Politics vs economics
That has been a familiar theme across the four countries, where the economic case for foreign labour has not translated into a political consensus for such an influx. Governments and employers might recognise the need for workers, but concerns about wages, competition for jobs and immigration have made recruitment politically contentious.
While having to accommodate the “Czech first” stance of its coalition partner, the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) movement, the ruling ANO party of Prime Minister Andrej Babis has vowed to “look for nurses in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan” and – more generally speaking – bring in 100,000 qualified foreigners by 2030.
“The current 942,000 foreign workers in the Czech Republic are still far below market potential,” ANO stated, with the ruling party planning to reduce the administrative burden, simplify the recognition of foreign diploma and certificates, digitise the entire process, and shorten permit deliveries to 30 days for highly qualified employees and 60 days for medium and low-skilled workers.
And while Czech employers and business associations have overall welcomed such plans, they have also warned of the risks to focus solely on high-skilled labour.
“Speed and predictability are crucial because Czech companies are competing for skilled workers with companies in Germany, Poland and other European countries,” Sotona of the Czech Chamber of Commerce tells BIRN.
“This is not a choice between making better use of domestic labour and labour migration. The Czech Republic needs to do both,” he says. “The objective is not uncontrolled migration, but the opposite: a legal, transparent and predictable system that enables companies to recruit workers whom they objectively cannot find on the domestic labour market.”
Across the border, “foreigners today are not just a supplement, but an essential part of the [Slovak] labour market,” according to Jakub Zagora, an analyst at the Kosice IT Valley in eastern Slovakia. “At the same time, however, we see that the demand for workers still significantly exceeds the supply.”
Obstacles to hiring foreign workers are many, ranging from uncertainty and bureaucratic hurdles to integrating them over the long term, to laborious permits procedures and enduring anti-foreigner sentiment among the population.
About two-thirds of Slovak employees see foreigners as a potential threat to their own jobs, and three-quarters worry their employment hinders overall wage growth, according to a JobsIndex survey. “Employers still see more problems and obstacles than benefits in importing workers from abroad,” assessed Martin Szabo, a labour market expert at Alma Career Slovakia.
Hungary’s restrictions have brought the tension between politics and economic needs sharply into focus. Since the government stopped issuing residence permits to people arriving under guest-worker contracts, employers have warned of difficulties filling vacancies and delays to investment. The door remains open to those applying for a so-called “residence permit for the purpose of employment”, but this is a more complicated and lengthy process, often taking nine to 12 months.
“Companies are already feeling the consequences and complaining about the lack of workers from third countries,” says Kalmar of BusinessHungary.
The organisation has been negotiating with the government to find a solution. Some urgently needed investments are already being delayed as companies are unsure whether they will be able to find enough suitably qualified workers.
The debate intensified during the summer when the owner of Master Good, one of Hungary’s largest agrifood companies, threatened not to proceed with a 120-billion-forint investment, worth about 330 million euros, in a new meat-processing plant if guest workers were not allowed into the country.
Critics accused the company of seeking to keep wages down, arguing that foreign workers, who are often willing to work longer hours than Hungarians, drive down pay. Yet Master Good’s owner, Laszlo Barany, countered that there were jobs for which the company simply could not find Hungarian workers. “There are shifts starting at 02:00 in the night, and the temperature in the processing plant is under 10 degrees Celsius all day,” he told Telex.hu. The company has employed guest workers from the Philippines for years to fill those positions.
Kalmar argues that Hungarian and guest workers are often not alternatives to one another. “In many cases, employing guest workers for certain jobs serves the interests of Hungarian workers,” he says. If there are no food couriers, he explains, a cook’s job could be at risk; if there are no workers at the end of an assembly line, an engineer might also lose their job.
The claims that foreign workers earn more than Hungarians are dismissed by Kalmar and, he says, is legally impossible. He acknowledges, however, that in some cases where a company has had to lay off workers, those dismissed were mostly Hungarian, while workers from third countries were retained. “They simply performed better,” he says.
A survey conducted by HR company WHC found that 70 per cent of medium-sized and large Hungarian companies could not imagine operating without foreign workers. The same survey found scepticism about the government’s plans to bring 300,000-400,000 so-called inactive Hungarians back into the labour market.
The problem with this proposed reserve is that people who are unemployed or economically inactive do not necessarily have the right skills, live in the right places or want the jobs on offer. “The problem is that this reserve usually does not match companies’ needs, either geographically or in terms of skills or motivation,” Kalmar explains.
Poland’s experience illustrates a related difficulty: even when migrants are available, employers cannot assume they will remain in the jobs that are hardest to fill. In research involving employers in agriculture and hospitality, Kaczmarczyk’s team found that businesses had stopped advertising some jobs in Polish altogether because nobody responded.
In agriculture, peak season can mean six or seven days a week and 10- or 12-hour shifts – conditions few Polish workers are willing to accept. Foreign labour has filled much of that gap, but workers who settle and integrate may eventually move into more attractive employment.
Source: balkaninsight.com
