Dangerous consequences of record levels of employment of foreigners
In 2014, district labor offices registered more than 387 thousand declarations of intention to hire foreigners, an increase of 64 percent compared to the previous year. Despite the fact that under this procedure Polish employers can hire citizens from 6 countries without needing a work permit, the predominant nationality is Ukrainian citizens. Among all permits issued last year, almost 373 thousand concerned Ukrainians.
“The protracted war in Ukraine, due to Russian aggression, has a negative impact on the national economy and leads to the devaluation of the national currency. Migration to neighboring countries is becoming one of the important ways to patch up household budgets. Some men also see migration as an escape from mobilization into the army. The increase in the supply of potential workers from Ukraine leads to the fact that potential migrants themselves do not pay special attention to employment conditions, because only the availability of work is important, and employers, knowing the current situation of migrants from Ukraine, are also in no hurry to comply with all the rules when hiring an employee. This situation may lead to the expansion of the shadow sphere in the Polish labor market and the deterioration of the situation of labor migrants,” emphasizes Myroslava Keryk, President of the Foundation “Our Choice,” which acts on behalf of Ukrainian citizens in Poland.
The growing influx of labor from Ukraine is dictated not only by the current geopolitical situation in Ukraine, but also by the better state of the Polish economy. Growth can be observed especially in industries characterized by high labor intensity, particularly during seasonal work. The sector employing the largest number of foreigners remains agriculture – 2014 ended with more than 178 thousand declarations of intention to work, the majority of which (176 thousand) concern Ukrainian citizens. This is 50 percent more compared to the previous year, 2013. Households also very often decide to hire foreign citizens. Out of 12,783 applications submitted in 2014, Ukrainian citizens were registered in as many as 12,525 cases (an increase of 120 percent compared to 2013).
The construction industry has also revived, where demand for workers from third countries in 2013 reached its lowest level in years. Thus, the 54 thousand declarations registered by construction companies last year represent an increase of 84 percent compared to the difficult year of 2013. Employment of foreigners in processing industry enterprises is dynamically increasing. Manufacturing companies, especially in the food industry, are increasingly willing to use the services of workers from Ukraine. As a result, the processing industry recorded a record, more than double, number of registered declarations (44,151 declarations in 2014, compared to 17,739 in the previous year).
Bright and dark sides of the declaration procedure
The declaration of intention to work, one of the most liberal procedures for legalizing employment of third-country nationals in the European Union as a whole, is a significant convenience for Polish employers, allowing them to effectively meet the personnel needs that they cannot find in local markets. However, the liberality of this procedure has significantly increased the number of cases of fraud and violations by Polish employers. The annual project “Safe Work in Poland” was dedicated to the problems of illegal employment of third-country nationals in Poland and methods of preventing fraud against foreigners in the Polish labor market.
The Polish labor market needs workers from the East. Without them, many companies in key sectors of the Polish economy will not be able to realize production opportunities and will consequently decline. However, meeting staffing needs cannot be achieved at the expense of foreigners themselves, especially since violations of workers' rights regarding third-country nationals are, unfortunately, not a rare phenomenon, says Zbigniew Wafład, an expert at the EWL employment agency and initiator of the “Safe Work in Poland” project. Seminars for employers and workers organized within the framework of the project, free informational materials, and an advice center opened in Warsaw will serve to reduce the negative manifestations of the growing demand for foreign workers. According to Zbigniew Wafład, the phenomenon of illegal employment does not arise solely from the bad will of the employer, but often from insufficient awareness of both parties and a lack of knowledge about the benefits of legal work.
Jarosław Cichoń from the Department of Employment Legality of the National Labor Inspectorate (PIP) also emphasizes the scale of the problem of illegal employment of Ukrainian citizens. According to PIP data, in 2014, about 15.5 thousand foreigners employed in Poland were inspected, among which as many as 9.5 thousand were Ukrainian citizens. Regarding illegal employment of foreigners, in 2014 PIP recorded 870 such cases, among which 777 were related to illegal employment of Ukrainian citizens.
In 614 cases, inspections found a lack of the necessary work permits for Ukrainian citizens. According to Jarosław Cichoń, the National Labor Inspectorate, in some cases, has limited ability to control legal entities that assign work to foreigners. Such a group includes farms, which, due to the scale of the problem of illegal employment in agriculture, are a major problem for PIP inspectors.
As part of a series of meetings, representatives of public and international organizations focused on analyzing solutions to improve the current situation on the labor market and reduce the scale of fraud and illegal employment.
As noted by Karolina Mazurczak, a representative of the Legal Intervention Association, foreigners in many cases do not know how they can find work in Poland, including what documents they should have to work legally. According to Karolina Mazurczak, Polish legislation does not sufficiently protect the interests of foreigners taking up work in Poland – the amount of fines cannot effectively deter unscrupulous employers, and there are also not enough positive examples demonstrating the effectiveness of the judicial system and protection of workers' rights.
As noted by Professor Zbigniew Lasocik from the Center for Research on Human Trafficking at the University of Warsaw, “a worker seeking a job cannot pay for information about the job, their passport and ID should be sacred, and the contract should be a written document.” The problems he mentioned are among the most common manifestations of violations of labor rights, which in many cases lead to the phenomenon of forced labor and human trafficking.
Marcin Wiatrów, head of the Labor Migration Division of the Department of Labor Market and Social Policy, drew attention to the significant increase in the scale of employment of Ukrainian citizens in Poland, which is partly due to the liberalization of procedures for legalizing employment.
Employers registering applications most often declare civil law contracts as forms of employment – in particular, an employment contract, which, according to Marcin Wiatrów, requires more detailed analysis. “The Ministry of Labor and Social Policy plans public consultations on introducing an information obligation for employers who hire foreign nationals on the basis of a declaration of intent to work. The employer will have to provide information about the employment to the relevant state authority. This information will include confirmation of the actual start of work of the foreigner, which should positively affect the ability to control migration flows and reduce the level of fraud. It is also not excluded that the implementation of the so-called seasonal directive of the European Union will significantly affect the current form of the declaration procedure,” emphasized Marcin Wiatrów.
The campaign is co-financed by the European Fund for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals as part of the project “Safe Work in Poland,” implemented by the EWL agency in partnership with the Institute of Innovation Foundation. Responsibility for the content of the above page lies with the authors. The European Commission and the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy are not responsible for any use of the information provided.
Will qualified specialists save the labor market?
Professions requiring higher qualifications in Poland are increasingly falling into deficit areas, mainly due to the outflow of specialists of Polish citizenship to Western European countries. Polish legislation has also been moderately conducive to attracting highly skilled workers to the Polish market. The Council Directive 2009/50/EC, the so-called EU Blue Card, introduced in 2012, due to a number of restrictions (including restrictions on worker mobility), was not met with great interest. Although the employment of foreigners in physical jobs still dominates economic migration, there has recently been an increase in the number of specialists in highly qualified professions.
Over two years, the IT/ICT sector has seen an increase in demand for workers from third countries: under the permit procedure, from 460 applications registered in 2012, 686 in 2013, to 3,227 permits issued last year. This represents almost a fivefold increase in demand for work in just one year. Employment is also growing rapidly in enterprises operating in professional, scientific, and technical fields. In 2014 alone, 4,399 applications were submitted, tripling compared to the previous year (1,452 in 2013).
The number of qualified foreigners employed on the basis of a work permit or a single permit for residence and work in Poland is also increasing. By 2014, about 15,000 work permits were issued for qualified workers, i.e., 40 percent more than in the same period of 2013. It should be noted that the employment level of unskilled foreigners has practically not changed (5,830 permits issued to workers for physical labor in 2014, compared to 5,761 permits in the same group the previous year).
Nevertheless, one should not rule out an increase in the number of registered permits for employees who are not highly qualified in the coming years. This may be largely dictated by the specifics of the employment procedure for foreigners based on a declaration of intent to work, which limits the period of work in Poland for a foreigner to 6 months per year.
For additional information:
Zbigniew Wafład – project coordinator “Safe Work in Poland”,
[email protected], tel.: +48 535 888 815
– for questions about the “Safe Work in Poland” project and data concerning the labor market (contact in Polish);
Daryna Popil – PR manager, Foundation “Our Choice”,
[email protected], tel.: +48 511 811 181.