Poland

The Polish unemployment problem-facts on the ground

Warsaw, Poland June 30th 2006 Poland continues to enjoy a very high unemployment rate. One can read statistics and one can look at various government programs without ever seeing what the real problem is. But one can find out a lot more when one gets close to the people and looks at what's happening.

In the city of Slusp Poland the unemployment rate is approximately 30%. A car repair shop once still employ eight workers. It offers a monthly pay of 2000 Zloty which is much higher than the 800 to 1000 zloty that are offered to people by many of the large retailers. They have been on able to fulfil the positions for some time. It is reported that they believe that people have registered as unemployed but they are working illegally and are such are not interested in taking on another job.

In another city a woman went to a state unemployment office and notice that there was a job offer by a bar. The people at this state unemployment office said that they did not send older women to this job but only sent younger women because they were sure that the bar would not hire the older women.

This older woman found the address to the bar and applied for the job. She was gladly accepted by the bar owner who said that he wanted to hire older women and that he was tired of hiring younger women. When the hired younger women they would work for six months and once they were fully trained they would go to England or Ireland and worked there at higher pay. So he was done with younger women and would only be hiring older women if at all possible.

Polish strawberry farmers are considering turning under their fields of strawberries. They cannot get people to pick the strawberries for them. They want the Polish government to allow migrant Ukrainian and Russian workers to pick the strawberries.

Polish strawberry farmers pay less than two zloty for a strawberry picker to pick a large basket of strawberries. Polish workers go to Spain where they can make 13 to 15 euro per hour picking strawberries.

If the Polish farmers are to survive the price of strawberries has the goal up dramatically in Poland so that they can afford to pay the strawberry pickers. That is of course unless the Polish government allows the Russian and Ukrainian workers to come to Poland.

Let it not be said that the Polish government is not concerned about providing employment opportunities to people in remote regions. They have even change train schedules in order to help people.

For example, one of the fastest trains in Poland is the Warsaw to Krakow train that runs at very high speed and runs nonstop between Krakow and Warsaw. Or, at least, it used to run nonstop.

A senior government politician and member of the Law and Justice Party made are raised this to have this train stopped at a town of 10,000 people. He said that by having this train stop at this small town it would give the people the opportunity to commute to Warsaw and Krakow and to get jobs. Now the station is totally unprepared to handle this and stopping at this town is well outside the guidelines that are set for stops by intercity trains that normally stop only at towns that have at least 200,000 people.

Stopping this train at this town has increased the power requirements for the train system and has made it necessary to reschedule many trains on those tracks. And of course it has increased the time that it will take to commute between Warsaw and Krakow. But the government has shown that it is concerned about creating employment for people in the countryside. http://english.people.com.cn/200608/02/eng20060802_289198.html Continue Reading More