rocco-siffredi
26.01.07, 11:52
Looking west for work
Young Poles drawn to wealthy European nations leave skill shortages in their
wake, putting their homeland's economy in jeopardy.
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Times Staff Writer
January 21, 2007
Wroclaw, Poland — Copernicus Airport. 12:52 p.m.
A former Polish soldier arrives from Ireland, where he waits tables and
studies computers. He shimmies through customs and tows his suitcases out
sliding glass doors, just as two lovers with new passports step to the ticket
counter for a flight to the British Midlands and jobs in a cookie factory.
Babies wail, duffel bags zip shut, tears fall on winter coats. Every day is
like this. Poles come and go, ferried across Europe on budget airlines to
new, unsure lives. Married and single, college graduate and high school
dropout, they make up a large part of the continent's growing class of
economic migrants.
"My company went bankrupt, and there's no future in my town," said Monika
Przebieracz, conversing in Polish while standing in the departure lounge with
her fiance, Dawid Dorociak, a thin man with matted hair and a pewter stud in
his eyebrow. "But how will we manage in Britain? What about the language?"
"This is our first time on a plane," said Dorociak said, listening to the rip
of tickets and the thunk of passport stamps. "We land in Not-ting-ham. "
Then, as if mimicking phrases from a Berlitz book, he added in
English: "Thank you, thank you, thank you very much."
The expansion of the European Union has loosened borders and increased
opportunities for Poles and other Eastern Europeans. Since Poland joined the
EU in 2004, between 600,000 and 2 million of its people have slipped away to
foreign lands for work, mainly in Britain, Ireland and Sweden. They've left
behind shriveling villages, high unemployment and low wages. Although many
find only modest jobs as laborers and waiters, they are fattening their bank
accounts while blending into new cultures.
Their journeys add a distinctly European spin to the global movement of job
seekers. The World Bank estimates that expatriate workers sent $250 billion
to their poorer native countries in 2005. Poland's economic emigrants
funneled home $7.4 billion that year, $2.6 billion more than three years
earlier, the Polish central bank says. The real amount may be double the
official tally. It's never fully counted because much of it arrives stuffed
in bags and billfolds.
It would seem a dream fulfilled for Poland. It's also a caution to be careful
what you wish for.
Through decades of communism, Poles longed to be part of capitalist Europe.
Now this nation of 39 million is losing citizens to Western prosperity when
it needs them to fuel its own economy. Foreign companies are expected to
create hundreds of thousands of jobs here in the coming years. Major European
manufacturers are planning to build new facilities in Wroclaw.
But with some of the nation's best-educated and youngest workers opting to
leave, who will work here? Who will be the bricklayers, the computer experts,
the dentists?
Meet Pawel Romaszkan, a broad-faced man with a gargantuan mission: bringing
the Poles home, preferably back to Wroclaw. Officials say the future of this
city of 640,000 people near the German border, where an elegant town square
evokes bohemian shabbiness mixed with communist neglect, depends on it.
"We're trying to build a brand-name city. We've attracted companies like
Philips, Siemens, Volvo and 3M, but we must have workers," said Romaszkan,
who visits Polish community centers in London and pubs in Dublin trying to
woo back his countrymen.
"If we can get a few to return, others will follow…. A monthly transportation
pass in London costs about 100 pounds. That's equivalent to a mortgage
payment on a small apartment in Wroclaw."
Romaszkan knows the alleys where Polish workers sip Guinness in Ireland, the
British churches where they say rosaries and offer confessions, the Internet
cafes where they find out who died, who was born and whose heart was broken.
He also knows that just by looking into people's eyes, you can tell whether
they have moved beyond your grasp.
"For many Poles, London is a magical city," he said. "I talked to one
computer specialist who's been offered a job in London that pays twice what
the mayor of Wroclaw earns. This guy told me, 'I'm not coming back.' "
In 2002, about 300,000 passengers traveled through Copernicus Airport; in
2006, the number was 700,000. The increase in part reflects a high
unemployment rate and salaries that are a quarter to a half of going rates in
Western Europe. Many foreign corporations moved east to save money and have
been reluctant to raise wages. Competition for labor has gradually begun to
increase pay, but Poland's economic growth is in jeopardy if there are not
enough of the right kinds of workers.
Growth accelerated after the end of communism, then slowed. Since 2004, the
economy has regained some momentum, expanding 5.2% last year. Although that
is more than 2 percentage points higher than the average of the more
developed EU economies, it is lower than that of other new EU members.
Mayor Rafat Dutkiewicz envisions Wroclaw as a high-tech research hub. The
city has 134,000 students attending 23 institutions of higher education. The
mayor is seeking about $1.3 billion in EU and other funding to create a
European Institute of Technology in which the city's universities would
collaborate with firms such as Hewlett-Packard Co., LG.Philips LCD Co. and
Whirlpool Corp. The goal: 100,000 new jobs over the next five years.
The region's 17% unemployment rate would seem to provide thousands of
potential employees, but many of the jobless have few skills or have stopped
looking for work. The most motivated and best-educated tend to look abroad.
In a British cookie factory, a woman like Przebieracz can make four times the
$320 a month she could earn in a Polish office.
She is part of a baby boom that swept through Poland in the early 1980s, when
Communist authorities tried to suppress dissent by keeping people off the
streets. This "martial law generation" later flooded colleges and
universities but found few jobs in their chosen fields.
Restless, and increasingly agitated by government corruption scandals, they
perfected their English and peeled away.
About 30% of those leaving Poland have college degrees. In Britain, most are
doing work that requires only limited skills.
"It may look like a brain drain, but it's really something else. It's a brain
waste," said Pawel Kaczmarczyk, chief demographer at the Center of Migration
Research at Warsaw University.
Even some poorly educated or semi-skilled Poles are packing their bags.
President Lech Kaczynski quipped recently that he couldn't find someone to
paint his house because the painters had all moved away. Building sites have
gone quiet as construction firms raid one another's employees.
The fabled Gdansk shipyard is short 200 welders and builders. Unable to hire
thousands of seamstresses, textile companies are losing contracts. Perhaps
the biggest irony is that Poland is expected to receive about $40 billion
from the EU for highway projects when there is a shortage of people to do the
work.
This is the unfolding tale of Europe. As the borders of the EU widen, those
in the formerly communist east want Western lifestyles. The emigration
scenario will probably repeat in January, when Romania and Bulgaria join the
EU.
But the Poles have an edge. They moved to Britain and Ireland before Western
European countries adopted stricter immigration barriers that will limit
opportunities in coming months.
The westward movement of Poles and other East Europeans, including Latvians,
Lithuanians and Czechs, has created a s
