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State failing to draw skilled labor

Cabinet promotes green cards as solution to worker shortage

By Victor Velek
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 16th, 2008 issue

The Czech Republic’s only program to lure skilled non-EU workers is failing to meet expectations as the country suffers from an increasingly serious labor shortage.
The five-year program, called the Selection of Qualified Foreign Workers project, has pulled in only 888 skilled foreigners from 12 qualified countries over its first four and a half years — far below the estimated 3,500 workers it was authorized to take in over that time.
“The project hasn’t fulfilled expectations,” said Štěpán Černoušek, spokesman for the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry. It will end in the middle of this year, as planned, and then be evaluated for the future, he added.
The future prospects of the project don’t look rosy. Its failure to draw more workers has become an issue now that the labor shortage is becoming a serious threat to the economy.
“There is no competition on the labor market,” said Viktorie Plívová, spokeswoman for the Economic Chamber. “The lack of a labor force has become the biggest predictable threat for economic development in the country.”
The labor shortage has hit virtually all sectors, with the most critical situation in the automotive and construction industries, Plívová added.
Over the past two years, the number of job vacancies has soared. By the end of 2007, employment offices recorded about 141,000 empty positions, a year-on-year increase of almost 48,000 jobs, according to the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry.
Despite the government’s ineffectiveness, workers have been coming into the country to fill some of these vacancies. At the end of 2006 there were 185,000 foreign breadwinners in the Czech Republic. Today, that number stands at more than 240,000. Of those, 85,000 hold work permits from countries outside the European Union.
The foreign workers program suffers from an excessive bureaucracy that discourages potential employers, according to the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry. These burdens are part of why the Cabinet has proposed its “green card” program, which it hopes will streamline the process of getting a work permit. Parliament will consider the proposal later this year.
Complicated procedures
However, not everyone outside the ministry would like to see the qualified-workers program canceled.
“It would be unfortunate if the project ended,” said Jan Schroth from the Prague branch of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental agency focusing on migration issues, and which is in charge of promoting the project at home and abroad.
The program has shown that the Czech Republic is an attractive place for work, Schroth said, pointing to 50,000 phone inquiries it has received in addition to 500,000 visits to its Web site.
“However, the initial interest usually dwindles when people find out that they would have to find a job prior to applying for the program,” he said.
There are also other impediments that hinder the project, such as complicated and slow visa procedures and the limited number of participant countries, according to the IOM. Potential workers can originate from only 12 countries, mostly former Eastern bloc states, although foreign graduates of local universities and high schools may also qualify.
Despite these limitations, the project gained momentum last year, Schroth said. In the second half of 2007, about 260 people took advantage of the program, more than in the entire preceding year.
The skilled workers project cannot be compared to and replaced by the green card program, he added. While green cards should quickly fill gaps on the labor market by making it easier for foreigners to obtain work permits and visas, they do not differentiate between highly skilled workers and lower-qualified laborers who work in “key” sectors, Schroth said, and it does not aim at attracting highly qualified people.
Green revolution?
The green card concept has received only lukewarm responses from nongovernmental organizations working in the field.
Green cards would be valid for a limited period of time, which means the foreign-workers program is a better option for people interested in settling in the country, said Marek Čaněk, coordinator of Migraceonline.cz, a project studying migration in Central and Eastern Europe.
“The green cards are a slapdash project based on no prior analyses of the current situation and of its long-term consequences,” Čaněk said.
Green cards would offer migrants few advantages, and the proposed program does little to protect foreign workers against mistreatment, he added.
Both the foreign workers program and the green card proposal fail to address the problem of illegal workers, said Martin Rozumek, director of the Organization for Aid to Refugees, which provides assistance to asylum seekers and migrants.
“Many of those foreigners, especially Ukrainians, have been here for a long time and are well-integrated into society,” Rozumek said, adding that the country should give them a chance to legalize their stays.

Victor Velek can be reached at vvelek@praguepost.com


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