Foreign labor is widely used even where there is a chronic shortage of local workforce. Most often, people from Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Belarus, and Moldova come to the Czech Republic in search of work, mostly men. Women from these countries, of whom there are very few in the Czech Republic, find work mainly in the textile industry or in the service sector.
"Yes, we employ foreigners. Mainly in border areas - it is easier for them to get to work," says Jiří Pospíšil, head of the human resources department of the forestry company CE Wood Zlin. Slovaks and Poles work in this company as lumberjacks and plant forests. "This does not mean that we employ exclusively foreigners; we only fill vacant positions with them," adds Jiří Pospíšil.
Mining enterprises in the Karviná district do the same; of the 2,086 foreigners working there, 1,500 work as miners. "They are not taking jobs from Czechs; there are simply very few Czech miners," says Dalibor Závadský, a representative of the employment office in the city of Karviná. Young people show no interest in this profession, and the older generation can no longer do this work for health reasons.
Legal employment of foreigners in the Czech Republic is not an easy matter. It is a lengthy process with many administrative obstacles. It is relatively simplified only for citizens of Slovakia. An employer has the right to hire only foreigners who have a residence permit in the republic, and only for those jobs for which he has previously announced vacancies at the employment office. In turn, the employment office will issue a permit to attract foreign labor only if these jobs cannot be filled by Czech citizens. The reason may be a lack of the required qualifications or an unwillingness of a Czech citizen to take this job for any reason.
Monika Hladíková, press attaché to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, characterizes foreigners working in the Czech Republic as follows: they are not afraid of heavy physical labor, agree to payment based on the final result of the work done or to such pay that a Czech worker would never agree to. They have no families here, they quickly adapt to any conditions. They are ready to work overtime and in shifts, on weekends and holidays, and are calm about frequent changes of the place of work, which is typical, for example, of construction. Foreigners are also undemanding in everyday life - they can live right at the construction site, where block containers and trailers are installed.
In some sectors of the Czech economy there is an acute shortage of local labor. For example, many health care institutions in the Moravian-Silesian region can no longer do without doctors and nurses from Slovakia, and in small towns of this region even they are not enough. The staff of the hospital in the city of Bruntál expects the arrival of doctors and nurses from Ukraine. In the city, no one fears that foreigners will take jobs from Czechs. On the contrary, Czech medical workers are eagerly waiting for "reinforcements" to share the heavy overtime work and night shifts with them.
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