International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Assessment of the present awareness of employers with regards to regulations
governing the employment of migrants can be made only on the basis of individual
interviews with employers, and opinions of the staff of employers’ organizations
and the State Labour Inspectorate. 67 They suggest that the changes concerning
declarations, and facilitations in work permit issuing procedures, as well as the
accompanying media debate (broad press coverage), translated into an improved
awareness of employers around the possibilities of legally employing third-country
nationals.
At the same time, the present situation cannot be deemed wholly satisfactory. This
is demonstrated by data sourced from the National Labour Inspectorate, which
records numerous cases of undocumented employment of foreigners. From the
viewpoint of the sizes of checked plants, the largest numbers of illegally working
foreigners were revealed in microbusinesses (whose staff does not exceed nine
employees) – which accounted for 53 per cent of all discovered cases (and 47%
in 2010) – and in medium-sized enterprises (from 50 to 249 employees), which
accounted for 22 per cent of all discovered cases (compared with 19% in 2010).
In 2010, besides microbusinesses, this group was dominated by small enterprises
(from 10 to 49 employees).
An important proportion (approximately 40%) of employers with whom cases of
undocumented employment of foreigners were revealed, went on to attribute
this fact to an unawareness of procedures, and considered the said procedures to
be extremely complex, which is untrue in view of recent changes. It is difficult to
ascertain unambiguously, however, whether those explanations were genuine and
to what extent employers are simply not interested in the legalization of migrants’
employment. It needs to be stressed, though, that the data published by the National
Labour Inspectorate suggest that the number of disclosed irregularities as regards
the employment of nationals of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova and Georgia on
the basis of declarations registered in public employment offices, has in fact been
declining year on year.
In the opinions of both employers and the staff of employers’ organizations, the
changes introduced between 2006 and 2009 had a positive impact on the prospects
for legally employing migrants, particularly as far as small and medium-sized
enterprises are concerned. The application for issuing a work permit for a foreigner is
not complicated, and its completion should not be a problem. Some reservations can
be raised as regards the list of documents that has to be attached to the application
each time. A majority of the certificates required to be attached could easily be
67 To obtain information, an analysis was carried out of available interviews with employers who have had
experience of hiring foreigners and of talks with the staff of employers’ organizations (3 interviews)
and the employees of the State Labour Inspectorate (2 interviews). The interviews were performed
with employees of the Polish Confederation of Private Employers Lewiatan, which affiliates 3,750
companies employing approximately 700,000 workers, and of the Business Centre Club comprising
of 2,500 companies. Both aforementioned organizations are members of the Tripartite Commission,
Poland’s major social dialogue entity. It is estimated that all Polish employers’ organizations represented
merely approximately 5 per cent of all employers, mainly of large and medium-sized enterprises.
country studIes – POLAND
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