Not the coronavirus, but losing their jobs is what Ukrainians working in Poland are most afraid of, according to the April survey of EWL employment agency and the Centre for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw, which Rzeczpospolita is the first to describe.

According to the study, 85 percent of the workers from the East (including mainly Ukrainians) who are now working in Poland during the pandemic intend to stay in our country – mainly because of their work. This will be helped by the possibility, introduced as part of the anti-crisis shield, to automatically extend permits for legal residence and employment, also in case of a change of employer. ‘It is a paradox that it was the pandemic that caused the long-standing demands for greater flexibility in the procedures for legalizing residence and work of foreigners to be taken into account’, points out Jacek Piechota, President of the Polish-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce (PUIG). According to the EWL study, workers from the East (the survey also covered Belarusians and Moldavians) feel safe in Poland during the pandemic. Fewer than 18% fear a coronavirus infection. A three times bigger group (58%) is afraid of losing their jobs and four out of ten are afraid of the effects of the economic crisis. It has already caused almost 27% of respondents to change their industry and a similar group had to move to another location. According to Andrzej Korkus, CEO of EWL, his company offered alternative jobs to all its employees who lost their jobs in the automotive or HoReCa sector at the turn of March and April: mainly in logistics and food industry. However, not everyone accepted the change. Approximately 25% of employees agreed to the change, the rest preferred to go home and wait for offers consistent with their previous specialization. According to data from the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland, since the beginning of quarantine, about 175,000 economic migrants have returned to Ukraine. However, the vast majority (estimated at about one million people) have stayed and, according to the EWL study, do not intend to leave as long as they have a job here. (…)

Source: Rzeczpospolita