Foreigners in Mazovia: how do they find themselves on the regional labour market?
Region Centrum is one of the six branches of the LeasingTeam employment agency, which delegates about a thousand foreign employees per month to clients. The branch covers, among others, the Mazovian labor market, acquiring both Polish and foreign staff for enterprises. Together with the employees of the Centre Region, we visit four production plants in Mazovia that employ foreigners.
“These plants are our long-term customers, to whom we direct employees from Polish and Eastern European countries, and even from Asia,” says Wojciech Rybicki, Director of Centre Region Development at LeasingTeam. “When employing foreigners, it should be remembered that they have the same rights and obligations as Polish employees. The Act on the Employment of Temporary Workers of 9 July 2003 is the basic legal act regulating temporary work in Poland – also for foreigners regardless of their country of origin. As an employment agency, we are obliged to provide a temporary employment contract or a contract of mandate in a language understandable to a foreigner, remuneration at a level not lower than the national minimum, as well as the legality of stay and work.”
Wojciech Rybicki emphasizes that the high dynamics of changes in labour law, tax regulations and regulations in the area of legalisation of stay and employment of foreigners mobilises LeasingTeam to work hard, as all participants of the process should be sure that the persons performing temporary work are employed in accordance with the applicable law.
The temporary work model basically consists in the fact that the Employer-User (the term used to describe the Employment Agency’s Client in the Act on the Employment of Temporary Workers) determines the number of people necessary to perform work in a specific period of time and decides to increase or decrease their number in individual periods.
Cooperation with a temporary employment agency based on this model allows the client to flexibly manage employment volumes, and thus costs, depending on the actual needs.
However, it should be remembered that a temporary worker may generally work for one Employer-User for no longer than 18 months, within a period of 36 consecutive months.
“Before the pandemic, most foreign workers, mainly from Ukraine, were sent to work in the production and warehouse industries, which did not require specialist skills and professional qualifications,” says Katarzyna Bryła, Regional Manager of the Centre at LeasingTeam. “At that time, citizens of Ukraine, as well as Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Armenia benefited from a simplified employment procedure, thanks to which they could legally work in Poland for a period of 180 days over the next 12 months. It was the so-called shuttle period, when employees went to their home countries to wait out the break and returned to Polish to be employed on the basis of another declaration of entrusting work.”
When the coronavirus pandemic broke out, all industries saw significant declines in sales. In the pandemic year 2022, many companies limited their operations to the bare minimum, and some companies completely stopped their activities, which they did not resume after the pandemic.
It is estimated that about 350 thousand people could have lost their jobs during the pandemic, almost 1/3 of whom were foreigners who returned to their countries. At the same time, many people took advantage of the solutions of the anti-crisis shield, which extended the validity period of documents entitling them to work and stay in Poland.
Contrary to expectations, the pandemic has not affected the trend of increasing applications for residence in Poland submitted by foreigners (mainly Ukrainians) since 2014. What’s more: in the pandemic year 2020, the number of applications increased by 19% compared to the previous year.
This fact, as well as the suspension of direct customer service as a result of the lockdown and the protracted and continuous prolongation of administrative proceedings long before the pandemic, contributed to a real collapse of the work of offices dealing with foreigners’ affairs. Nevertheless, in 2021, the number of Ukrainian citizens in Poland returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Although the pandemic crisis did not cause drastic and irreversible changes in the Polish economy, the achievement of economic stabilization was thwarted by the war in Ukraine.
It is worth noting that refugees did not come to Polish for work, just like their compatriots, economic migrants from before the war. Over 70% of today’s refugees from Ukraine are women, children and the elderly. Most of them have higher education and want to return home after the war is over. Hence, their appearance in Poland did not lead to overcoming the challenges related to the staff shortage in many sectors of the national economy.
“Refugee women are looking for work primarily in the areas of infrastructures that will provide their children with satisfactory housing, educational and health-promoting conditions” – points out Anastasiia Naburanna, recruiter at the LeasingTeam Centre Region. “In Mazovia, it is a metropolitan area of Warsaw. Although the procedure for employing Ukrainian citizens who came to Polish after the start of the war has been simplified, insufficient knowledge of the Polish language does not allow refugees to work in accordance with their education. They mainly take up physical work in various industries, including the production and storage of goods. Here, knowledge of the Polish language is required at a communicative level, and companies are increasingly introducing flexible conditions for employed foreigners.”
“One of our clients found a solution for employees from the East in a project where knowledge of the Polish language is not a requirement even before the influx of refugees,” says Wiktoria Rojik, project coordinator at the LeasingTeam Centre Region. “Since the work takes place in one production hall, an employee has been assigned for each shift, who acts as an interpreter for additional remuneration. In the current situation related to the employment of refugees, this solution has become more important. In many of our projects, it is possible to stay close to the workplace. For a small surcharge, employees can live in a hostel, as well as in a multi-room apartment or a two-storey building. Although the conditions are good, they are not optimal housing options for women with children, which refugee women often want.”
“Commuting to work is also important for employees – when the employer provides it in an organized way, it becomes an additional value” – adds Aneta Stasiak, project leader in the LeasingTeam Center Region. “For example, our customer in the food industry provides employee transport to the workplace. There are about 20 larger locations from which buses run, the driver also picks up people from smaller towns on the route to the plant. The farthest range of the transport location at the moment is about 82 km. I think this is an additional benefit for most employees due to the fact that not all employees have their own means of transport.”
Zinaida Czupylka, 57, an engineer by profession, has been working at the LeasingTeam project since 2017. He lives in an employee hostel. She came from Ukraine for the first time to work in a factory in Katowice. “I quit because it was too hard physical work for my age,” Ms. Zinaida reveals. “I went to Mazovia, where I found a job in the LeasingTeam project as an assistant production operator. I was doing well, so I stayed for the second season, then for the next one, and so six years passed. I didn’t worry about the apartment – I had a hostel provided by the agency, in the meantime I learned Polish, and a few years ago I brought my son here, with whom we work together.”
What are the chances for foreigners in the current labour market, which is strongly correlated with persistent inflation and economic uncertainty?
According to Wojciech Rybicki, despite high inflation and the uncertain economic situation, foreigners looking for work in basic positions, primarily as manual workers, can be confident about the possibility of finding a job in Poland. Foreigners are still attractive employees for Polish employers, mainly because of greater openness to employment on the basis of civil law contracts and acceptance of remuneration lower than that agreed to by Polish employees.
Wojciech Rybicki also points out that the rising costs of doing business, caused primarily by record-high inflation, an increase in the minimum wage and high energy costs, force entrepreneurs to look for savings, and employee costs usually account for the largest share in the costs of doing business.
Experts still define the labour market in Poland as an employee’s market, forecasting a minimal increase in the unemployment rate this year. Most companies want not only to retain current foreign employees, but also to attract new ones. For example, in the manufacturing industry, there is still a shortage of candidates for positions such as machine operator, production worker, forklift driver, or quality control specialist.
It is worth remembering that the distinguishing feature of individual industries is the so-called seasonality, i.e. periods of increased or limited production. It significantly affects the employment of temporary workers and the conduct of recruitment processes. At the same time, there should be no shortage of work in the manufacturing and warehousing industries. However, there is no nationwide strategy for the professional activation of refugees that would take into account changes in gender proportions and competences.
Doświadczony analityk rynku pracy, specjalizuje się w badaniach nad trendami zatrudnienia i zmianami w strukturze zawodowej. Jego artykuły, publikowane w renomowanych czasopismach branżowych, pomagają czytelnikom zrozumieć dynamikę rynku pracy.
