Minimum basic salary in Poland

That's interesting (seriously). Do you have any background on this story?

It was in the media about 7 or 8 years ago. If I remember the owners were a Dutch company. I don't really remember any more.

Unfortunately, it's the case in Eastern Poland. Children are frequently "encouraged" by the family to leave school and start working instead - because earning an extra 600zl now makes more sense than getting an education. At least in their view.


In a country with free universal education, it certainly is. I know one guy who came from a ******** family who couldn't afford to put him to university. He knuckled down, worked his ass off in a succession of horrible jobs and somehow managed to study full time too - he left with a so-so degree, but his work ethic has blown away every single employer - and he's now building a huge house for himself and his family. He came from a PGR village - but his parents crucially pushed him in the right direction, even if they couldn't help him get there.


Exactly the sort of mentality that I'm talking about. People try and improve their lot, but they often don't want it - such places are extremely dysfunctional. They would rather spend the day wasted than working.

...and where two good degrees still can't get you a permanent contract from employer and decent salary.

So. You know one guy who is building a house. That really opened my eyes and made me change my mind about the plight of sooo many underpaid workers. It's their fault, obviously. They are not trying hard enough. All 5 million of them or so.


Bullshit. Mainly because there are no jobs to send your kids to.
Also because of the social services that would rather take the kid away from the family than allow for child labour.
And also because the families get child benefits as long as the kid is in school.

BTW: do you know that Poland has one of the highest in Europe percentages of people with university degree (if not the highest)? And, paradoxically, most of these graduates end up on dole. I would be really careful putting (university) education in one line with good salary prospects.

Over-educated. I threw a CV in the bin the other day from such a person - she had two degrees (both bardzo dobry), had the CAE certificate - all in all, great in education. But - she was 27, had no work experience (except some work experience for a month in a "fashionable" place to get experience) and had absolutely nothing on the CV that said "talk to me".

Two degrees mean nothing - it's about what you can do.


Underpaid? Why are they underpaid? Is it perhaps because they're lazy, can't be bothered to work extra hours to get ahead and want to run off at 3pm to cook for some stupid kids rather than work the extra hours needed? If you want to work in a shop from 7am-3pm and not a minute more, you have to accept that you'll always earn nothing. It's just the way it is.


Not bullshit at all, but rather the sad reality that families would rather send their kids at 17 to work for 500-600zl a month than staying in school.


You think social services in a village (where everyone knows each other anyway) are going to intervene in such a case?


If the child can earn more by working than by staying in school, they'll try and put the kid into work.


All to do with the fact that many Polish students like to party and go for nice holidays rather than putting the effort in. I could tell you numerous stories about students who have blown golden chances because they wanted to go for crap holidays in the mountains instead.

At the end of the day, people have to help themselves rather than waiting for someone to help them.

I thought that was normal for Milky?

delphiandomine, you threw out the CV of a person with great degrees and yet you preach about the importance of education? :D
And if a kid, that was working and earning money since he was 17, shows up - you will throw the CV out, because he had no proper schooling?

Makes sense to me :]


Yes, I totally agree, it should never be expected that 8 hours of daily hard work will bring you any decent income :]

<plonk>

Very much so. I only pointed it out because he specifically asked for examples of his skewed postings about Poland.


She was 27 years old. That means she'd had at least eight summers when she had three months to work. She had apparently worked for one month of those 24 months. Would you want a person who had so little in the way of work ethic?

One month in a "fashionable" place.
Could as well have spent 23 months waitressing in Bristol to get the money for college. Work illegally and / or in grey zone to earn any money at all. Nothing you can put in CV in Poland if you want to get good job.

That's however not the point here.

The point was:


So there you have it: an educated person gets her CV binned as well. So much for the value of proper education.

Every excuse is good for putting the blame onto the employees: overeducated. Undereducated. Not willing to work overtimes (usually unpaid). Not willing to half-kill themselves for additional 500zł. Not willing to accept trash work contracts and no social insurance from employer. Not willing to accept 1,600zł salary and spend half of that (and 6 hours daily) on commuting. Not willing to do the job of three people for the salary of one.

Lazy bastards. It's all their fault that don't earn even earn the average (that won't even qualify you for a 35-year mortgage in most banks).

proper education is a good base of general education plus a lot of practical skills - teaching in Poland is very much focused on feeding you facts and not making you use your resources - before vocational education was strong but with the downfall of many of industries and falling out of favour with authorities (because their ambition was that 80 per cent of youth go to universities - hehe good bye realism)

Putting something is better than putting nothing. Would you want to employ somebody who didn't have the wits to realise that it is a bad idea to give the impression of being an utter slacker?


A 'proper' education is not gained only at university. Well, not unless one wishes to spend the rest of one's life at university.


I'm in the office right now. I don't even have a work contract. I pay my own social insurance. I don't expect anybody to accept what I won't accept myself.

As for starting out low and working one's way up, let me explain how it is in the world: you're born, you take sh1t. You get out in the world, you take more sh1t. You climb a little higher, you take less sh1t. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what sh1t even looks like.

You have not taken into account the Polish mentality when it comes to a 'Educated person with 5 or 6 diplomas' who has never done a day's work in their life and a 'robol' (blue collar worker).

It seems that even when this 'robol' (generally a plumber, electrician, car mechanic, builder - all physical work) earns 2 or 3 times as much as the 'educated mgr' in the eyes of some people, he will never be considered on the same level as the 'mgr'.

But, the politicians know better - let the whole country be educated, let there be 99% of people with mgr (MA) diplomas - and nobody to do REAL work......

I told everyone this 20 years ago when I was in Poland, and the answers I got were: 'yes, but when you have a mgr you are "somebody". ....yes, well but not in a country where education has fallen to such levels that almost everyone now has a mgr (MA).

And so I say....let this somebody's serve at McDonalds (that's if they're lucky enough to get that job).

Nothing will change in Poland until people begin to APPRECIATE the hard-working blue collar workers.

it almost vanished

Not necessarily. Not with the sort of attitude shown by most of HR departments - or even bosses of small enterprises who think recruiting makes them half-gods, looking down on any applicant.

Besides:
Let's say she is from rural area. I've known plenty of students that had to go back to their own little villages (and "lazy villagers" parents) because of two reasons:

- one: it's harvest time. The best time to reciprocate the effort the parents put into paying for child's schooling in some crazy expensive big city

- second: the student dormitories close for summer. Finding a summer accommodation (and paying for it) in cities like Kraków or Warsaw may be quite a challenge. Definitely not something you can do with a part-time waitressing job or unpaid training provided by some well-known brand name (the possibility of using their name in your future CV is of course sufficient reward, isn't it?).

The problem with Polish salaries is that generally speaking there is no average salary for average work (and I don't mean the level of engagement here). No mid-levels, no proper training / start-up periods, when you earn money not-that-good (but sufficient to survive) and know that the situation will improve with time. No basic jobs that still allow you to pay the rent and bills without ambitions for much more. You either have to embrace the über-capitallistic mindset and maybe finally advance in the market food chain (unless of course your family has long been there in the right spot and it's all downhill form here) or steer away from the rat race and realise in time that it's not really an option if you want to survive. The average salary quoted before is not the "most common salary". There is no such thing as "average" in Poland and that's the biggest issue. You have two very different worlds and very different salary levels - it's either tens of thousands or 1,600. And it takes a lot of these "1,600" to make for one "ten thousand" in the "average salary". There is no work ethic as such, it got replaced by the money ethics when you can't be proud of your job unless it pays well. And there is only a handful of jobs that pay well - and even these can offer you the right money only because down the food chain there are people who are getting less and less. The mid-level managers' salaries can be 20k and more because the till lady gets 900. The editor gets 10k a month because the student journalist gets 120 for their two weeks work (but hey! he can use the magazine title in his resume!). The local craftsmen, the little kind vendors who knew all their clients, nurses proud of their work ethics, courteous bus drivers - they are gone. If not entirely - going extinct at an alarming rate. The middle class is gone.

It's either sh1tstorm or place almost pristinely sh1tless, the space for gradual sh1t changes is shrinking and not too many vacancies seem to be left there.

Did you actually work in Bristol?

So it is better to look like a person who decided to work for one month out of a possible 24 than to look like a person who takes whatever work is available rather than doing nothing? Really?


So put that in. Any employer worth working for will recognise that somebody who is capable of doing long days of back-breaking work in the heat is not going to whine about doing a couple of hours' overtime when needed.


Most students in Warsaw do not live in dorms and the ones I know of do provide rooms during the summer. And there is always the option of heading up to the coast and working in a place where (low quality) accommodation is part of the wages.

What that has to do with anything?


I could go on and on the the quality of employers in Poland :D


Really.


Tens of thousands do. And definitely the group that cannot afford private accommodation during the term can't afford higher prices durign the summer (also - the dorms are transformed into hostels during that time, usually about 5% of rooms remains for students' use and you have to have a good explanation for your application. Usually university work qualifies for accommodation. Working somewhere else usually doesn't).

Again, the above does not have much to do with my original claim:-
a couple earning (both) the Polish average salary are the lucky ones (and well above minimum wage of 1,500 gross or 1,111 nett).
Period :)

averages don't mean anything in Poland. The population is widely spread out across the country and there is a lot more working class. The expected salary for somebody in a white collar job in the north is about 7,000- this is not entry level but somebody who has 5 years experience. In Warsaw it is more.

why should somebody straight out of school make that much money. nobody, anywhere in the world, makes a huge salary straight out of school. It takes time, dedication and experience. It takes a willingness to resign from a holiday the first few years in order to prove oneself and work the way up the corporate ladder. That is just the way it goes.

Yes, Pip absolutely, that's why I get so angry when people bit*h and moan that they aremaking peanuts and in meantime they didn't do much to progress at all. You do need some luck, but more than luck you need to be able to look ahead into what oportunities job or company can give in future. Short term you can land a better salaty in a smal business, but 5 years later you might still be in same job earning same salary. Whose fault is that?

this is one of the main differences that I have noticed between Poles and foreigners. Perhaps it has to do with working and living under communism, but there are many people that I have come across that just want a 9 to 5 park your brain kind of job. Of course not all Poles are like this but my husbands cousin is one of these- once he gets a job then he just sits back and plans how to spend his salary. They have ambition but once they land the job then they don't have the same determination as before. In Canada these are typically gov't workers. Day in and day out same thing- park your brain.

Some basic information on Polish salaries in English:

Where ?

I cannot see a link

szczecinian.eu/index.php/2012/02/how-much-do-szczecinians-and-poles-earn/

That article is hopeless - cashiers don't earn 6PLN/hour. Heck, I struggled to find a finance assistant with responsibility for preparing accounts for less than (the cost to me) 6000zl!

So the person who wrote that she earned that amount was lying?

Probably, you don't know what a 'cashier' is/does, and have confused it with something like 'accountant'..

A cashier doesn't earn that kind of money in the cities or even big towns because quite honestly, no-one will get out of bed for that.

The only people who will get out of bed for that are the ones who are already claiming "renta" and who want to be paid on the side.

Anyway, the article is also hopeless because the salaries listed are just wildly inaccurate. The average incomes are right, but apart from that...?

Either the person who wrote that's how much she earns is lying, or that's how much she gets,

Why would she lie about it?

Normal in Poland to pretend that things are much worse than they really are.

too right. it is the national past time. and it carries over into Polonia in the rest of the world.

And they want to paid handsomely for it, too. They don't want to have to work hard (and god forbid, some unsociable hours/overtime) - but they want all the benefits. And they complain like hell when employers (already unimpressed with their lack of work ethic) deny them the 2nd of May off, for instance.


No no no. They want it NOW.

I've only ever met one person who was rising through the corporate ranks and only working 40 hours a week. The guy is a machine at work, getting everything done and more - but crucially, he doesn't mess around at work. No messing around with "second breakfast" or taking odd days off to give him long holidays - but he only works 40 hours and that's it. And he's respected for it - he doesn't come up with excuses for not doing something.

Poland doesn't have class barriers or shady interviews to gain entrance to the best universities - it's a very open society. It's there if you want it - there's no such thing as "your face doesn't fit", and no-one is particularly bothered if someone comes from the village or the city - it's all about the person, not their background. That's why there's absolutely no excuse for someone not to do something with themselves - and if they were too stupid to do anything else with themselves, they have no-one to blame but themselves.

Poland seems to be very like America in this respect to me. You want a high salary? Go out there and get it.