With workers' leaving for Western European and US shipyards and the high volume of orders received lately, the domestic market is experiencing a shortage of thousands of employees.
"Each shipyard would need another 1,000-2,000 people to be able to work at full capacity and meet its orders," says Paul Pacuraru, Romanian labour minister, adding that tens and even hundreds of specialists and skilled workers are leaving for foreign shipyards, particularly in the US, every month.
The domestic naval industry has around 12,000 employees. Despite workforce migration being an economy-wide phenomenon, several months ago there was a wave of shipyard workers going to work in the US, Norway, Germany, Italy or Spain. According to some estimates, around 500 employees left the country at that time, for wages of several thousand euros.
"There is a deficit, which in the case of Aker Tulcea amounts to around 600 persons," reckons Dumitru Ivanov, the shipyard's general manager.
Besides personnel migration, there is also a problem related to the structure of the business of shipyards, which work with subcontractors, in which case it is difficult to control productivity and labour quality.
Ivanov does not quote migration as the main factor that triggered the personnel shortage, but says that the high volume of orders the shipyard contracted in previous years, along with the relatively low labour productivity, led to this situation.
The high personnel turnover and the difficulties naval companies are facing when it comes to replacing their departing workers have started to leave a mark on major players' business. Thus, Aker Braila shipyard last year logged losses of 52.15m RON (15.6m euros), almost 7 times more than the 2006 level, though its turnover doubled against 2006, to 78.8m euros.
Still, shipyards continue hiring. "The highly skilled employ
