Getting infected, losing your job and returning to Ukraine – panic among workers in Poland
Due to the increase in incidence due to the third wave of the pandemic, the level of anxiety among Ukrainian labor migrants in Poland has increased. People are especially afraid of getting sick and losing their jobs.
Anatoly Zimnin, PR manager of the Polish company EWL, announced this at the presentation of the sociological study “Migrant workers in Poland during a pandemic,” PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The third wave of the pandemic in the spring of this year was characterized by a huge surge in morbidity and a record mortality rate. Of course, this affected the level of security among workers in Poland, as well as Polish citizens themselves. We see that, compared to August last year, the sense of security has decreased among foreign employees.
If in September last year more than 83% of foreign workers indicated that they felt safer, now this percentage has dropped to 64%,” he said.
The biggest fears related to the pandemic are the fear of losing a job, the fear of being personally affected by the economic crisis, and the fear of returning to one's own country. At the same time, 36,4% of respondents are afraid of losing their job, 27,7% are afraid of the consequences of the economic crisis, and 24,8% are afraid of the need to return to their own country.
Compared to September last year, the number of people who are afraid of contracting coronavirus has increased. Thus, the number of migrant workers who are afraid of a reduction in wages decreased by a quarter from 19,5% to 15%. The number of respondents who are afraid of contracting coronavirus increased from 10,3% to 12,9%.
“This is the result of the third wave of the pandemic. On the one hand, we see that the percentage of those who are afraid of some kind of economic loss, such as a reduction in wages or job loss, is decreasing, but the number of respondents who are afraid of contracting the coronavirus is growing,” noted Anatoly Zimnin.
The study “Migrant workers in Poland during the pandemic” was carried out in April-May 2021 by EWL, the EWL Foundation for Support of Migrants in the Labor Market and the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Warsaw. Using the CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interview) method, 620 foreigners, mostly citizens of Ukraine, who came to work in Poland, were interviewed.
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