Sporting yellow safety helmets, about 30 men are busy at work on a construction site south of Bucharest, exchanging a few words in Vietnamese.
Faced with a growing labor shortage that threatens their economies, Romania and Hungary are courting Asian workers, going against Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s anti-immigration rhetoric.
“My friend, my friend,” a Romanian worker said to his Vietnamese colleague in English at the Bucharest construction site, trying to break the language barrier.
Photo: AFP
Very little bridges the gap between the two cultures — from cigarette breaks, where the Vietnamese use a PVC pipe for an improvised puff, while for lunch a Vietnamese chef prepares several dishes for his compatriots to eat in a dining hall.
District Mayor Daniel Baluta said the city was forced to recruit far beyond EU borders.
“We had money to renovate dozens of public housing units, but not the necessary manpower,” he said.
In neighboring Hungary, the government has been quietly opening up the market to foreign workers.
This year, it is issuing 75,000 permits, mainly for workers from Ukraine, but also some from Vietnam, China and India, up sharply from 13,000 in 2015.
“It is impossible to realize a large-scale project without foreign workers,” said Eva Toth, a representative of the chemical industry trade union, adding that Hungarian workers should be paid more and have better work conditions to entice them to stay.
In construction alone, an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 additional workers are needed, said Gyula Pallagi, head of the sector’s union.
At one industrial site — a new polyol factory owned by Hungarian oil and gas giant MOL about 160km northeast of Budapest — a so-called “container city” has been built to house up to 2,500 foreign workers.
Romania issued more than 11,000 work permits in the first half of the year — already more than the 10,500 granted for the whole of last year — to fill the shortage left by 4 million of its own citizens emigrating north to look for better paying jobs.
Vietnamese, Moldovans and Sri Lankans are most numerous. Many are hired by recruitment companies that specialize in Asian labor, whose number has exploded.
“At first we were solicited for small projects, but for the past three years the demand for workers for large projects has increased significantly,” said Corina Constantin, director of recruiter Multi Professional Solutions.
A study last year by US-based ManpowerGroup said that four out of five Romanian employers have difficulties in filling posts.
With a total workforce of 5.1 million, the country — one of the poorest in Europe — lacks an estimated 300,000 workers, industry groups said.
“All sectors are affected, but things are particularly bad in industries, where there are strict deadlines and contracts to be respected throughout the year,” Association of Entrepreneurs vice president Christian Parvan said.
Parvan said foreign workers get “treated well” and their employers try to integrate them in the conservative EU member state, which unlike many other European countries has not seen a surge of nationalist sentiment.
Baluta said that 500-odd Vietnamese employed in construction in his district receive the equivalent of 900 euros (US$1,000) net per month, one-third higher than the average salary in Romania.
However, trade unionist Dumitru Costin criticizes what he describes as “abusive behavior” by many employers, adding that the Asian workforce “is much, much cheaper than the local one.”
Labor inspectors cannot check whether the “minimum standards” of conditions for workers are respected, because it is impossible to communicate directly with the employees, he said.
“When they have traveled thousands of miles to find a job, it is obvious that they will obey without flinching and work unpaid overtime for fear of being sent back to their country,” said Costin, who heads SNB, one of the country’s main trade union confederations.
Across the border in Hungary, trade unionists make the same accusations.
Employers “exploit the language barriers by faking even their working papers,” Pallagi said.
Hungarian employees likewise are under pressure from their bosses, who tell them they are “easily replaceable” by Ukrainians, Mongolians or Vietnamese, Metallurgical Trade Union head Zoltan Laszlo said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the