The Bitter Business of Berries PART IV: The embittered experience of berry picking

In this final part of our four-part story on berry pickers in Finland, the Thai and Finnish governments try to find a way to ensure guarantees for Thai berry pickers. There is, in fact, a decade of issues that have not been adequately addressed. Finnish courts have provided some relief. The Thai police are bringing wrong-doers to account in Thailand. Jenpreeya and her husband have received some justice–just enough for Jenpreeya to open a massage shop in Nong Bua Lamphu. Yet the memory of her time in Finland still brings a bitter taste to her mouth.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Labor Minister Suchat Chomklin announced that Thai workers had as a whole generated an income of nearly 800 million baht from picking berries in Finland.

In September last year, Suchat met with Tuula Haatainen, the Finnish Minister of Employment, with the goal of raising the standards…