In relatively industrialized Central European countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic, Ukrainian workers have become important workers supporting blue-collar workplaces such as construction sites and factory assembly lines. It has become. However, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, a large number of Ukrainian male workers returned to join the fighting, causing serious labor shortages in these workplaces.
Companies are focusing their wisdom on filling in talent, including training courses to place women in blue-collar workplaces and hiring Asian workers.
Reuters interviewed 14 people in Poland and the Czech Republic, including executives, recruiters, industry groups, and economists. It has become clear that the turnover of Ukrainian workers is causing increased costs and delays in the manufacturing and construction industries.
High wages and relaxation of visa requirements have triggered a large influx of workers from Ukraine over the last decade into Central European countries. Employment has been filled with occupations with inadequate wage levels for domestic workers, such as construction, automobiles, and heavy industry.
In Central Europe, Ukrainians were the largest group of foreign workers before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. According to industry groups, Poland and the Czech Republic have accepted around 600,000 and over 200,000 Ukrainian workers, respectively.
According to Polish industry groups, about 150,000 Ukrainian workers have left Poland after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, most of them men.
Wislav Novak, CEO of the Polish tram and rail construction company ZUE Group, said that one of the subcontractors recently failed to complete track laying work for 30 Ukrainian workers. He revealed that almost all of them had left their jobs.
The European Central Bank (ECB) said in June that the influx of Ukrainian refugees would ease the labor shortage in the euro area. But the opposite seems to be happening in industrialized European countries outside the euro area.
The hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees arriving in these countries are mainly women and children, and it is not easy to fill the shortage of blue-collar jobs. Most of the jobs are in physically demanding fields such as construction, manufacturing, and casting, and the weight that female workers can carry is legally restricted in these workplaces.
"The turnover of Ukrainian workers has exacerbated the problem for companies," said Radek Spiker, vice chairman of the Czech Industry Federation. "Companies are unable to meet all the demands of their business partners. The reality is that they are delaying the delivery and paying penalties."
The Czech Republic has 30% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the industrial sector, which is one of the highest among the member states of the European Union (EU). Next to this is Poland with 25%.
Prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Germany-based recruitment firm Hoffmann Personal was planning to accept more than 1,000 Ukrainians into the Czech Republic from March to June.
Companies that relied on Ukrainian workers are now struggling to fill this hole, according to Gabriella Fulbakova, managing director of the Czech division of Hoffman. The Czech unemployment rate is 3.1%, the lowest level among EU member states. "If this problem is not resolved immediately and the hiring opportunities for foreign workers do not improve, it will have a significant impact on the manufacturing industry," said Mr. Furubakova.
Hundreds of workers are in short supply in manufacturing departments that require qualifications such as welding, manufacturing equipment operation, metal, and forklift operation.
The impact of Ukrainian worker layoffs is particularly strong in emerging European countries, according to executives and industry groups. This is because these areas are less automated than Germany and other advanced EU industrialized countries.
Finland's Scanfil, which manufactures electronic devices, has strengthened its automation promotion plan due to a sudden labor shortage in Poland, where the company operates. However, a senior executive in the company's human resources department said that some workplaces could not be automated and that more workers were still needed.
Based on economic data and interviews with local businesses, Ukrainian worker turnover will have a clear negative impact on the Polish economy, at least in the short term, said Mihal Dibra, the chief economist at BNP Paribas Bank Polska. Said that it was too early to show the scale concretely. Poland boasts the sixth largest economy in the EU.
Companies are exposed to rising energy and material costs due to the war in Ukraine and prolonged turmoil in the supply chain due to pandemics, adding to the problem of labor shortages. The year-on-year rate of increase in the Producer Price Index (PPI), which is an index of corporate inflation, was close to 25.6% in Poland and 28.5% in the Czech Republic.
Some companies are raising their salary offers to attract workers.
According to a Polish dispatching company, client companies are hiring Ukrainian refugee women to move men to more physically demanding jobs and fill the gap to address labor shortages.
We also have to review our working styles and look to countries such as Mongolia and the Philippines where it is difficult to hire quickly due to language, travel, and visa issues.
Poland has seen 38 times more Ukrainian workers in the last 13 years, and this response is too much to keep up with, according to executives at a staffing agency.
When a recruitment company called on 2,000 refugees to attend a course to learn how to operate a forklift, more than 600 women responded and dozens recently started taking a four-week course.
One of the participants, former sales manager Orha Borobi, who fled from Ukraine to Poland, got a job at an automobile manufacturer's warehouse. "I utilized to operate with my head in Ukraine. I use my body in Poland," he said.
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