöholm
     
      For years now, bus companies operating in and around Helsinki have been struggling to find enough drivers.
      This autumn, as before, there have been cancellations as a result of shortages of personnel behind the wheel.
      Perhaps the biggest difficulties have been experienced by Helsinki’s largest operator, Helsingin Bussiliikenne. Now the company has embarked on an aggressive recruitment drive. HelB is is trying to hire new drivers directly from Eastern Europe, rather than waiting for them to turn up in Finland looking for work.
     
“We have to use any and all means at our disposal, because we are constantly short-handed”, says HelB’s traffic manager Timo Puisto.
      The recruiting of immigrant bus drivers has already made HelB - owned by the City of Helsinki - one of the country’s most multi-national employers. As of now, one in three of the company’s drivers (450 out of a total of 1,300) are foreigners. Nearly 40 nationalities are represented on the roster.
      The first foreign driver joined the HelB payroll in 1990. More and more immigrants have since been hired, though the main influx has only come since 1997.
      According to Puisto, the bulk of the drivers currently undergoing training are migrants.
     
It is hard to persuade Finnish natives into a profession that is neither well-paid nor very secure. From the employees’ perspective it is tough to manage in the Greater Helsinki area on a monthly salary of around EUR 1,750.
      There is another reason for the shortage of willing drivers: routes are put out to tender, and the competition over routes makes for a risk that the services of the operator could suddenly no longer be required.
      “It is quite impossible to get Finnish manpower to work if there is a real chance that the job could vanish in the space of five years or less.”
      Young Finns in particular have no inclination to make a career out of driving a bus.
     
Helsingin Bussiliikenne has employees from almost every corner of the globe. A large number come from the Balkans and the former Yugoslavia, from Estonia, Russia, and various countries in Africa.
      Timo Puisto admits to having initial fears of friction among the workforce. In particular he anticipated that there might be disputes emerging among migrants who came from the diffrent parts of the former Yugoslavia.
      “But the doubts have not materialised. We have had surprisingly little in the way of conflict”, he says.
      Hannu Toikkanen, the chief shop steward of JHL, the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors, confirms this: there are few arguments.
      “Of course there is going to be a certain amount of disgreement generated by cultural differences. But ultimately there are more difficulties arising out of communication problems, because the drivers are only required to be able to speak a modicum of Finnish”, says Toikkanen.
      JHL is a very large umbrella union, with nearly a quarter of a million members, created by the merging two years ago of six sizeable unions in the state, municipal, and private sectors.
     
Thus far at least, there are very few foreign drivers in the capital’s Metro or tram traffic. Elina Tartia, Head of Human Resources at Helsinki City Transport (HKL), assumes the primary reason is that the HKL drivers are expected to have an excellent grasp of Finnish.
      “The driver has to be able to communicate with the command centre and others by radio. You can always leave a bus by the side of the road to wait if something goes wrong and you need help or a tow-truck, but that won’t do with a Metro train. You can’t simply leave it on the tracks”, says Tartia.
      Only a couple of dozen of HKL’s 400 drivers are of immigrant background.
      Tartia says that finding suitable staff is made a shade more difficult by the fact that tram and metro systems are rather less common than bus services around the world. There are not that many who would have had the opportunity back home to get behind the controls of a 35-tonne articulated city tram.
     
Even though it is possible to become qualified as a bus driver in many or most countries, according to Timo Puisto at HelB the bus drivers they take on often have to be retrained in Finland.
      A licence to drive a passenger bus issued outside the European Union is not valid in Finland as such.
      Despite this hurdle, it is relatively easy for immigrants to become bus drivers hereabouts.
      JHL’s Toikkanen says that the future also looks bright for migrant workers.
      “It all depends on just how many immigrants find their way to Finland. They are often directed to this sort of work, because the job vacancies are definitely there."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 29.10.2007

More on this subject:
 FACTFILE: HelB handles nearly half of the bus lines in Helsinki

Links:
  Helsingin Bussiliikenne
  Helsinki City Transport
  JHL - The Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors

EMMI SJÖHOLM / Helsingin Sanomat
emmi.sjoholm@hs.fi