In their free time, dozens and dozens of migrants from Asia leave their motorbikes with Glovo boxes on them, with which they deliver food, and gather in the Văcărești Natural Park to play cricket. I wrote then for GSP: Who are the people who practice a sport that has not been seen in Romania in a place that did not exist until a few years ago?
In recent years, especially with the pandemic, there have been areas of work taken over by workers from Asia.
In all the larger and somewhat more prosperous cities, the delivery boy is a boy who knows how to play cricket: Romania’s future national sport.
The delivery guys are those guys who casually pull 14 hours a day from somewhere in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India or Uganda. We don’t really distinguish them. But they do hard, cheap labor for those here: they are ferociously exploited, for little money, and often live in harsh conditions. They are exploited hard – somehow repeating our history of the 90s of the first waves of emigration. But we forgot.
More recently, all hotels are staffed in these areas: cleaning women, restaurants, all these intensive jobs. Women are less visible, but they are just as exploited – perhaps even more harshly.
A few weeks ago I was in Timisoara at the hotel: I think only the receptionists were Romanian – the rest, Asian. But this phenomenon also extends to small towns. In Reșita, at the hotel there was something similar.
I go out with a friend for coffee and tell the story: he follows the subject and knows the field well. We, the generation on the edge of the decrees, who are soon preparing for retirement, but without a work card, discuss.
– It’s just the beginning, he says. In the next period we will have a labor force deficit of over one million workers. We can no longer have them from the inside: it’s over.
– We will bring them, but from where? I ask.
– Well, the only big offer is Asia: they will save us. Practically, in 8 years from now we will end up with 1 out of 5 workers in Romania being a worker normally brought from Asia. Every fifth worker will come here from somewhere. Ukrainians don’t really stop here – so Asia.
– Well then we don’t have to worry too much, I say ironically. There is someone to save us with a cup of water….
– Yes, but this only partially solves the problem, because they will only be able to replace certain jobs, unskilled or low-skilled jobs. Some of the jobs are language related and that complicates the situation. Unskilled jobs don’t need language, skilled jobs do.
Things are much more complicated. Let’s look at some demographics.
155,390 children were born in 2023. They will enter the workforce around the age of 21, around 2044.
In 2024, 330 thousand people will retire (men at 67, born in 1976, 208 thousand; women at 65, born in 1979, 205 thousand, in total 413 thousand; with an attrition rate of 20%) .
330 thousand pensioners will be replaced by only 155 thousand young people.
There will be no unemployment: instead, there will be a huge labor shortage.
Romania will have to import a lot of labor and will definitely change demographically.
Births in 2023 were less than half of those in 1990.
I come and ask too that we are in deep election year with four clicks.
That’s why we have the state, institutions, parties to think strategies and public policies for 10-20-30 years strategically. do we have Anyone thinking about this? Have you seen any parties on the program discussing this? Have you seen institutions that do research and provide strategic solutions for the next 20 years?
Where from? We do not have institutions to count us, we are not able to organize a census, we do not know how many there are, to put us in categories so that we can do a minimum analysis. That is, if we are not able to produce a census and minimal analysis, where are the strategies?
The first condition of a state is to be able to do a census, which has been done for millennia – we have proven that we cannot, we are not capable. What are we talking about?
If we also put into perspective the massive departure of the somewhat more qualified labor force, and especially the mass departure of young people, then the future becomes quite complicated.
In the next period we will face a lot of big problems, related to the labor force, its composition, the labor legislation adapted to new conditions, the social, cultural and economic integration of a large number of workers who probably came dominantly from Asia. We lack not only institutions but minimal strategies for what comes our way. And the worst thing is that we do not even problematize this situation, and the parties and state institutions do not have the topic on their agenda.
But these problems will come upon us whether we are prepared or not.
So the pension is delayed, the water mug in Sri Lanka is a little more complicated, and its social cost may be a big one, for which we are not yet ready.
Photo: Vlad Chirea
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