Hiring a Polish Worker - Pros and Cons

i love the english language... so many beautiful expressions for so many different situations...

... fek off back to your own country seems most apt in this instance...

It would appear that he has already. Probably out on parole

Just addressing "marilyns" comment about tons of people living in one place. Maybe, no certainly it is not an ideal situation for anyone, but I don't think people should be arrogant and put their nose up to other financially less fortunate people's situation. That was the reason why I mentioned my personal view on the English and their very strange attitudes on life and fellow human beings. We finally left the UK last year, and I swear I had to program myself to smile. It was so wonderful to finally be able to move to a place where (strangers) people smile, wish each other goodmorning, small talk and make a plesant day out of it. In the UK it was NON existant. And I am not taking about the poorer parts of the UK. We lived in a very affluent area, and between my spouse and I we probable were in the highest 10 percent earning bracket. It was the culture and the people that was the saddest thing about that country. No, I am not angry in any way or form, coming from California things were very very different in the UK. God bless the people who choose to live there!

Ah, now I understand. Please excuse my (typically) flippant English comments. In the South of England in particular there is little community spirit. It has a reputation for being very reserved and outwardly unfriendly. Cliques are prevalent and outsiders are outsiders. The more affluent the area the worse it can be. It's not unknown for neighbours never to have spoken after years of living next door to each other. Yep it sucks in that respect.

On the other hand I lived in San Jose, CA for a couple of years and I found the friendliness to be a bit too shallow and superficial! Over compensation if you like. :)

I couldn't wait to leave there but that was just my opinion.

Anyway, all the best to you.

I love the way people come to London and the South East and assume that that is Britain. First off, is it 40 or 60% of Londoners are immigrants.

Second, the rest of the country is far more friendly, go to Yorkshire and its completly different. Mind you the people you will be speaking to will be English, not French, Spanish, Polish or winging Yank. There are more languages spoke in London than are different language newspapers printed daily world wide. Live in a posh area like Chelsea and you neighbours are more likely to be Russian than anything else.

Or go to Paris and assume it is France. or go to NY and assume it is the USA :)

Da :)

Thanks, nice chatting with you!

Why is there even a need to compare Poles to other nationalities? We are all the same. People from better developed countries judge Poles so fast but how many of you could speak another language, or even get master degree? It seems to be obvious that if you are an American or British, you are a God...The rest is always less sophisticated! Why? Look at yourself first. You could not last even a day in foreign country. You don't even know your own language well...

" Pole"

Oh well done Sabina,

Yes i am from Britain, the "You are god country" let me see, oh yes i have travelled and lived in quite a few countries.. oh yes and terrible me, i speak more than one language... oh the shame of it..!!! one word springs to mind regarding your post..

Generalizing !!!

"God"

Oh yes Sabina,

I forgot to ask, would you like a shoulder to go with that chip?

Siema Sabina :)

we Polish workers are hard working however some of us have "sticky fingers" :)

even boxer Andrew Golota had "sticky fingers" during his cleaning days in Chicago:)

Speak for yourself Witek, not everybody has sticky fingers.

Who told u that 50 ppl live in Poland in 1 house?????????????????? Im polish and i`ve never seen anything like that! Go to Poland and u will be able to see how it looks like. It doenst differ much from UK.

yes, polish have a reputation of hard workers also in Greece.

to all people being rude on this forum to poles
lets have a look at this "problem" from the other side...how many british based companies have entered poland to squeeze the money from polish people? .... lots..... the best known example is tesco ... the prices of food and other goods are very similar to uk prices, but the costs of running business are much lower and people work there for fraction what employees get in uk. there is a huge profit made and where do you think all the money go? stay in poland? no, back to uk call the tesco management office and ask for statements....you would be really surprised and this money are invested back in uk

thats globalization and principles of EU ...free movement of everything .... and who doesnt like it, time to safe money and leave the earth :-)

have just read all the facts!...and i've just got to say that i am british and work with polish workers!,and there fine with me.we cant begrugde people if they want to work in the uk...people move around the world deal with it!! if the shoe was on the other foot(ie)a britsh worker went to live and work in poland im sure there'd welcome him with open arms(good natured)and the reason there living 12 a house is to save money and i say good luck to um...the majority of polish people come here to work not sponge of the state(and there good workers that pay there taxes).....nuff said!!...cas

In Ireland there is no construction side where Polish builders are not working. Most of the Irish thinks that they are the best workers. Few times it happened that before signing a contract people were asking if my company have Polish workers. That’s true, there is problem with language, but I must say, that not only Poles have problems with it – I work with 15 Brazilians and only 3 of them have good English, where 10 of 25 Poles can speak English very well.

As a British Building worker I have to say that most of the polish workers that I have come across are honest and hardworking. I don't think that is the problem. The problem is that if you live in west London it feels like living in a foreign country, everywhere you go you hear polish. The Britsh are far to polite to express our feeling of anoyance at the overcrowding so we just bottle it up. The problem is that we are just so wierd, we are cold and unfriendly and yet we seem to be the most wellcoming country in the world as far as migrants and immigrants are concerned. Its ironic that the B(Bloody)N(nobrained)P(Pratts) are gaining votes because of an increase in white immigration. The one very obvious fact that the polish migrants have brought up is that there is no genuine unemployment in this country, Any goverment worth its salt would end unemployment benefit now. The sad thing is that we are raising a nation of spoilt insolent bratts who think that having to work hard is beneath them. As far as the Tories getting in next time you had better hope not because they will soon wreck the economy and put us all out of work( You havent been here long eneogh to remember their last stint). So much as you get on my nerves jabbering away everywhere I go with your sullen expressions I recognise that you are what we used to be honest hardworking and probably our future

lol health system? what health system? the one in poland is beter well at least in the qualification department so no thats not why i came here the free handouts what handouts? we have to work 1 year for the same employer to be able to clame any benefits again that is not why i personaly moved here coz i like the place and whanted a change i work for the same cash if not higher then my british counterparts since i dont value myself that low about immigration well dont look at poles i admit a lot has come but just for comparison sake look at how many poles you see on the streets and how many arabs,black or any ather "minority" (this is no racial remark).

as for the education system being beter (somone said that ) lol you got to be kiding most of the ppl ive meet (and thay got masters and phd's) cant count without a calculator and yes ive finished a uni here as well (so i got 2 degrees one polish one english) and belive me when i say that passing all the tests and projects here was like taking a break.

Okay I have bring this back up to the top because I can think of a con with regards to hiring a Polish worker, a while back I got a friend an interview at a large corporate company (my friend is a manager there), okay the job was just a clerical job but the money was okay and it meant she could improve her English, plus it looked better on her c.v. than her job at the time which was waiting tables. When the company took her on, she said she would be going back to Poland in September (for studies) so they gave her a fix-term contact, then she told them that she would be staying for another year so they made her permanent staff (no real difference, she got paid leave and all the other usual stuff before)....Okay I will get to my point, she gave her notice in last week telling the company she was going to London with her b/f, her Manager doesnt believe it because they actually offered a transfer to a branch in the south because she is a really good worker and the company believe in staff retention.....they now believe that she had no intention of staying with the company for another year and had every intention of going back to pl for studies this year and the upshot of it is they dont see the point in employing young Eastern Europeans who will be trained (which costs money) only to then leave after a few months...like I mentioned about staff retention / training, I dont think any company wants high staff turn-over and high training costs

With respect Amathyst, that happens with British workers too and any other nationality......I can't believe you posted that as a 'con' for employing Polish workers.....

Get real.......this is what happens in some industries all the time and especially in lower paid jobs in admin, retail and catering.......

No need for that kind of tone but I will clarify something you overlooked.

I didnt single out Polish I said Eastern European.

Why should a company invest in a person only for them to leave, yes I understand that this happens with British people, but the point I made was that she lied, she said "oh yes Im staying here for another year" but now she's off back to Poland because she has saved enough money for her studies etc.....

Its made me look like an idiot and I feel pretty bad for asking for a favour from a friend...a little bit of honesty goes a long way!!!

i wasn't using any tone amathyst....you should know that :) I was just trying to say, be realistic.(maybe I could have phrased it a bit better, so am sorry if it read badly to you) it doesn't matter on the persons nationality, this happens and has happened in such industries for a long time. Thing is people do things like that all the time. They don't appear to have the same loyalty that we have to our employer. My point is and was, it has nothing to do with any nationality, in the case you mentioned.


You wrote this in the thread entitled "Hiring a Polish worker the pros and cons'.....that's why I felt it a bit unfair to point the finger at one nationality in this particular case.

I fully sympathise with you and how you must have felt, when you recommended her for the job. I'd be pretty narked as well in a similar situation. And not only did she let her employer down she let you down also :(

But again, my point is that this sort of behavious has nothing to do with their nationality. It's a human thing regardless of sex, creed or colour.

Most companies forecast their training and recruitment costs based on their known and expected turnover of staff in their particular field. And budget accordingly. As I said before it varies not only on the nature of the job but also the industry they work in.

:( Apologies for any perceived tone.....

overall, Polish people are good workers. Maybe their english is not so perfect at the beginning but later on its very good. And one more thing- England was always multicultural and thats the beauty :-) . So I am glad Europe is united now!!! (or almost united:-) )

Anyway good luck people!!!!

The only effect of all these visitors is that our income decrease and in some cases ceases altogether. Why would any boss agree to a pay increase demand if the pole will do it cheaper and not dare to stick up for themselves. Sure there may be a bit of extra damage and maybe a few people hurt, but hey... what the hell, money talks. We've been betrayed by our leaders. We cant blame the poles, if someone offered us lots of moneys to do a job we're really not up to, then most of us would take the cash and think what a pr**k he/she is for employing me! They are mostly spongers and we will lose big-time on this mistake. If anyone thinks they will appreciate the chance they have been given or be loyal for it, you're living in cloud cuckoo land because they are not typical traits of most poles. There are some very respectable people among them who will have their reputations ruined by their countrymen. Poland is just the same way, 5% tryers and 95% hangers on which is why its not going to change until they pull their fingers out and ditch the peasant mentality. I love Poland, its fantastic and birthplace of my wife and sons.

As much as i adore poland, i honestly think the uk needs to change the laws on immigration to this country, not just for the polish peeps, but more importantly for the rag heads and the vast influx of roma people heading for these shores. At the end of the day i have never met a pole i didnt like or trust, on the other hand, if we in scotland have well educated muslim doctors trying 2 blow up airports and we have roma men selling kids for sex on the streets of glasgow, then we need to get rid of them, or at the very least stop more of them getting in.

Do i blame the polish, lithuanians, latvians etc for heading to the uk to take advantage of the situation? Do i hell, because if i thought moving to any of these or any other country would improve my life then i would be gone in a heart beat. If i remember correctly in the early 90s i headed down to london to work on various buiding sites as an electrician, because if i put in the hours and worked hard i could make £600/£700 a week . Am i any different from the poles? I worked hard, away from home for weeks at a time, i was lonely, sad, i had next to no friends.

I was a foreigner in a foreign land! For england is foreign to me!

Continued good luck to all my european friends

If I was an employer I would hire Polish people they work hard and are smart people and would probably appriciate what they get.

pro: the hardest workers you'll ever get

con: they'll con you whenever you give them a chance. lol

Hardest workers until you take your eye off them,then the foot comes off the gas.
Rip you off if they get half a chance?of course .... bo trzeba

bo trzeba? lol old ways die hard, eh?

It took years to learn and will take many more to unlearn.As hardest workers, not many can outwork me and I,m certainly not a Pole.A lot of poles need to be constantly motivated to work,and yes they then work well.I prefer people who motivate themselves and get on with it for the sake of it.The blokes I worked with on International were Scots,Paddies,English and Welsh,all of them great guys who could match anyone from anywhere-especially the scots,I was VERY impressed with them because we had the same approach.I knew a lot of excellent poles too but they were exemplary examples of their nations drivers. Zenon -Czarna Stoppa-Bartosz(zamosc),Marek-pet shop boys-Krauschar( Siedlec)(R.I.P),Zbyszek Wroblewski(Warsaw).+++

I can name all the best ones because high quality was so rare and still is.