East Europeans Go West for the Good Life

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Olczyk earned 3,000 zloty (€780) in his Warsaw office -- a good salary by Polish standards, but his salary in London is £2,000 (€2,930). "Of course the money was an issue," he says. "It's that way for most people. But to me, it was also about my career. There was nothing new I could learn in Warsaw."

Last autumn he plucked up courage, booted up his computer and began searching the Internet for work abroad. He had success with his first job interview. "We're about 30, which means we're a little behind. Those who are now 40 profited most from the fall of the Iron Curtain in Poland," Olczyk says.

Back then, during the early 1990s, the economic boom in Eastern Europe began. Foreign companies and privatized Polish companies hired entire classes of university graduates directly off campuses. "These people are still young today," he explains. "They're blocking the way up for those like us who have followed in their footsteps."

POLAND STRUGGLES TO FIND QUALIFIED WORKERS
Twenty-five-year-old Tomasz Gawlikowski had better luck. The psychologist works for the personnel consulting firm Kadry Polskie in Opole. Callling him a "head hunter" would be an exaggeration. Gawlikowski sits in the offices of Warsaw's employer's association and recruits workers for domestic and foreign companies. "We have problems finding welders and other qualified workers," Gawlikowski says. "It takes weeks because they're all in England."

In his desperation, Gawlikowksi will sometimes even call up priests, since they often keep good tabs on the ambitions of the younger members of their congregations. Or Gawlikowski will send recruiters to football clubs, where they can distribute application forms among the fans. But it's a tough sell. "Young Poles are leaving the country in droves," he laments. "There's enough work here, but the wages are not keeping step with the rise in prices. Those new to the labor force must work especially hard, and they earn terrible wages."

Gawlikowski is trying to convince employers to pay better wages and offer services such as assistance in finding an apartment or planning a career. "The hire and fire mentality of the 1990s is outdated. Polish workers want to be courted," he says.

The situation in the public sector is worse. Even the miserable wages of Western nurses are attractive to trained nurses from Eastern Europe. And doctors can easily earn 10 times more than they do back home.

Highly specialized doctors such as Roman Brazdil, the director of an anesthesia department in Karlovy Vary, in the Czech Republic, can earn as much as €1,000 ($1,334). His clinic is freshly renovated and meets modern Western standards. Still his colleagues don't seem to want to stay. "After university, it takes someone another six years before they can really work independently. And then they leave," Brazdil comments dryly.

A DRAMATIC MIGRATION
He employs Slovakians to fill the gaps. Slovakia is also an EU member country, but wages there are even more depressed than those in the Czech Republic. "The world is witnessing dramatic migration in the health sector: Doctors from Germany, France and England are going to the United States; the Czechs and the Poles are taking their place; and they in turn are replaced by Bulgarians and Romanians."

Conservative estimates suggest that 200,000 Bulgarians will make their way to Western Europe during the coming years. EU regulations allow them to live and work wherever they want, now that Sofia has become a member state.

But the British have had enough for now. They've closed their labor market to Bulgarians and Romanians. Trade unions and critics don't feel the United Kingdom could stomach another wave of cheap immigrant labor.

Ironically, though, studies on the business cycle confirm that Britain's strong economic growth of 2.7 percent is largely due to the inflow of immigrants. The immigrants didn't exactly depress wages, but they did prevent them from rising rapidly. They also boosted domestic demand and paid taxes. More importantly, they took jobs that the British were no longer willing to perform.

BRITAIN'S POLISH ENCLAVES
Poles and Czechs can be met anywhere in England. They drive buses, iron people's clothes, keep parks tidy, clean windows and tap beer.

Small Polish enclaves are emerging all over the place, including London's Hammersmith borough, where you can easily find Zywiec beer, Wedel chocolate and pirogis stuffed with sauerkraut. Banks and telephone providers woo new customers in Polish and Czech. In the Cheshire County, the A49 motorway to Manchester now features direction signs in Polish.

Thousands of Poles work for mobile phone provider Vodafone in Crewe. In Northern Ireland, the newly created Police Service of Northern Ireland is filling its ranks with Poles: There are not enough native Catholics to meet the 50 percent quota fixed during the last peace agreement.

With each passing day, Olczyk feels more and more at home in London. Sometimes he goes out to the Green Leave, a chic Indian restaurant, where he likes to order exotic dishes. And then, with chicken tikka and papadam on the table, he starts philosophizing.

Even though Poles still like to describe themselves as patriotic, they've probably had enough of their own country, he says.

"We had the German invasion at the beginning of World War II. Then came communism with its economy of scarcity and the wild transition period that came with the fall of the Iron Curtain. That's deeply ingrained in our memory. We just don't want to stay at home and wait for things to improve. We want to finally enjoy the good life."

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