Companies in the Thrace Economic Zone (TEZ) have been using workers from countries outside the European Union for at least five years, says Katya Staykova, executive director of the “Cluster Thrace Economic Zone” association. But they certainly need more.
“I remember at the end of last year we organized a meeting of ICT companies with Nikhil Manshramani, CEO of ABC International, a leading recruitment agency that sources quality manpower from Asia. The interest was very high and that was expected,” commented Staykova.
The labor shortage problem is not from yesterday, and even worse, it is getting worse. Some employers have already hired through recruitment companies or by directly concluding employment contracts and obtaining visas for people from Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Uzbekistan. These are the preferred countries because of the easy overcoming of the language barrier – they speak Russian and Turkish, part of the Bulgarian staff also speaks these two languages.
There are employers who are ready to hire people from Asia, but on the condition that they speak English, Stajkova adds. Practice shows that intermediaries hired through companies are usually employees for seasonal work, and with direct employment contracts they are in permanent jobs.
Companies using the labor of people from third countries have built systems to train newcomers, and changed the mentality of their local team – to accept them without feeling threatened for their jobs.
In reality, this labor does not come out cheaper than the Bulgarian one, emphasized Katja Staykova. “But for example, if the company has 200 people, an article is about to be made according to a new project, it is cheaper for the employer to hire 20 workers for the new project with slightly higher costs for them than to raise the salaries of all 200, so that he can “steal” and appoint new local personnel”.
And you know how the Bulgarian does his best when he is a guest worker abroad? In the same way, the foreigners here also try and drag the others along, the owner of a large Plovdiv company, which has been providing bread to Ukrainians for several years, points out an interesting reason for the preferences towards these workers. His experience started long before the war in Ukraine.
The concern for employers is that there are legal limits on the percentage of third-party employees in a firm. They point to the example of Poland, where in a local company, part of a German conglomerate that also has a similar plant in TIZ, more than 80 percent of the staff are workers from third countries.
Other companies from the huge industrial zone near Plovdiv prefer to hire local staff because, according to them, guest workers are more suitable for repetitive simple operations, and not for high-tech production. According to these employers, young people who graduated from the Professional High School of Electrical Engineering and Electronics in Plovdiv, for example, are much more qualified than their peers from non-EU countries.
Hidden joker
The Thrace Economic Zone team sees an unused resource in the Roma population. “One of the important goals is to get and keep the children of Roma origin in the education system, so that they can acquire professional skills and be able to start working. This is one of the biggest labor resources of Bulgaria”, according to the management of TIZ. For at least two years, Eng. Plamen Panchev, creator and director of the largest Eastern European industrial park, initiated the idea to build a dormitory at the Professional School of Mechanical Engineering and for it to become a benchmark for what an educational institution offering professional education should look like, for children to learn and live in an attractive environment and to break away from marginalized communities.
Romania and Greece have blown us away while we are tripping over the law
Neighboring Romania blew us away again. It has been successfully importing a large part of its service personnel from countries outside the European Union for years. For example, for the year 2023, their quota of 100,000 workers from countries outside the EU is already almost reached. According to data from the NSI in Bulgaria, the appointed citizens with a single residence and work permit for the entire year 2022 are 2,831 employees. Even if we add seasonal workers and even those with blue card type permits, the numbers are far from the successes of its northern neighbor.
To the south of us, in Greece, nearly 168 third-country nationals will be working in various sectors of the economy by the end of next year. 20,000 of them are from Egypt and Bangladesh and come under bilateral agreements, writes Kathimerini newspaper.
Foreign labor fills the positions that Greek citizens are not interested in, in the same way as it happens in Bulgaria.
Non-EU labor is sought for unskilled agricultural work, but also in construction, dairy and local industries and, of course, in tourism.
“Let’s not forget that our legislation imposes restrictions on the total number of third-country nationals with long-term residence permits working for the local employer in the previous 12 months not to exceed 20 percent of the average number of employees employed under employment law, and for the small and medium-sized enterprises – 35 percent”, remind “Respect Consult” – the legal partner of the Thrace Economic Zone.
If the legislation is changed and the labor import process is forced, it will be a great success for BG employers. The tourism industry now hopes that in its remaining time the 49th Parliament will consider changes to the Foreigners Act and pass them. The changes will enable third-country nationals’ short-term 90-day work visas to be renewed without them having to leave the country.
Yesterday, the parliamentary committee on tourism was able to accept at first reading the draft amendment to the Law on Foreigners in the Republic of Bulgaria (ZChRB), submitted by Manoil Manev and Temenuzka Petkova from GERB. What will happen from there next remains to be seen.
