Thank You! You’re Fired

A ninth wave of unemployment is expected to descent upon the Ukrainian labor market early in 1999, reporter Natalia Vernyhora learned at the State Employment Center.

Viktor Lukyanenko, Director of the State Employment Center predicts that next year the employment service offices will deal with over two million people looking for a job (today there are 1,512,000 registered unemployed in Ukraine – Author).

The revised law will also contribute to an unemployment increase: as of today, it is the enterprise that is supposed to pay discharged workers a gratuity and a compensation for three months and, as of January 1, the compensation for two months will be paid by employment centers while the enterprise will pay it only for one month.

According to Viktor Lukyanenko, it will cost the next year budget Hr 250 million to pay off the total sum due all the jobless. Mr. Lukyanenko complains, “The budget is to weak. We lack such a sum and won’t get it. Now we are working out a bill to postpone this provision a year.”

The only way to combat the unemployment – creating new jobs – is unrealistic in a country with a degrading economy.

This year experience showed that many secondary school graduates who cannot afford the expense of higher education come to employment centers. Young people constitute up to 33% of all jobless. They are being assisted in choosing a skill and receive free job training. However, training alone does not mean that the centers will be able to easily find a job for them. Every local employment center reserves some jobs in local enterprises for women with children under six years old, young people, people near retirement age, persons released from prisons, and those after involuntary commitment. Enterprises which actively help solve the unemployment problem are given adequate privileges. However, such enterprises are rare. And to force an enterprise to employ secondary school graduates as is stipulated by the law is to some extent unrealistic.

People laid off by enterprises constitute 58% of the jobless. As a rule, they are people who had spent their lives working in one enterprise and one collective. And there is no longer any need for their skills. Such people are supposed to undergo a training for a new skill and to wait patiently until somebody calls for them.

80% of the unemployed in Ukraine are women. Hard physical labor is unsuitable for them. There is a separate list for women among a variety of vacancy listings. The Day was told at the Kyiv employment center that there is a demand for the very scarce calling of cleaning lady.

When offered a job people often ask a main question: how much are expected wage arrears to be expected. When an enterprise has three or more months accumulated back wages the number of people willing to take work in it falls substantially (the unemployed are paid their compensation on time – Author). Employment centers solve partially the unemployment problem by organizing so-called paid public work. Special worker groups are being formed on a voluntary basis. Those groups working in the construction industry consist mainly of men.