Foreign workers in Iasi

Romania follows the development path of other European countries: Spain, Czech Republic, Poland, etc. The market economy has grown, salaries have increased. Even if there are quite big differences compared to the salaries in UK, Netherlands or Norway, for some people in Asia Romanian salaries are getting more and more attractive. Respecting the models already developed in other countries, Romanian companies are bringing in cheaper labor especially from the Asian continent. And, similar to other countries, the first sector that starts using foreign labor are the constructions.

Palas project aims to be one of the biggest real estate projects in Easter Europe. The developers aim to have a team of 2500 people working for the project. Up till now they already hired 600 employees. Out of these, only 500 are Romanians. The remaining 100 are Chinese.

This is not the first real estate project from Iasi where are working foreign people. Inter-Dogan, the company that develops Green Park project, is using Turkish construction workers. Up till now they hired 150 workers from Turkey, and they plan to grow this number up to 300 permanent workers. On the peak periods the company representatives estimated that up to 1000 Turkish workers will be brought to Iasi.

In the first 4 months of 2008 there were 2800 workers from non-EU countries that received work permits for Romania. Out of these, more than half were employed companies from Bucharest (1500). 400 non-EU people started working in Constanta in the first 4 months of 2008, 200 in Bacau and 100 in Galati and Sibiu.

So far most of the foreign people in Romania are hired by construction and textile companies. But I am sure that soon other sectors will follow. Romania becomes an important center in the BPO sector and I am sure that these companies will soon start to look for employees from other countries. Foreign workers might prove to be the salvation for the Romanian agriculture that is highly inefficient now.