"We must admit that there's a crisis situation in the western Slovakia region due to a shortage of qualified labour. The situation, however, hasn't reached the point where companies are leaving Slovakia," said Labour Minister Ján Richter on Sunday. He reacted to recent media reports that Samsung, which has two factories in western Slovakia and is struggling to find new workers might close one of them. The company declined speculations about leaving the country. "Some companies face questions as to whether to move their business within or outside Slovakia," said Markus Halt, chair of the Slovak-German trade chamber for the SME daily. Richter also said that it is time for state subsidies to no longer be used to support investors in western Slovakia, they will need to import manpower from abroad. He suggests to send state subsidies to eastern Slovakia, where the unemployment rate is much higher.
Opposition MP Soňa Gaborčáková of the Ordinary People Party pointed out that qualified people are leaving Slovakia, who are then missing from the labour market. Moreover, she sees a problem with the Slovak economy being strongly focused on the automotive industry and the risk thus not being spread out.
As Emil Machyna, chair of the KOVO trade union organisation said "the problem is not only a lack of a workforce, but also high costs related to employing people." Recently, the Slovak government introduced higher weekend, holiday and nightshift bonuses. A lack of labour also leads to payrise requests as seen in the case of Volkswagen Bratislava, where the trade unions organized a strike last summer. Currently, an alert strike is in full swing at the largest private employer in the eastern Slovak Spiš region, Embraco.
