Polish trade unions are campaigning for ‘Polish jobs for Polish workers’, since the credit crunch has led to a decline in jobs.
Polish trade unions want to see stricter laws on the number of foreigners working in their country, as Poles who have lived and worked in the UK head home to find jobs there in short supply.
They report that non-EU migrant workers are prepared to work for less, so employers are more ready to hire them than EU citizens.
Jan Guz, head of the OPZZ union in Poland, said: “The Polish government should consider limiting the inflow of foreigners because there cannot be wage and employment ‘dumping’.
We are not talking about Germans or other European Union citizens. We are talking of Ukrainians, Belarussians, Chinese. Employers tend to pick them because they work for peanuts,” he said.
Poland’s labour ministry has said that 10,000 Ukranians and Belarussians are employed legally in Poland, and many work as baby-sitters, cleaners or do other menial work.
Earlier this week the row over immigration in the UK escalated when the government admitted that tighter immigration rules to crack down on the number of migrant workers may only produce 6,000 fewer applications.
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Meanwhile a report revealed yesterday that some recruitment agencies in the UK are operating an ‘immigrants only’ policy, preferring Polish and other nationals from the A8 accession states to register for jobs above UK nationals.
The study of two major cities by Centre for Cities said: “[In Hull] unless you were Eastern European, recruitment agencies were unlikely to put you on their books. This may have prevented the same vacancies being advertised to local people.”
