Voka, the Flemish employers’ association, wants South American workers to relieve pressure on tight labour market, especially in West Flanders: “This labour shortage is endangering our prosperity.”

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  2. **South America, the Philippines and Africa. Voka is looking to people from those regions to help us get rid of the shortage in the labour market. The employers’ organisation calculated that 77,000 extra workers will be needed in West Flanders in the coming years to guarantee continued growth. “We want to get 50,000 of those from abroad, even outside Europe. And that is necessary if our companies want to continue to grow and ensure well-being and prosperity.”**

    It may sound like a broken record, but the Chamber of Commerce Voka has constantly been raising the issue of a tight labour market for years. Despite corona, things are going from bad to worse, especially in West Flanders. “We see that in November last year in our province the number of non-working jobseekers per vacancy was 1 to 1,” says Hans Boels, chairman Voka region South-West Flanders. “That means that for some jobs there are no candidates left, which means that West Flanders is in a very unique situation.”

    **No reserve**

    The job-seeker ratio, which is the ratio of the number of job-seekers to the population of working age, was 4.7 per cent in West Flanders at the end of November 2021 compared with 5.7 per cent in Flanders. “Regions such as Tielt and Diksmuide, with 3.2 percent, come close to 3 percent, which is considered full employment,” says Michel Soubry, chairman Voka region Central West Flanders.”

    “But in order to grow we need people,” says Hans Boels. “That is where the shoe pinches seriously. The shortage does not seem to be easing; on the contrary, the tension on the labour market has never been as great as it is now. There is no reserve left in our province. We need at least 77,000 extra workers to continue to guarantee the growth of our companies. We need initiatives to support the labour market. Focusing on activation and staying in work for longer, qualitatively, is not enough.”

    To tackle the problem, Voka foresees a number of measures. “We need a modern and flexible labour law and by means of training and guidance we can activate at least 15,000 job seekers and give at least 12,000 inactive people a job,” clarifies Christophe Dhaene, president of Voka Ieper.

    **Poland**

    In addition, according to Voka, we should dare to focus on a more targeted economic labour migration, both of highly, medium and low-skilled people. We should not only look for them within Europe, but also outside of it. “During a certain period many Poles came to work here,” says Hans Boels, chairman of Voka region Central West Flanders. “In the meantime, the standard of living in that country has risen and they themselves are struggling with shortages on the labour market. Hungarians and Bulgarians took their place, but due to corona that influx has come to a standstill. Moreover, those people do not stay here. Their families stay in the country of origin and sooner or later the workers go home again.”

    **Entire families**

    Voka really wants to make an effort to bring over entire families. “In South America there is a great potential of people looking for work. We also want to bring over workers from the Philippines and Africa.” One example is a project in Nigeria and Senegal that seeks to give highly educated people from those countries suitable jobs in Flanders. “We hope to welcome 50,000 foreign talents in the coming years to strengthen our economy. However, we will have to overcome a few hurdles: the work permit procedure, housing and welcome policy, and creating public support. So there is a lot of work to be done.

    Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

  3. Tldr: we don’t want to pay the liveable wage that would make it attractive for the Belgian Labour force to work for us so please import more cheap labour.

  4. Little side note, those numbers also dropped a lot, because the government didn’t like having “none working job seekers” so they changed the rules and made a lot of people fall off the boat.

    … You’re sick, but too young to be sick… Now you’re a job seeker… You’re too sick to be a job seeker, so we’ll park you into free volunteering work.

    … You’re out off school, so no benefits for x years.

    … You’re too old / developed age related issues, but you have to work until 67. Can’t, we will send you to heavily subsidized adult schools so you can develop skills you might never understand, or knowing no one will hire you on your age & zero experience…. Or it takes 2 years to train you, and you are 2 years and 4 months from retirement.

  5. This is how we got those first immigration-waves too, by the by. Not lefty-open-borders but companies pushing this.

  6. Also a new form of colonization. Brain drain the poorer countries by luring the skilled workers here.
    Don’t mind them coming here, but in some way you’d expect there should be compensation since those countries paid for the education and don’t get the revenue of the workers career.

  7. Won’t be long before VOKA is going to plead for banning trade unions. N-VA would do it in a heartbeat if they thought they could get away with it… .

  9. There is no labour shortage, only shitty employers who do not want to pay a decent wage.

  11. Isn’t there a region just south, in the same country, with a way higher unemployment rate were they could hire people instead of getting them from another continent?

  12. If Belgians value their democracy, they must give these immigrants a quick and accessible path to citizenship so that they can fully participate in civic life.

  13. They basically don’t want to pay any wage that a regular Belgian would want to do the work for ( eg a livable wage). Let’s get some really poor people who are totally under our control and will work for anything ( slavery). It’s a race to the bottom.

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