About the machine

About the machine

Etelä-Suomen Sanomat published (27.1.2018) a Finnish hairdresser´s opinion, or more of a cry for a help, on 27.1.2018.  The paper lets professionals from different fields reveal the "untold  secrets" or their work. This secret, if it is such to somebody, has the headline Necessity Entrepreneurship is wrong.

A screenshot of the headline the ESS published on 27.1.2019

The unidentified writer sees that it is the machine, the Finnish system, has made it impossible for microentrepreneurs to hire people. Hairdressers are forced to rent chairs in their salons at a high price. According to the writer, young professionals are therefore forced out from the industry just to start working on the black market. The writer worries about the misbehavior towards young professionals and about he jealoysy that controls the athmosphere on the industry. Lowering the taxes would be the solution, the text says.

Having been there by myself, the text was not a nice read. It is sad to say, but the struggles microentrepreneurs, vast majority of them women, face within the industry, are known on pan-european level. In Finland, small steps towards health and well-being on the hair and beauty industry are being made for example through a project First Things First, co-funded by European Union.

This project organized a Learning, Teaching and Training meeting hosted by a Mallorcan project partner IES Borja de Mol in October 2018.  Dr Iosunes Salinas Bueno talked with us about the Machine.

People struggling with their work were earlier led into thinking that the work is just how it is, unchangeable, and the humans are to handle it.  The machine does not change, but the human can do more. Times have changed but still this way of thinking can be recognized in, for example in young hairdressers thought "I must pay high rent for the chair because the owner has to earn her living too". 

We, who have the priviledge to educate and guide the future workers at schools and at salons, must work really hard to teach the young professionals to think the other way round. We need to lead them to recognize the machine and its behaviour. Then the young, rich in their ideas, can come up with an idea how to work without the machine bothering them too much. Or, they can grow to be the ones who build the new machine.

An artwork at a Paasitorni building in Helsinki reminded the blog writer about the machine. 

Lowering the taxes might do little bit good but as the idea is not likely to come true,  and as it would not take care of some other issues, other ideas should be found to beat the machine. Professionals on the hair and beauty industry should combine their forces and work together, in many cases, under the same roof and under the same name.   I would be very happy to work with such case, if there is anybody interested.