From Ireland, EU hears hum of cheap labor
By Monday, Western Europe must decide whether to lift restrictions on low-wage Eastern European immigrants.
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Other observers are more sanguine, and say that with time, as the Irish grow accustomed to the large numbers of foreigners in their midst, they will also recall their ancestors' experiences as strangers in strange lands.
"The biggest issue is that this is all so new, it happened so fast," argues Pat Normanly, who works as the Equality and Diversity Officer at the capital's bus company. "There is a great opportunity to get it right, because of our history."
They came from the same country with the same dreams. Yet Rafal Dambiec and Leszek Nowakowski could not have ended up in more different circumstances.
Mr. Dambiec, 22 years old and garrulous in his newly learned English, rattles off the five jobs he has held in the four months since he arrived in Dublin from his home in northern Poland: a week in a warehouse "just to start," then a spell as a car valet, then a while on the reception desk of the hostel where he stays, then a week on a construction site, and now night manager of a gas station.
"I'm looking for something more responsible," he says. "This is an easy job but you do nothing actually. Just serve customers and clean the station."
Mr. Nowakowski, 52, asks a friend to translate for him as he explains, "I arrived here two months ago and I haven't found any work. I don't know why."
The result: He sleeps with four other Polish men in an abandoned shipping container. He eats twice a day at a soup kitchen run by Capuchin monks, and he showers at a shelter for homeless men.
Even for Dambiec it hasn't all been smooth sailing.
The week he worked on a construction site was a mistake, for example: A Brazilian guy he knew offered him a job, but ended up paying him only 50 euros ($60) a day for 16 hours' work - four times less than the legal wage.
But at the gas station, working seven nights a week, he can pull down 2,000 euros ($2,400) a month, he reckons, and save 1,000 euros ($1,200) of that. At home, working as a driver, he earned 150 euros a month.
"I want to stay till the summer, go back to Poland, give some money to my parents, come back here, stay one year and earn as much as possible, then go home to study journalism," he explains.
Nowakowski is not looking so far ahead. "I hope today will be the day a job falls," he says with a wry smile. "That's why I stay."
May 1, 2004
Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Malta, and Greek Cyprus join the EU.
Out of the 15 "old" EU members, only Britain, Ireland, and Sweden agree to admit workers freely from the Eastern European member countries. The other 12 impose "Transitional Arrangements" (TAs).
May 1, 2006
All 15 "old" EU members must tell the European Commission whether they will maintain or change their TAs.
Portugal, Spain, Finland are expected to lift restrictions. France, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Netherlands are expected to maintain some sort of restrictions. Germany and Austria are expected to maintain current TAs. Greece has given no indication of its intentions.
May 1, 2009
All TAs will end, barring exceptional circumstances such as an undue threat to labor market stability. In such cases, states will be allowed two more years maximum.
