​HotNews.ro wanted to find out what difficulties Ukrainian women face when looking for a job in Romania. In this sense, I spoke with two Ukrainian refugees and with representatives of a non-profit organization that deals with their integration in the labor market. Here are their stories.

Victoria* is one of the Ukrainian women who stayed in Romania and found a job. With tears in her eyes, the woman recalls that she would have accepted any job just to send something home and take her time away from the war. And she is not the only one like that.

Since the beginning of the war, 76,155 Ukrainian refugees have settled in Romania. According to the Minister of Labor, more than 6,400 active contracts of Ukrainian citizens were registered by August. Most of them found work in Bucharest, Bistrica-Neseud or Timișoara.

But what problems do refugees face when they plan to find work in Romania?

It is important to emphasize that the situation of a refugee is different from the situation of an ordinary migrant who decided to go to another country and work there. As a result, it is very likely that the placement process will take longer and long-term solutions are needed to facilitate their experience.

This was also confirmed to me by the employees of Asociatia Ateliere without Frontiere (AFF), a non-profit organization that deals with the integration of vulnerable people in the labor market and which immediately after the beginning of the conflict launched projects aimed at Ukrainians.

We spoke to two women from Ukraine who came to the country after the war began, as well as those from AFF who are responsible for the integration project of Ukrainian refugees, to be able to answer questions related to the experience of Ukrainians with the labor market in Romania .

“The employer requires a minimum knowledge of the Romanian language”

“Workshops without borders” association. PHOTO: HotNews.ro/ Andra Muresan

Victoria from Zakarpattia region came to the country with her youngest 17-year-old daughter after February 24, when the war broke out in Ukraine. Before crossing the border, she worked as a teacher at a local school for 22 years. Now she has changed her field of activity and is a translator for the AFF project, but she says that she is ready to work in anything, even as a cook or a cleaner.

Such situations are common for Ukrainian refugees. Many of them come to the country and are forced to work in completely different fields than they worked before. That is why, often, accommodation becomes even more difficult.

Eva, a translator at AFF and responsible for interviewing the refugees, tells me that she tries to find them a job as close as possible to the one they were working in before.

“We diverted women with higher education to printing instead of cleaning. I try to find something as close as possible to their status.”

Victoria’s husband stayed in Ukraine after he returned there for his mother’s funeral. Martial law means that men between the ages of 18 and 60 cannot leave the country, so he is stuck in the country.

Now Victoria is forced to bring money home herself, so she tries to work as much as possible to be able to send money home. Unlike other refugees, she also speaks Romanian because she lives near Sighetu and has come many times with her eldest daughter to singing competitions around the country. Her daughter came to college in Bucharest a year ago.

In relation to the problems she has observed, both through the contact with refugees during the work she does at AFF and because of what she has seen around her, the main obstacle is the lack of knowledge of Romanian or English.

“I called Ukrainians, they trusted me when they heard that I spoke to them in Russian or Ukrainian. And I convinced them that we need to learn the language in order to continue farming. When the language is learned, the children can integrate into kindergarten or school, and we can get a job,” says Victoria.

During our conversation, Victoria had tears in her eyes. She told me that her current job helps her forget about the war and gives her a purpose here. However, she does not see her future in Romania. She wants to go home for Christmas to her husband, and until then she is trying to find a second job on the weekends to send money home.

• Read also: How Ukrainian women who came to Romania because of the war see their future: “We are a burden for Europe and soon they will talk about it”

Not knowing the Romanian language seems to be the biggest problem for many Ukrainians, as many jobs require them to know at least common words.

“You might think that it would matter less in unskilled jobs. Even there, in some areas, it matters. You can’t just use sign language, it’s important to understand and know what you’re working with. Even when cleaning, you may need to read the product label to know how to use it. Of course, this is just an example to better understand the situation,” explains Mihai, who is responsible for contacts with employers for refugees arriving at AFF.

Even if some of them know English, Romanian is still needed to understand what is written in the job description and to integrate into the team, as Mihai told me. Many employers do not have translators, so the organization makes sure that the Ukrainians who come to them know what documents they are signing.

Most of the refugees arriving in Romania are actually women with children. If they came here alone or did not have time to enroll their child in kindergarten, it is very likely that they will not have time to work. Even if the child goes to kindergarten, he can still work only part-time.

Therefore, AFF people are often asked if they can find part-time work. Eva tells me that she tries to find a solution together with them, recommends talking to friends in the community or, if it’s a shift job, to contact colleagues from another shift. In this way, he managed to find work for several women with children.

Mothers who have come to the country need time for their children

Refugees from Ukraine. PHOTO: AFP/Profimedia

Kateryna is one of the women who crossed the border with children. They are from a village near Odessa and came to Romania in April. Kateryna is 34 years old, she is a victim of domestic violence, and in Ukraine she lived in a mother and child social center.

“The road was long and difficult, especially because I came with my youngest daughter. He was then five months old. He is now one year old and speaks Romanian. I speak to her in Russian, and she answers in Romanian,” the young woman tells me.

When the center was closed, they were brought to Romania. Before coming here, he worked in the Horeca sector, usually in the summer. Now she works in the educlick workshop at AFF, because the social center sent her here. More precisely, day by day they learn to restore old equipment, such as computers, which are then sent to schools across the country.

She is very good at it and tells me with a smile that she is already teaching people in the workshop how to do certain things. When I asked how she would describe her experience here, she laughed and responded by asking:

“What experience? Learned to disassemble and everything! Now it seems to me that I do it better than my husband,” says Kateryna cheerfully.

The young woman came to AFF in May and this is the first job she has applied for. Although he really likes what he does, he would like to return to Ukraine. He told me he only wanted to stay in the country until March.

About how she divides her time between work and children, the young woman told me that “it is difficult, but she manages.” The children are enrolled in kindergarten and school, and while he is at work, he is helped by the center’s employees.

There are other mothers from Ukraine in similar situations who must find a solution to be able to divide their time between work and children.

Lack of support from family or friends can become an obstacle to finding a job. That is why it is important for refugees to integrate into society or eventually create connections in the country, Eva, who is in direct contact with many of them, told me.

In addition to her work at AFF, she was one of the volunteers who helped out on a daily basis at the North Station. Both Eva and Maria, AFF’s holistic project manager (she deals with any non-work related refugee issues), told me that they keep in touch with the Ukrainians they meet and emphasize how important it is to have a community to turn to.

This is how a WhatsApp group was born, where 50 Ukrainians gathered in two months. Through the group, they keep in touch with each other and ultimately act as a point of contact for other Ukrainians looking for work. Just the other day, a woman came to AFF through another refugee who got a job thanks to the project.

Although they were a little reluctant at first because they did not trust the local people, now they are gradually getting used to it. Lack of trust, homesickness, uncertainty about the future, and cultural differences are obstacles for refugees seeking work in Romania.

In addition to all this, the desire to return home remains, which is understandable. Many of the callers to AFF say they want to return, while others they met at Romexpo said they were coming here for a short time.

“The bad part is that people are always in a state of waiting. When you don’t know what’s going to happen from today to tomorrow, it’s okay to ask yourself, how long will the war last, how long will these problems last, and if the war ends, what will you see when you come back? So when you have all these unknowns, you can’t make any plans. We are slowly trying to help them unlock themselves on a psychological level by participating in events and creating a community,” explains Maria.

However, he emphasizes, any project needs time. This means that if refugees start learning Romanian now, the results will be visible in three months. So long-term solutions are needed to help them while things still look uncertain.

Monika also said that last week after the victory in Kherson, the first message in the WhatsApp group was: “It’s great! It means that soon we will return home.”

The women I talked to, Victoria and Kateryna, are in the same situation. Both want to return home soon. All they can hope for is that the future will be as they imagine it to be: Victoria will be home for Christmas with her husband, and their only worries will be cleaning or setting the plates.

At the same time, in March, Kateryna will come home, where she will disassemble everything, even cars, as she learned here in Romania.

Author’s note: The women’s names have been changed at their request because they did not want to speak publicly about their experiences in Romania. For refugees interested in finding work, there are platforms such as Jobs4Ukraine, Ukrainians in Iași or the Asociatia Ateliere sans Frontiere project, which I spoke with for this article. Associated with Workshops without Borders, they can be addressed both by Ukrainian refugees through the project, which began in August, and by vulnerable sections of the country’s population.

• Read also: How do teenage refugees from Ukraine who live in Romania see their future, “captured by screens”: “I tried to make Romanian friends, but communication did not work out”