Sokołów lures labor with cash bonanza

In response to Poland's recent muscle drain, meat producer Sokołów is trying to lure Poles home from abroad with more attractive bait. The main incentive to return will be higher wages - the firm is planning to offer 85 percent of the average wage in the meat sector in Germany, which would work out at around EUR 1,000 (zł.3,851) net monthly.

"We are having problems finding qualified workers [here] ... so we will look for them there," Sokołów's president, Bogusław Miszczuk, told Puls Biznesu.

This is a growing trend, as the exodus of qualified workers has led to a deficit of labor in Poland, especially construction workers, plumbers and medical staff. "The West needs more and more workers due to a demographic crisis," said Andrzej Sadowski, vice president of the Adam Smith Center. Polish firms respond by offering higher wages, though usually still far lower than Western salaries. In the construction industry, wages rose by more than 11 percent in the 12 months prior to November 2006, while the average wage growth in the economy in the same period was a little over five percent.

But Sadowski doesn't think this means that the average Polish wage will catch up with Western standards soon. "[Wages] will [catch up], for those workers from fields that will be sought after in the West," he said. "In some sectors, such as the IT industry, wages had already been at the Western level for a long time," Sadowski explained.