Men fight at home
Poland lacks Ukrainian construction workers
03/26/2022, 08:04
Men leave their jobs in Poland and go to the Ukraine to fight – this poses major problems for many companies. Even without the recent consequences of the Russian war of aggression, the shortage of skilled workers was already high. Nobody dares to look into the future at the moment.
Before the war, Szymon Janiewski employed ten Ukrainians in his small construction company in Poland. Now nobody is there. In January they went to their home country to see their families, a month later the war broke out and they never came back – because men are needed to defend the country. A number of Polish entrepreneurs are currently in the same situation as the 40-year-old.
“I don’t have a single Ukrainian employee anymore,” Janiewski complains. “They were the backbone of my company.” According to official figures, 300,000 Ukrainians had residence permits in the neighboring country before the war began; the number of those actually present could have been up to 1.5 million people.
Many Ukrainian men have now “left their jobs in Poland to defend their homeland,” says Polish Minister for Family and Social Affairs Marlena Malag. Some industries risk losing permanent workers, she reports. The construction industry is hardest hit. According to the PZPB industry association, 480,000 foreign workers worked on Polish construction sites and in companies in the sector before the war – four out of five came from Ukraine. However, a quarter of Ukrainians living in Poland have left the country since the start of the war, the PZPB estimates. “Everyone in the industry has the same problem: Ukrainian workers,” says entrepreneur Janiewski.
Small and medium-sized businesses badly affected
Even without the recent consequences of the Russian war of aggression, the shortage of skilled workers was already high. Already in 2019 there was a need for 150,000 workers in the construction sector, today there are 250,000, as Jan Stylinski from the PZPB says. Small and medium-sized companies in eastern Poland on the border with Ukraine are particularly hard hit.
Company boss Janiewski tries to keep in touch with his Ukrainian employees, he is attached to them and wants to support them in these difficult times. They cannot leave Ukraine because 18-60 year olds are supposed to stay to fight. “It was a team I’ve been working with for four years,” says Janiewski. “I trained her, we got along well.”
At the moment he is offering refuge to ten family members of his employees, they are now war refugees in Poland, they are children and also widows. “The children are already registered at school,” says Janiewski. Like so many of his compatriots, he did not hesitate to help. Poland has now taken in more than 2.2 million people from Ukraine. Mainly women, children and old people come.
The lack of workers is not the only problem for Poland’s construction companies. As a result of the war in the neighboring country, the prices for asphalt, fuel and concrete have “risen dramatically,” says Barbara Dzieciuchowicz from the road construction authority. Many other important products are scarce – due to disrupted supply chains or sanctions. “Nothing comes from Belarus or Russia anymore,” she says.
Road construction in Poland is not in danger. However, the situation is “extreme, very dynamic” and stabilization is unlikely in the near future, says Dzieciuchowicz. At the end of February, the price of building materials rose by an average of 27 percent compared to the same month last year, and the cost of insulation work by as much as 72 percent. Inflation in Poland is already at a high 8.5 percent and labor costs are rising. Entrepreneur Janiewski would rather not look too far into the future at the moment. “Everything is very difficult to predict,” he says. “I focus on the present, on the moment.”