Work Not Benefits Tempt Poles

SOKÓŁKA, Poland — In his campaign to negotiate a new deal for the U.K. in the European Union, David Cameron is taking aim at Tomasz Bancerek’s customers.

That’s because the U.K. prime minister’s goal of limiting benefits paid to migrants coming to Britain from other EU countries is in large part directed at the million or so Poles who have flooded into the U.K. over the 12 years since Poland joined the EU, in the process becoming the largest community of foreign citizens in Britain.

Those are the people Bancerek drives in his minibus as he makes his twice-weekly 20-hour, 2,000-kilometer run from Sokółka, a town of 18,000 hard by Poland’s eastern border with Belarus, to London.

“People prefer the door-to-door service,” said Bancerek as he loaded his van, decorated with a British flag and a “Sokółka-London” sign.

And he’s got some bad news for Cameron. His clients aren’t in the U.K. solely to take advantage of the country’s social benefits, and they’ve got no intention of giving up a life that earns them significantly higher pay than they’d be able to make at home.

“Even if you work day and night, it’s hard to make a decent living around here,” said Ewa, traveling to visit her sister, a shop assistant in north London.

Unemployment in the region around Sokółka is 15 percent, significantly higher than the national average of 10.3 percent. The average pre-tax monthly salary in the region is 3,348 złotys (€760).

That’s only a fraction of what a worker can make in London. The average salary for a construction worker in the U.K. is £30,806 a year — that works out to 14,530 złotys a month, an unimaginable salary for a Polish worker who stays home in Sokółka.

It is the difference in wages — not social benefits — that motivates Poles to go.

That extra pay, plus better benefits, are among the reasons the birthrate among Polish women in the U.K. is higher than in Poland — which has one of the EU’s lowest fertility rates. That’s the case even though Poland’s cost of living is much lower than the U.K.’s

Marta Kownacka is a stay-at-home mother in Sokółka. Her husband also owns a transport business between Poland and the U.K., the family’s main source of revenue. The couple met in Britain and recently moved back to Poland to raise their children closer to extended family. Despite the family ties in Poland, motherhood, she said, remains easier in the U.K.

The sight of divided families — where one parent is working abroad — is less common in Poland than when the borders first opened. The (mostly male) migrants who travel back and forth to provide for their families are nicknamed “sailors.”

“It’s more common amongst older people, whose children are over 18,” said Kownacka.

The draw of higher salaries keeps pulling Poles into the U.K. — to the frustration of locals who have to compete against Polish workers.

Migration frustration

It’s that irritation that is driving Cameron’s hunt for a way to stem the labor migration to the U.K. from poorer Central Europe. In negotiations with European Council President Donald Tusk (a former Polish prime minister), Cameron has tacit approval for an “emergency brake” on benefits for new EU migrants.

That still has to get the nod from the 27 other EU leaders at this week’s summit, which is why Cameron has been making the rounds of regional leaders like Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydło.

Great benefits reform swindle - Emmet Livingstone

In meetings with Szydło and with Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party and Poland’s most powerful politician, the Poles made it clear they won’t countenance any steps that affect the benefits of EU migrants already in the U.K.

The Polish government wants to be seen to be protecting the rights of Poles in Britain — a cause especially important in its heartland of eastern Poland, where the rural, religious and socially conservative population has long been a bulwark for Law and Justice.

But the increasingly friendless government in Warsaw has also said that London will be Poland’s leading EU ally, and wants help in pushing through the permanent stationing of NATO troops in the region.

“To stop them from leaving, you need to offer something and we simply cannot compete with British wages” — Adam Łajkowski, Sokółka’s mayoral office

“A lot of political capital has been invested in the relationship between the new government and the U.K.,” said Przemysław Biskup, a lecturer in Polish-British relations at the University of Warsaw.

Away from the high politics of Law and Justice’s relationship with Britain’s Conservatives, and Poland’s assessment of the threat posed by Russia, people on the ground in places like Sokółka still calculate that it makes sense for them to move. Of course they will happily take the more generous family benefits they get from the U.K.

“I know Poles who are eligible for U.K. child benefits, they take them if they know how,” said Bancerek.

“We are taxpayers! It’s like questioning if someone should have the right to take out his pension,” added his co-driver.

But that’s not the reason so many have left the birch forests and endless horizons of eastern Poland for the U.K.

It is the difference in wages — not social benefits — that motivates Poles to go.

“Would I leave my own family and go to a foreign country to sit at home on benefits?” asked Andrzej Bujniacki, who is traveling back to the U.K., where he works as a delivery driver, after a short stay in Sokółka.

And the debate about benefits in London and in Brussels won’t stop that.

“Barring access to U.K. benefits will not affect people from leaving here in any way,” said Adam Łajkowski of Sokółka’s mayoral office. “To stop them from leaving, you need to offer something and we simply cannot compete with British wages.”

There’s no prospect of salaries quadrupling in eastern Poland. So despite the drumbeat of negative coverage from U.K. tabloids deploring what they call “benefit tourism,” Bancerek doesn’t foresee a quick end to the service he provides, even if the atmosphere for Poles in the U.K. has soured of late.

“When I returned home from a shift, people would ask me if Brits don’t like Poles,” said Bancerek, who lived for two years in Luton, a town north of London.