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Due to the labor shortage, an increasing number of Asian guest workers are arriving in Hungary, who are not paid less than Hungarians and therefore do not lose their jobs, Kisalföld reports. The portal interviewed a Kazakh couple working in Hungary to present the life and working conditions of guest workers.
Dilnoza Yusupova and Eldar Mannapov, aged 39 and 38, lived in Turkistan, Kazakhstan, until a year and a half ago. Dilnoza has two degrees: a law and a customs administrator’s degree. She used to sell children’s clothes, and her husband worked in a furniture factory. Business was good seasonally, but sometimes there was no income at all, they lived from one day to the next. The Kazakh couple saw a job advertisement of Pannon-Work in Hungary on Instagram and applied. The money they earn will be sent home to support their relatives and build their family house, which will absorb everything.
The couple work for an automotive company in the press component industry, three shifts a week.
They earn a net monthly income of HUF 350,000 (EUR 890) each, spend about HUF 200,000 (EUR 500), and send home more than EUR 1,000.
They feel that they have a good life in Hungary. They have a wider choice of goods than at home, and they can travel: they have been to Germany, Lake Balaton, the sea in Slovenia, and they also have a group of friends.
They have been with the company for almost a year and a half. They would like to stay for another year, and after the two years they have signed contracts for (that is the maximum), they go back home. They said that
in Kazakhstan, the average salary of a skilled line worker is only EUR 300 a month.
The economic situation in their country is not the best at the moment, with many people looking for work in Korea, they explained, describing the situation in Kazakhstan, where more than 120 nationalities live together. It is the ninth largest country in the world, with 20 million inhabitants on two million square kilometers.
Pannon-Work Zrt., a Hungarian recruitment and temporary employment agency, has been intensively involved in bringing foreign guest workers to Hungary since 2017. It was then that they were approached by companies looking for workers. One company even openly told them that if they could not provide 200 workers within a few months, they would have to take the relevant factory lines out of the country.
They started with Ukrainians and Serbs, then as the demand grew and government opportunities increased, they moved on to Asia. They are now working with Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Filipinos, and Indonesians. The agency takes care of its workers: they do not put them up in workers’ hostels, but in separate properties, in family houses, in flats, and four of them are living in one place. If they need any help, they can call their mediator immediately. There are no major problems; if there are any, the problematic people are moved immediately.
In the first instance, we always try to do it with Hungarians, but sometimes we need up to a hundred people at a time – we cannot find that many workers from home,”
Beatrix Sarkadyné Pápai, responsible for international recruitment at Pannon-Work, told Kisalföld. “Foreigners do not come cheaper, and they cannot come cheaper, therefore it is not true that they are taking jobs away from Hungarians and accepting lower wages. The laws ensure equal pay,” she stressed.
Via Kisalföld, Featured image: Pixabay
