Kashtan
A new cake shop in downtown Vienna, named after the chestnuts of Kyiv. An update on long-term integration issues in Austria, and recent arrivals.
On Friday, I received a text message from a Ukrainian mom who had occasionally met up with me to practice her conversational English. She casually invited me to stop by her cake shop for its grand opening this weekend. I knew she had a business in Ukraine, and still travelled regularly back to Kyiv to see her husband, but I had no idea she is a co-owner of a gorgeous cake shop. It is not for the faint of heart to open a cake shop in a city which prides itself on both extreme bureaucracy when it comes to opening anything “gastro” and recipes for cakes which have not changed in hundreds of years. I spoke with the young Ukrainian owners yesterday as I inhaled (literally) a piece of Kyiv cake (my favourite!), and they didn’t complain. I love the entrepreneurial spirit amongst so many of the young people from Ukraine who are trying their hand at opening businesses in retail and service here in Austria, not the easiest location to get started in. They do not complain, they just push forward. I imagine perhaps you sort of just expect a few headaches along the way and half the battle is how you handle the roadblocks, mentally.
In any case: if you are in the neighbourhood, do stop by. The cakes are as delicious as they are beautiful. They are all freshly made in the company’s professional kitchen in the 16th district. They tell me they will soon at savory breakfast items to their offerings in the 3rd district cafe. Kashtan.Wien.
I was contacted a few days ago by an experienced journalist who is not only a native speaker of German but also speaks Russian fluently. Tomorrow, she wants to ask me about how Ukrainians are doing, during these third year of the war, and she is asking specifically about those who chose to come to Austria. In preparation for this conversation, I asked, again, informally, for feedback. I would categorise the main issues into two major problem areas.
The first is that the “temporary protection” status awarded to Ukrainians by the EU, and still not extended past March-2025 (although we hope this will happen soon), leaves them cut off from many of the social and other support benefits accessible to other citizens and permanent residents of the EU countries in which they are living. To put it very simply: a Syrian family with permanent residency in Austria can apply for a rent-subsidised apartment from the city of Vienna, but a Ukrainian family of any constellation and circumstances cannot under any circumstances, due to the “temporary protection” legal status not being seen as permanent residency. So far, the only option to transition out of this is to apply for a RWR+ card labor permit, which some Ukrainians will be able to do this summer, but they will only be a very small minority (less than 10%), as the barrier to entry is high in terms of months worked, net salary per person, German language skills. All the financial and other housing problems stem from the fact that Ukrainians in Austria can only access the very bare minimum (Grundversorgung) and it is not enough to live on. This is a huge problem for those who are handicapped or elderly or for other reasons cannot work. Into our third year of this war, and no one has changed this, legislatively or otherwise. Furthermore, more Ukrainians are arriving now, and there are no additional beds waiting for them. Despite the news from Kharkiv…
I will translate below a few of the messages I received on this topic in recent days.
“Hi. I read your message about the interview with the Austrian journalist. There are so many important topics. One of those is regarding the handicapped and the elderly. There are many people with limited mobility who cannot take on full time jobs, and it is extremely hard to survive on €240 per month. So it turns out that people try to eat buying food at social supermarkets (expired goods), they wear second-hand clothing, and some even collect bottles etc to make little extra money. Unfortunately this is now a reality. It is really these two groups of people who are totally unprotected. The only extra payments are possible if someone gets “Pflegegeld” (Tanja — support subsidy for caretakers of handicapped family members). But you have to apply for that and it is not easy to get approved. My family is really trying, we are trying to find some kind of work, so much time is spent on emails and interviews. We are trying our very best, and are working simultaneously in several directions, but so far with no luck…
…I would also like to thank Austria and all the people who helped us. This country has done more for us than Ukraine ever did for us in my lifetime.
There is also one unpleasant thing. We live in housing provided by Caritas and there are inspections once a month. They have the right to come when we are not home and take anything they think necessary from our things. We also have nightly inspections every day at 8pm. We live in a pensioners’ home.”
Another woman has been bothering me relentlessly this past week. She has to leave her apartment by the end of May (as I write it is June 2 and I do not know what she ended up doing). She begged for help to find new housing. She explained her appointment to receive the payment for her and her child is not until the end of June. I sent her a Hofer card after I received one. But €50 does not help the fact that refugees cannot be expected to pre-fund their lives in a new country, and in fact, that is what the system expects of them when the NGO in charge of payments in Vienna schedules appointments for the end of June for which to pay May and June…it makes no sense. So basically, she is now facing the tough lesson that if you don’t find work or don’t have some savings, no one here is coming to save you. And yes if you have kids, still the same. She wrote me a few days ago she will have to go back to Ukraine. I would not be surprised if she is already on her way.
The second issue which is very telling and is only now really coming to light is that trained professionals: teachers, doctors, nurses from Ukraine are finding it extremely difficult if not impossible to have their diplomas recognised in Austria via official channels and are not being offered the opportunity to work in their fields even when schools might clearly need some Ukrainian-speaking assistant teachers and hospitals and nursing homes, we are told, desperately need staff. But as is so often the case in Austria, the bureaucracy and contradicting rules and regulations make it nearly impossible to do things the “correct” way in real life. In real life, these women end up scrubbing toilets instead. Unfortunately. Because so much of what is regulated here is not based on any kind of economic calculation. There are rules for rules sake and they are adhered to, much to the collective disappointment of both Ukrainians looking for work in their fields and probably also those employers who might like to hire them.
I keep having to remind Ukrainians in my group chat that Austria’s economic rules were not written when their employment in mind. In fact, no one is really thinking about them. I think that is the hardest message to accept. But cerebrally, one must.
“I would really ask them to review the rules/requirements/length etc. for recognition of our Ukrainian diplomas, for example for teachers! I know that now many Austrian schools and kindergartens suffer from a shortage of personnel, and refugees from other countries work there often without even B1 German. They tell us that we cannot work at these jobs until we have at least C1 German, and that in order to have our diplomas recognised in Austria, you also need C1. As a result, a Ukrainian, with a bachelor’s degree, who could work legally and pay taxes to the government is forced to either sit without work, or work illegally as a cleaner or caretaker for seniors.” (Tanja’s note — illegal work because when you receive this €260 per month from the state, you are forbidden from earning a lot legally on top, hence its a viscous cycle)
Another woman replied to this comment:
“Unfortunately, I heard the same information which you shared from the AMS (job board in Austria) seminar. Teachers in Austria are a special profession and they think we Ukrainians do not have enough training, they would need us to have C1 German and special additional coursework. That is what they told us in April. And yes they have a teacher shortage and these rules…it turns out they also need social workers like myself but…”
The original poster replied
“Yes, but the Syrians and Afghans don’t all have C1 and some of them work in this sector.”
“Those I know from German classes are not trying to be teachers, they want jobs in afternoon care, they want to train for this.”
“I don’t need to be seen as a teacher but if they would let us be assistants with B2 German in schools or kindergartens…I cannot find a logical explanation why they are so conservative. I was motivated to study for B2, and to have one of my diplomas recognised, and my social work…and now I am completely demotivated.”
Another reader adds:
“In our school the afternoon care staff do not speak good German. Definitely not C1.”
I was also contacted by a woman living in Austria for a while now, who found about an opportunity to study in Austria to become a certified elderly care specialist, and signed up for such a program which promised a subsidy while you are studying. She wrote me in great panic and great detail, and I will translate some below, but to make a long story short, she invested all the time and effort, only to be told that she as a Ukrainian does not qualify for the full subsidy, and she now asks me how one is expected to pay rent and survive on less than everyone else.
“Hi Tanja, do you remember how I wrote you, that I want to study for elderly care? So I have spent six months, and this winter I signed up for three open doors, and I was also on the ÖIF career platform. All this time, they told us Ukrainians that we could qualify for this stipend:
You are then tied to work after your studies for two years — this gives you a stipend of €1,635, or without the promise to work, €1,535, and then you would have the right to look for your own internship, and would be free to work fewer hours. That is what I was counting on. That I can change my career (I worked in marketing), rent an apartment, and I can perform a job that is important for Austria. I passed the exams in several schools, and was accepted to one, I found a home for seniors for an unpaid summer internship and my continued studies. And then AMS stepped in.
They claimed that Ukrainians cannot qualify for this stipend. They said that I could only qualify for a maximum of €890, and they would choose where to send me to study and work, and it would be illegal to earn any extra money on top of the assigned job for two years.
Of course, many women immediately refused, because it is impossible for two years to survive, rent an apartment, and live on €890, plus maybe €200, but the home for seniors is on the border with Freistadt, and I am in Linz, and the school is in Linz, the other side of the city.
I am searching for who I can ask, what is happening, what can be done, because they were looking for people to train for these professions, and they told us we could do it, and now they say we do not qualify? Why would they tell us about this last summer, and we studied German hard.
I worked for 21 years in marketing, and in accounting, I was in charge of logsitics, and organised deliveries across Ukraine and abroad. My AMS ‘advisor’ said that is nothing, because I have no work experience nor education in Austria. That my experience is worth “zero”. That is a direct quote. They send me job opportunities for cleaners and maids. Or physical labor carrying boxes in retail stores. My advisor does not care that I am looking for office work, that I have B1 German and am taking B2, that I am learning 10-finger typing in German. And then the newspapers will write again that Ukrainians do not want to study, work, and how can anyone live on €890 per month for two years and rent housing, and eat….they promised us €1535 and the opportunity to find extra work for 10 hours per week. That was critical for me! I was so happy when I learned about this, I passed the exams, but it is so frustrating, I even passed the medical exam and for what…
My advisor did not want to give me an appointment. Said would maybe have time for me in August. But my studies are about to begin, and I need my stipend! They treat us like trash.”
She sent me this article, printed by the government, boasting about the career opportunities for refugees in senior care:
This woman told me she is going to contact more people this week, some NGOs, find a lawyer, ask for further clarification. And will demand another meeting with AMS. But can you imagine?! How idiotic does a system have to be to recruit people who actually want to do these deficit jobs and then turn them away over a measly €500 per month? It makes no sense. It can only be attributed to either stupid rules which should be changed by those in charge or incompetent staff who do not care not about the economy nor the people they are charged with helping.
I truly hope this woman and others like her will be able to keep fighting. But I fear these doors are going to continue to be slammed in their faces as long as their legal status is nothing more than “temporary protection”. And as the months roll on, the percentage of Ukrainians who see their futures long-term here will naturally grow. Time marches on. It is already June 2024. Crazy.
Other problems are of the more personal nature. A woman wrote me yesterday, her husband took a lover, they are divorcing (this is possible online in Ukraine via Dia), and yet he is still collecting the child benefit payments in Austria. She asked for a lawyer. I told her to go to the finance ministry instead. She told me the ex-husband sometimes takes the kids and does not tell her where he is with them. I reminded her he is their father and has every right to see them. And on it goes…
…we are out of space for new arrivals. I would love to hear if there is a plan. I fear there is not.
When I asked the young Ukrainian entrepreneurs how hard it was to find staff for their new cake shops, they told me it was super easy. A few posts in Facebook groups — one “Ukrainian youth in Austria” and the other “Ukrainians in Austria” and they were flooded with CVs and were conducting a half dozen interviews a day. Ukrainians do want to work and they do want to “integrate”; Austria’s rules do not always make this easy, especially for those with ambitions beyond working as cleaning staff in hotels.
Excellent reporting. What you reported (I hate 2nd person but...) I witnessed and experience, to a limited extent, in Canada. Many, many people who came to Canada would later discovered that their certification for whatever was not recognized. At the time, being a nobody, what could one have done but witness and assimilate whatever lessons that there were. Where I am from, we had waves upon waves of refugees coming from Vietnam/China and South/central America, some from eastern Europe and of course the whole province was seeded mostly from refugees escaping from either wars in Europe or those lured by the promise of free or cheap land. There was a very large wave of Ukrainians that came long before I born who maintained a very strong sense of their cultural heritage and essentially became what was locally called "established".
Originally, many of the "rules" that were in place I accepted as necessary to prevent any form of favoritism toward any group, that the laws and regulations were meant not just for we indigenous but for all for the news and history books abounded with examples of what happens when justice becomes seen as something akin to a popularity contest. I'll be honest, nothing is less attractive to the human spirit when individuals begin to pivot their arguments for how a social contract to work along the concept of "birthright" especially when expressed as a function of skin color.
In retrospect, I failed to recognized that my views were not as universally shared as I once thought. There was a time when many of my peers saw Canada as a work in progress, but there seems to have evolved some sort of disconnect that social justice and economic justice are the same thing. Living in the US has opened my eyes how some people (especially on the political left) seemed to think that the level of tax revenue available to a government is a measure of a state's commitment to social justice. In actuality, using and raising tax dollars, to pay for social programs that do not address at a structural levels questions of either social justice or economic is extremely alienating for some (the ACA has done nothing about health care costs). It isn't a coincidence that the MAGA crowd finds most of their supporters in low income states.
Fast forwarding, personally I think we live in an age where it came be pretty widely seen that our elites are not our betters. For sure in the political arena, but the same can be seen with many institutions like ICRC, Amnesty International, the UN,.....I have to go but I just read that the PM of Canada said recently that the housing and rental crisis can be solved but the solution must involve preserving current home levels to protect investors. Nothing is more corrosive to a social contract as when a people see their disposable income being reduced because of miss management of resources.