Kathimerini Greece Newsroom
By Roula Salourou
It is estimated that Greece’s labor market needs more than 300,000 workers from other countries, from dishwashers to chefs to carpenters, machine operators and electricians to web and software developers.
The tourism industry needs both unskilled and highly skilled employees: dishwashers, waiters, cleaning staff, but also chefs, spa therapists and front office professionals.
The conbstruction sector has a great need for specialized artisans, such as welders, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, steamfitters, drivers, site suoervising engineers and specialized heavy machinery operators.
Industry is looking for employees in production, storage facilities, packaging, machinery maintenance, CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machinery technicians and AutoCAD designers.
Information technology companies are looking for highly specialized programmers, including machine learning engineers and systems security specialists.
And, last but not least, the lack of farm workers has long been known.
But bureaucracy, not surprisingly, throws up obstacles. The process to invite foreign workers can last 6-9 months, making especially hard to get enough seasonal employees and undercutting Greece’s desirability as a destination. The state may issue approvals for tens of thousands of migrant workers, but only a small fraction decide to come and work.
Vangelis Kanellopoulos, the CEO of WorkInGreece.io, the first online platform created to match demand and supply of international labor, told Kathimerini that more than 2,000 businesses, from small family concerns to large multinatioals, have expressed interest in hiring globally. Conversely, more than 35,000 prospective employees from 11 countries, including Bangladesh, Egypt, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Moldova, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam, have expressed an interest through his platform.
A successful hiring depends on many factors: a ministerial decree determines the allowed number of jobs and specialization; businesses must ask local and regional authorities for permit; Greek embassies abroad must approve and issue the visas; after the employees arrive in Greece, they must be issued a Tax Identification Number (ΑΦΜ), a Social Security Number (AMKA) and, in many cases, a blue card.
“The existing legal framework…presents many challenges,” Kanellopoulos says.
Among them, delays in regional authorities approving applications and embassies in issuing visas; lack of transparency on how the number of permits per specialization is decided; delays in issuance of ΑΦΜ and AMKA that may take a month, during which the arriving workers cannot be employed.
The arriving labor must also deal with state-accredited agencies in their country of origin, some of them proving unreliable. But their involvement does help, to an extent, guarantee employee rights.
Kanellopoulos is calling for an integrated digital platform that will serve the various agencies and individuals involved to speed up the approval process.
