This may effect some one who is thinking of going to Bulgaria and working?

Bulgaria is to restrict to a minimum the issuing of work permits to foreigners, Social Minister, Totyu Mladenov, declared Tuesday.

The proposal is to be officially approved by the National Council for Employment Encouragement, along with other amendments of the Decree for Issuing, Denial, and Revocation of Work Permits for Foreigners in Bulgaria.

Mladenov explained the measure was made necessary by the increase of unemployment levees in Bulgaria.

Currently the country has registered over 1,100 work permits for foreigners.

One of the amendments provides for the extension of the market test - the period during which the employer is mandated to seek Bulgarian citizens for the job - from 15 to 30 days. A labor negotiator is to take part in each hiring process to verify that there isn't any discrimination against Bulgarians.

The second amendment mandates that sectors with increased levels of unemployment should not allow foreigners to take jobs, while the third one will ban employers, who had notified about mass dismissals, to hire foreign citizens for a period of 6 months.

A recent checkup of the Main Labor Inspectorate and the Employment Agency had revealed that Bulgarians are discriminated against in favor of foreigners. For example, the Turkish "
MAPA-CENGIZ"
company, working on the Lyulin highway, which employs 310 Bulgarian and 367 Turkish workers pays Turkish workers EUR 4,5 an hour while Bulgarians make two times less, according to the Social Minister.

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It's interesting to read this as I have just been offered an opportunity in Bulgaria which I am considering so thanks for that Ashley

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This is the latest update on the Employment situation in Bulgaria

For years, employers have been asking the Bulgarian Government to expand the labour pool by making it easier for employers to hire foreigners, with Vietnamese welders becoming the unofficial face of this campaign. But after unemployment reached a 27-month high at the end of August and with worse expected to come, the Cabinet is preparing a drastic policy change.

The Labour Ministry will impose harsh restrictions on the number of workers hired from countries outside the European Union, Labour Minister Totyu Mladenov told journalists on September 8. This will protect Bulgarian job-seekers, who are sometimes overlooked by employers in favour of foreigners, he said, as quoted by Dnevnik daily.

The amendments to the regulations on work permits will be discussed by an advisory council, which includes Government officials, labour unions and employers, on September 11. On September 9, in an interview with Bulgarian National Television, Mladenov said that he was confident that both the labour unions and the employer associations would back the proposed amendments.

Asked whether employers still preferred to hire foreigners because they had better skills, Mladenov was uncompromising: "
Employers will first take care of Bulgarian workers, because there are unemployed with the qualifications needed, and after that, if there is a shortage, they will get foreign workers."


The amendments will extend the so-called market test, the period during which employers have to search employment bureaus for Bulgarian employees that meet the job requirements, to 30 days from 15. Furthermore, job ads will no longer be published locally, but nationally, and employment intermediaries will sit in on job interviews to ensure that there is no discrimination against Bulgarian applicants.

Employers that have made "
massive redundancies"
over the previous six months will be barred from more payroll cuts.

So far this year, Bulgaria’s Employment Agency has issued 1100 work permits, including 678 for Turkish nationals, the agency’s head Rossitsa Steliyanova told journalists on September 8. Most permits were for jobs where there was a big pool of unemployed Bulgarians, she said.

None of the planned changes would affect highly-qualified foreign personnel, Steliyanova said.

Management vacancies will also be exempt from the amended regulations, Mladenov said. "
We are not talking about top management. Naturally, if a company wants to hire a top manager from abroad, they will have no problem with that,"
he told BNT.

The amendments are just some of the measures that the Labour Ministry has planned to keep unemployment under 10 per cent this year. At end-August, Bulgaria had 292 000 unemployed, or 7.88 per cent of its labour force, an increase of 0.26 percentage points over July.

"
Foremost is the two percentage points decrease in the mandatory social security payments. This will leave business quite a bit of money and they should use this money to save jobs. If they are loyal to their country and their workers, this alone will allow them to save 60 000 to 100 000 jobs a year,"
Mladenov said.

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Thanks for that Ashy very interesting [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Oddy