Ukrainian workers – the hope of the Czech economy
Citizens of Ukraine are to come to the Czech Republic to fill medium-skilled jobs that Czechs have shown no interest in. Workers arriving under this program will have a simplified regime for obtaining visas and work permits. Since the program opened in August, 323 applications have already been received.
As Radio Prague reports, local firms that are desperately short of staff are interested in the program to attract labor from Ukraine: “Through the Employment Office, our company is looking for about 50 employees. The situation in the engineering sector has developed such that not only specialists but also unskilled workers are lacking,” explains Alena Štefániková, a representative of TVD – Technical Production.
The most common shortages on the labor market are for cooks, fitters, seamstresses and drivers. According to Jan Wiesner, head of the Confederation of Employer Unions, some firms have to turn down orders due to a lack of labor: “Even though we organized retraining of workers from areas with high unemployment, we failed to significantly increase the percentage of needed employees. Therefore, we have focused on recruiting labor from abroad.”
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Irena Valentová says firms are showing interest in foreign labor despite the short time since the program was launched: “It is already noticeable that the program for employing Ukrainians is on the radar of many employers, so more and more companies are applying to participate. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially set quotas of 170 applications per month, but from October the quotas are planned to be raised to 320.”
In total, up to 5,000 people from Ukraine can come to the Czech Republic under this program per year. However, Czech employers must first offer the vacancy through the Employment Office. Only if the vacancy receives no interest from the Czech population within 30 days can it be offered to workers from Ukraine.
According to the Czech Statistical Office, employers lack about 140,000 employees. Meanwhile, the Employment Office registered about 390,000 Czechs looking for work in August. According to Josef Středula, chairman of the Czech-Moravian Confederation of Trade Unions, the situation has arisen such that there is no demand for vacancies due to low wages. “One of the main reasons the unemployed show no interest in the vacancies offered by firms is low wages. When you are offered a gross salary of 16–17 thousand crowns (600 euros), that is not enough to deregister from the labor exchange,” Středula comments.
Therefore, representatives of the Czech Chamber of Commerce fear that even attracting workers from Ukraine will not save the situation with labor shortages.