Workers from exotic countries are beginning to compete with Ukrainians on the Czech labor market
“With the money I’ve earned since arriving in the Czech Republic, I’ve already built a house in Ukraine. The financial reward here is much higher. I can earn forty thousand (crowns), or even more,” a bricklayer shared with Czech Radio. As Radio Prague notes, construction companies are in dire need not only of bricklayers, but also plasterers, painters, rebar workers, carpenters, and so on.
As Ondřej Vachal, a representative of one Czech developer, explains, the problems don’t end with hiring Ukrainians: “Ukrainians have become more confident in the Czech Republic, forming their own communities here. As an employer, you help them with paperwork and set them up with a job, and after a week they leave you and your company and go to another job, often even changing their profession. So your efforts to acquire labor from Ukraine don’t pay off.”
His company has found a way out of the situation – it has started hiring workers from more distant, exotic countries, such as Nepal, for skilled trades. But even here there are nuances.
“Conducting a competition via Skype is not ideal, but that’s what we do. We give applicants a specific task and then see how they handle it, to understand what they can and cannot do. For us, this is an additional burden because our Czech employees must therefore speak English. And, of course, we have to take care of the guest workers at the beginning, as they arrive in a completely foreign country; we find them housing and so on,” explains the representative of the Czech construction company.
Despite these difficulties, companies need foreign workers. So workers are increasingly coming to the Czech Republic not only from Nepal, but also from India. The new trend is also confirmed by Jana Mičková-Sladká from the employment agency Grape Care, which specializes in recruiting labor abroad: “Demand has grown several times compared to last year. Previously it was dozens of cases, now we’re talking about hundreds. Most often we look for warehouse workers, operators, international truck drivers, welders, and also lumberjacks due to problems related to the massive spread of the bark beetle.”
Despite all the measures taken, there are still not enough workers. That is why the government increased quotas for hiring qualified foreigners starting in September of this year. Vice-President of the Economic Chamber of the Czech Republic Irena Bartoňová-Pálková says that even this step will not be enough. “Next year we can hire a total of 50,000 qualified workers from abroad. We have high hopes in this regard for Kazakhstan, but, as they say, that’s a drop in the ocean. We actually need half a million workers,” Bartoňová-Pálková reported.
As is known, the process of hiring foreigners takes more than a week. It usually lasts about three months, and in the case of workers from Nepal, it can take up to three-quarters of a year. Nevertheless, for workers from non-European countries, the game is worth the candle.
“I started working in the Czech Republic because there are far more job opportunities here than at home. Plus, my salary here is twice what I would earn in the Philippines,” Robert Diyano, who works as a mobile phone technician, told Czech Radio. By Czech standards, however, Diyano’s salary leaves much to be desired – he earns 13,500 crowns (540 euros) per month.