Will labor migrants become the salvation of the Czech economy?
Is it beneficial to saturate the Czech labor market comprehensively with migrants, including Ukrainians? As noted by Radio Prague, questions accompanying this phenomenon are increasingly being asked by sociologists, economists, and politicians.
The volume of construction work in the Czech Republic rose by 2.9% in September. This is largely due to foreign workers, who make up 16% of all employees in this sector. Two-thirds of construction companies in the country use their services, including the most active developers.
According to a survey by the agency CEEC Research conducted in October, most foreigners come to the Czech Republic for work from Eastern Europe and Asia, particularly from Turkey. Compared to 2017, while the total number of foreign workers remained the same, the number of Ukrainians employed in construction decreased. About a hundred Czech construction firms participated in the survey.
A journalist from Radio Prague spoke with František Pospíšil, a process engineer at a construction company in the Central Bohemian Region with 25 years of work experience.
– Companies are increasingly complaining that, with orders for ten months ahead, they are overloaded with work and, in the face of a worsening labor shortage, fear missing deadlines. What explains the growing shortage of personnel, and why do we often simultaneously hear criticism of foreigners employed in construction?
– First of all, we are seeing a decline in the number of Czech workers because, since the mid-1990s, the number of students acquiring construction trades in vocational schools has decreased. Around the same time, interest in craft activities began to wane. The situation is worsening because older workers, who were about 40 years old 25 years ago, are now retiring, and there are not enough people to replace them. Therefore, construction firms are trying to fill the shortage of certain categories of labor by attracting foreign employees.
Nevertheless, in such cases, we have to consider that we are often dealing with people who have not been specifically trained in the professions or trades by which they earn a living here. They have to acquire new skills directly in the process of work. Frankly, in the end, we do not get the quality we are used to. As a result, there is a need for more thorough inspection of construction work, and it has to be redone several times.
– Companies are satisfied, among other things, that Ukrainians are willing to work for lower wages than Czechs – this is also reported in an article on the website of the weekly Tyden.cz. At the same time, a weak point is considered to be that the integration of foreigners into the work team, including Ukrainians, is difficult. What is your personal experience of cooperation with foreign workers?
– We primarily cooperate with Ukrainians, although today we also employ workers from other former Soviet Union countries. Many of the first Ukrainians who came to the Czech Republic for work have become bosses or foremen, recruiting guest workers from the former Soviet Union, and often, besides Ukraine, from Moldova and Central Asian countries.
The main language of their interethnic communication is Russian, albeit far from perfect. Most Ukrainians know Russian at least to the extent necessary on a construction site. And they also learn Czech faster than many of their foreign colleagues, becoming a kind of main liaison between, simply put, clients and workers from Central Asia who, besides Russian, do not speak any other language.
Labor migrants are more often employed by firms with a minimum annual turnover of up to 200 million crowns (7.8 million euros). About 80% of companies fall into this category. Among small and medium-sized developers, half use the services of foreign workers. Companies consider a positive aspect of facilitating the employment of foreigners to be that they take sick leave much less often than Czechs, and are also willing to learn new skills and professions to be in demand on the labor market. This is confirmed by František Pospíšil.
– Of course, this is due to the habit of the mentioned groups of foreign workers to different working conditions and a different climate in Central Asia and Ukraine, and, frankly, physical hardening. Therefore, young Ukrainians and people from Central Asian countries are more accustomed to working in difficult conditions, in cold conditions, and do not get sick as often as Czechs, who cannot withstand such loads in particularly windy or rainy weather. As for acquiring new skills, they are also open to this, learning from more experienced Czechs or their compatriots.
– Returning to the "young Ukrainians" you mention – what age group predominates among those employed in construction production?
– From personal experience, I most often encounter foreigners up to 40 years old at work, maximum up to 50. There are few fifty-year-old workers among them, and if there are, they often work together with their sons. This to some extent compensates for the fact that their family is far away, because living and working abroad while being alone is certainly not easy. Especially when people cannot afford to get sick, and certainly not for two weeks, for example, because the issue of stable earnings is very acute. Visitors simply need to earn as much as possible to send money home and support their families.
– In private conversations, Ukrainians often complain about how hurtful it is when, in some cases, they feel a dismissive attitude from colleagues.
– In general, it's all very individual, but to generalize, the following pattern can be noted – when Czechs go to work in Germany, they often don't feel as comfortable as at home, admitting that Germans tend to look down on them. And Czechs, in turn, often treat Ukrainians the same way, but not all. Overall, this is unfortunately true.
Almost half of foreign employees have been working in Czech construction companies for over three years. About 10% leave their workplace after the probationary period.