EU:European Union trade unions should work together to better protect working conditions of migrant workers and ensure they are not exploited, Poland's foreign minister, Anna Fotyga, said yesterday.
Some estimates say that up to two million of Poland's 38 million people have left to work in western Europe since 2004, mainly to European Union countries that have allowed migrants such as Britain, Ireland, Sweden and, more recently, Spain.
The Polish embassy in Oslo stunned Norway's authorities and media in September when it said that more than 120,000 Poles may be working in Norway - a figure corresponding to roughly 5 per cent of the Scandinavian country's entire workforce.
Norway's newspapers have repeatedly published stories of Poles working for a fraction of Norwegian wages and living in poor conditions. Norway's government has tried to cut "social dumping", or hiring migrants without respecting their rights as workers.
Ms Fotyga urged trade unions to do more to ensure equal treatment by employers for all workers. "We may have to return to bilateral or multilateral between trade unions within Europe in order to fight this problem [of social dumping]," she said.
The foreign minister said she hoped Poland's migrants would one day return home. Poland is already suffering from shortages of skilled workers in sectors such as healthcare. - (Reuters)