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'Green card' gives economy a green light


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March 19th, 2008 issue

The secret has been out in the Czech Republic and many other European Union countries for a couple of years now: It seems there aren’t enough workers to go around.

There are some solutions. Training programs are in the works at various technical colleges to teach students what they need to know to work at the country’s factories. Or, through a complicated system of rules and applications, employers can bring migrant workers to the Czech Republic, and many do.
This can create other problems, as illustrated by the case of the Labor and Social Affairs and Interior ministries, where officials seem to be contradicting themselves by sending home some North Korean workers while allowing more than 100 others to stay in the Czech Republic. Published statistics show 144 North Koreans are still here, and many others (North Koreans and other foreigners) are believed to work off the books.
Construction crews and carmakers, sewing factories and medical companies employ workers from Moldova to Poland, Ukraine to Vietnam. IBM struggles with worker shortages, as does Foxconn and Škoda Auto.
Czech officials are now trying to create a “green card” system to make it easier to bring workers from non-EU countries to factories here. While these discussions have been going on for at least six months, Parliament isn’t expected to take up the issue until later this year.
So what isn’t working right now?
A five-year qualified foreign workers’ program has pulled in only 888 skilled foreigners from 12 qualified countries. At the same time, national employment offices recorded about 141,000 empty jobs in the economy at the end of 2007. About 240,000 foreign workers now hold work permits in the Czech Republic; of those, 85,000 come from outside the EU.
Critics say the foreign workers’ program is so bureaucratic that potential employers don’t want to register for it.
Škoda Auto, which employs 27,000 workers at plants in Mladá Boleslav, Kvasiny and Vrchlabí, can’t wait much longer, says Radek Špicar, external affairs director for the company. The firm goes through labor agencies to find workers, but things are getting desperate.
“For us, the green card project would be very useful, because it would make it easier to get new people into our factory,” Špicar says. “At the moment, we are practically unable to cover our needs with the domestic work force.”
Clearly, officials need to stop discussing the worker shortage and pass the new “green card” rules now.  
The country should also make the worker shortage a top priority when it takes over the EU presidency in January. Here’s the perfect chance to work together with countries like Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, all of which plan to simplify their procedures for work permits soon, according to the EU.
We know that such programs are not without controversy and the Interior Ministry has every right to monitor temporary workers to make sure they follow the laws and act as productive members of society.
But, in a worst-case scenario of what can happen if the government doesn’t get involved, one needs only look at the United States, which, by all accounts has thousands of undocumented workers, most of whom don’t pay taxes but still use social services.
Workers will always go where the jobs are. The challenge now is to make them legal, paying members of the society where they work.


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[16:53 22/03/2008] : I think that this will be a bigger problem in the future as more and more skilled labor go to countries with better wages and more and more unskilled labor comes west to work in Prague.
Roger Jaffe
Prague
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