Suzana Radulović, Secretary General of the Montenegrin Employers Federation (UPCG)
The reform of foreign-worker employment raises a far bigger question than how permits are issued: what kind of labour market will Montenegro have a decade from now?
Labour shortages have become one of the biggest challenges facing Montenegro’s economy, especially during the tourist season. The announced reform of the employment of foreign nationals therefore opens a wider question: how to regulate the labour market, protect the domestic workforce and, at the same time, allow businesses to find the workers they lack. Suzana Radulović, Secretary General of the Montenegrin Employers Federation, writes for Diplomacy & Commerce Montenegro. Some problems get called temporary for long enough that one day, almost imperceptibly, they become the new reality. Montenegro’s labour shortage is, it seems to me, one of them. For years, particularly in the run-up to the tourist season, we have been having the same conversations: how many workers will be missing, where we will find them, and whether employers will manage to bring them on board in time. At UPCG we discuss this with businesses every day, and before and during the season we work with the relevant institutions to resolve concrete problems as they arise in practice.
Then the season ends and, for a moment, it seems the problem has passed with it. It has not. We have merely postponed it until next year. That is why I believe the announced reform of the system for employing foreign nationals is a chance, this time, not to talk only about how permits will be issued, but to ask a more serious question: who will actually be working in Montenegro in five or ten years?
As we at UPCG prepare an analysis of the existing system and the announced directions of its reform, one seemingly simple question has proved more important than it looks: what do we actually know about the foreign workforce coming to Montenegro?
We know how many permits have been issued. But the number of permits is not necessarily the number of jobs actually taken up. Sometimes the worker never enters employment with the employer in question; sometimes the worker pulls out, sometimes the employer does, and sometimes the employment ends very quickly. With seasonal work, this is especially sensitive: if a worker fails to show up, or leaves mid-season, the employer often no longer has time to find a replacement and go through the procedure again.
On the other hand, we know how many people are registered as unemployed. But the number of registered unemployed is not the same as the number of people genuinely available for work. An administrative register is not a labour market. A labour market is made up of real people – their skills, their experience, where they live, the jobs they do and do not want to do, and the moment at which an employer needs them.
For years I have heard almost the same sentence from employers: “I would hire a local worker if I could find one.” That does not release Montenegro from its obligation to work more seriously on activating the domestic workforce, on education that tracks the needs of the economy, on skills development, and on creating the conditions that will make our people want to build their professional future here. But it would be a mistake to believe that the need for foreign labour will then disappear. Demographic trends, migration, the structure of the economy and pronounced seasonality all suggest that labour migration can no longer be seen merely as a temporary intervention with which we patch the worker shortage each year. If it is becoming a permanent feature of the labour market, then we need more than an efficient permit system. We need a considered labour migration policy.
We approached partner employers’ organisations in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Italy, Slovakia and Bulgaria. Their answers differ – and that may be the most important answer of all. There is no magic “European model” for Montenegro to copy. Countries use different combinations of labour market tests, quotas, shortage-occupation lists and exemptions. The Austrian labour market is not the Romanian one. The Polish is not the Slovenian. And none of them is Montenegro’s. Being European does not mean transcribing someone else’s solution; it means building a functional system on European principles, around the real needs of your own economy. The announced possibility of introducing a labour market test, with the Employment Agency’s consent, raises a legitimate question about protecting the domestic workforce. If a local worker can and wants to do a given job, it is only natural for the system to give that worker the opportunity first, before labour is sought abroad.
But what if there is none? Or, more precisely, what does it mean that such a worker “exists”? Is it enough that the occupation appears in the Agency’s records, or must the person be genuinely available, suited to the specific job, willing to accept it and able to start when needed? A labour market test is a useful instrument. A test that finds only a name in a register is not. And this brings us to data. If the Ministry of Interior holds data on issued permits, the Tax Administration knows whether and for how long a person was registered as employed, and the Employment Agency holds data on the unemployed, the inspectorates hold information from their oversight-how much sharper a picture could we get if we connected those data? Digitalisation is not turning a paper form into an electronic one. The real change comes when institutions start exchanging the data the state already holds and using it for smarter oversight. A better state does not demand more data from citizens and businesses, but one that makes better use of the data it already has. There is one more reason why I would not view this issue only through the lens of the next season. Montenegro is heading towards membership of the European Union, and European integration also means greater mobility of people and more open competition for labour. A Montenegrin employer today no longer competes for a worker only with another employer in Montenegro. Increasingly, they compete with an employer in Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany or another European country. So we also have to talk about how Montenegro can become a market where people want to work-and stay. Administrative policy can regulate who may come. It cannot make anyone stay.
That is why I would like the announced reform not to end in just another procedure and one more amendment to the law. It is an opportunity to know reliably who is coming, where they work and how long they stay; to establish which occupations we genuinely lack; to distinguish seasonal needs from long-term ones; to activate the domestic workforce where it exists, and to enable timely access to foreign labour where it is objectively needed.
UPCG will put these questions on the table in a position paper we are preparing, with the aim of moving the debate away from a single administrative procedure and towards what matters more – what kind of labour market Montenegro wants, and is able, to build.
Montenegro is a small market, and it can make some changes faster than larger systems can. We have the data, the business community’s experience, and European practice to learn from. We do not have to choose between a market without control and a system that stops businesses from finding the people they need. We can build a smarter system. Perhaps we have spent too long asking how many foreign workers Montenegro needs. It is time to ask the harder question: how many workers will Montenegro have at all – and what are we doing today so that tomorrow there are enough of them?
Far more than a single residence and work permit depends on the answer.