Due to the shortage of workforce in the country, Slovakia needs to adopt a number of measures related to the import of labour force, including a measure that will cut the time needed for companies to hire foreigners, stated Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini (Smer-SD). There are currently about 82,000 vacancies in Slovakia for which companies have been struggling to find suitable candidates. "Over the next two weeks, all the state authorities that have something to do with approving the influx of labour from abroad, including the Foreign Police, the Interior Ministry, the Labour Ministry and the Foreign Affairs Ministry, are set to submit a package of further measures aimed at facilitating the whole process without these being strictly of a legislative nature," said Pellegrini.
The first vice-president of the Republican Union of Employers (RUZ) Mário Lelovský, who also took part in the meeting, said that various associations of employers have submitted to the Government a series of measures aimed at addressing the issue of labour shortages, including reducing the bureaucracy and long waiting times linked to hiring workers from non-EU countries. "I think the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Interior Ministry have not been ready for this. They need to increase their capacity in order to deal with the demands of the labour market," said Lelovský. At the end of July, there were 60,136 foreigners working in Slovakia, most of them employed in the automotive industry and shared-services centres.
Slovak officials have been concerned about so called social dumping. Thus the import of foreign labour will be monitored, and companies will have to employ foreigners under the same conditions as those provided to Slovak employees and only in professions for which Slovakia lacks labour force. The Government also wants to work with long-term unemployed Slovaks and find ways to put this group on the labour market.
