Brain-drain debate
Seamus Pentony, president of the board at Grafton Recruitment, and Kazimierz Kuberski, undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, take two very different views on how labor migration is affecting the Polish economy.
Seamus Pentony, Grafton Recruitment Polska:
It is not very good for an economy or the development of an economy when it is losing its skills. Is it a brain drain? I would have to say yes, in the short term. Hopefully, that would be rectified by decisive government intervention - also by government business action and making sure that it is a lot easier and safer to do business specifically in Poland.
The specialists that foreign employers are looking for in Poland are from the IT, telecoms, engineering and design sectors. Also, medical workers are desired, including care, nursing and surgery.
The health sector is also the one mostly prone to the brain drain, which is very worrying. When you look at somebody who is earning zł.1,000 a month, and then goes to the UK and earns Ł1,000 a week, there is something wrong.
Polish specialists working abroad could also bring benefit to the country. Poland is very culturally similar to Ireland.
For example, for many years people leave Ireland and they return later, with gained knowledge and experience and apply it back in Ireland. The ultimate benefit from it has been the Celtic Tiger - a result of economic migrants returning home. Hopefully, Poland will gain strength there as well. But it needs fundamental policy changes and fundamental investment in all aspects of industry.
Why do foreign employers not just look for skills locally? Unfortunately, the people and the skills are not there. And even if they are there, people are negotiating absolutely extortionate salaries.
Everything [about Polish workers makes them popular abroad] - the culture, the character, the linguistic capability, the mentality and sometimes the education system that is here.
Kazimierz Kuberski, Ministry of Labor and Social Policy:
The scale of the migration in the European Union is not that big. This is not a problem yet, so we do not plan any preventive action. The brain drain is especially exaggerated when it comes to doctors.
When it comes to the outflow of Polish high-qualified workers to Western countries, the popular professions are nurses and caregivers. We do not have any data concerning IT specialists.
The outflow of Polish workers has nothing to do with the increase of the unemployment rate in Poland. If a certain number of people leave it does not mean that unemployment falls by the same number. It does not work like that. Besides, the people who leave usually already have jobs in Poland. Interestingly, despite the high unemployment there are needs that our labor market cannot satisfy. This applies to shipbuilders, builders, agricultural workers and gardening workers. We are quite likely to face the situation the Germans have - with the high unemployment rate we will have to consider opening our labor market to Ukrainian workers for those unsatisfied needs. At the moment the demand is for 10,000 such jobs. This is partly due to the fact that Poland lacks such workers, and party due to the fact that many workers just do not want to work.
We hope for significant aid, about EUR 9 [zł.34.2] billion, from the European Social Fund in 2007-2013 for many forms of activating employees. We want to move the third sector - many valuable people working for non-government institutions work as volunteers for a minimum salary, because the organization do not have money to give its employees permanent working contracts.
