Poles flock to Irish job fair in Warsaw

They came from all over Poland: engineers in crisply pressed shirts, laborers with mud on their shoes, university graduates with backpacks, all seeking the same thing -- a job in Ireland.

Long lines snaked around a Warsaw hotel Thursday and Friday as Irish construction companies competed for the best workers to keep their building projects going in a booming economy. The crowd of would-be emigrants illustrated enduring frustration over low wages and high unemployment in Poland, the largest of 10 countries that joined the European Union in 2004.

"Poland is a beautiful country, but people don't earn enough money to live like civilized human beings rather than like animals," said Bogdan Wajda, 50, an electrical engineer.

Wajda traveled from his home in Lodz in hopes of finding a job that pays more than what he gets now: about $1,325 per month.

After taxes, he's left with only $830, hard going for a man helping his ex-wife support three children.

On that salary, there's "no chance" to go to movies or restaurants. Vacations? "Forget it," he said bitterly. "I can't finish the house I started to build six years ago. I don't have enough money."

The job Wajda applied for pays $5,770 to $6,400 per month, and could prove his financial salvation.

The firm to which he applied -- John F. Supple Ltd. -- seemed impressed with his 26 years of work experience and fluent English, and was flying him to Cork soon for a formal interview.

"He's good -- he's the best I've seen so far today for that position," recruiter Padraig Cronin said Thursday afternoon. But there was only one vacancy for an electrical engineer -- and more than a day left at the fair.

"And I'm going to keep taking applications," Cronin said, a pile of resumes stacked up on the floor beside him.

As Wajda's fate hung in the air, so did that of thousands of others at the fair.

While some, like Wajda, dressed in jackets and ties, others showed up in baseball caps, flip flops and shorts. Some even wore sweaty, worn-looking clothing to the ballroom of the Sheraton hotel.

"Some of these people are wearing everything they own on their backs and are begging for jobs," said Paul Sheridan, an organizer. "They're saying 'look, I'll do anything you want.'"

After Poland joined the EU in 2004, many commentators hoped their country would become the next "Celtic Tiger." Ireland, a once-poor country that for centuries saw huge numbers emigrate, has seen dramatic technological and economic progress since joining the EU in 1973.

Poland may become an economic powerhouse yet. But, for now, it looks more like the Ireland of old, a country witnessing massive emigration. The country has a jobless rate of nearly 16 percent, miserably low wages across many sectors by European standards -- even for doctors and scientists -- and dilapidated roads, railways and houses.

The lack of opportunity has pushed more than 150,000 Poles to seek work in Ireland since Dublin opened its market to members of the new EU states in 2004. Even more have left for Britain, with the numbers in the hundreds of thousands but impossible to quantify exactly.

But the number of Poles heading for Ireland is perhaps most striking, given that they have swelled in only two years to make up a whopping 5 percent, at least, of the working population in the country of 4.2 million, according to the Irish Embassy in Warsaw.

In Britain, with its population of 60 million people, Poles still make up a much smaller share of the overall work force. And there, the trend reflects some continuity, given that there's a long tradition of Polish migration to Britain.

Poland's government-in-exile was based in London during the Nazi occupation, and under communism a wave of Poles sought freedom there.

Since 2003, Poland's jobless rate has fallen from 20.7 percent to 15.7 percent, leading to jokes that Britain has done more to lower Poland's unemployment rate than any Polish politicians ever have.

But Maciej Duszczyk, an emigration expert with the Polish government, objects to that. He argues the economy -- now growing at a speedy 5 percent per year -- is creating many new jobs.

Just look, he said, at the weekly job ad section in the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. "It's much thicker than three years ago," he said.

At the fair, Izabela Kaminska, 24, was making a possibly life-altering decision in the ladies' washroom, filling out an application for a job as a civil engineer against the wall.

She just graduated from Wrocław University of Technology and wants a job designing roads and airports. "I thought I'd give it a try," she said.

She said former classmates who have found jobs in Poland only earn about 900 zlotys per month, or $300, and survive by living with their parents and giving up a lot.

"I think it will be sad for me to go. I'd really miss Poland and my family terribly," Kaminska said. "But it's the politicians who have made Poland what it is today. They can't expect people to live on only 900 zlotys a month."

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