Many foreigners in fishing industry

Foto: Svein Reppe

The dependence on foreign employees is revealed in a Norut report prepared for the Fishery and Aquaculture Industry Research Fund.

A major finding in the report is that more than one-third (34 percent) of the labour force in the fish processing industry originates from overseas.

Recruiting

The report states that the companies would have preferred to recruit staff locally, but are unable to achieve that.

”Recruiting is a huge problem. If we did not have access to the foreign labour, we would never have seen the coastal communities we see today. Without the imported labour there would not be much light in the houses along the Norwegian coast,” says the Head of Information at the Norwegian Seafood Federation, Øyvind André Haram, to the newspaper Aftenposten.

The fisheries industry cannot manage without the foreign labour. Research Scientist Per-Arne Emaus indicates that the requirement for foreign labour is unlikely to reduce in the future.

Research Scientist Marit Aure points out that the processing plants are large places of employment:

“These cornerstone companies are of major significance to the local community in which they are located. The companies become a foundation and contribute to many other wider economic benefits in the local community. The foreigners are extremely important in order to maintain the coastal communities we have today.”

Fish further processed overseas

In 2009, a total of 9781 people were employed in the fish processing industry in Norway. This is 25 percent lower than 15 years ago. Just 19 percent of Norwegian fish is processed in Norway.

Norway’s high level of costs is the reason that such a low proportion of the fish is processed in Norway. Enormous volumes of Norwegian fish are exported to countries including Poland and China for further processing by far cheaper labour forces.

The Project Manager has been Elisabeth Angell, Norut Alta. Research scientists Marit Aure, Norut Tromsø and Per-Arne Emaus, Norut Alta, have participated in the project.

Report (In Norwegian language only)
Kompetansebehov og rekruttering i fiskeforedlingsindustrien - med fokus på utenlandsk arbeidskraft

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