Roma at work

Businesses in Brno take the lead in having more minority employees

08/08/2012 – In a city where racial tensions between the white and Roma populations often escalate, a bold new initiative has been created to help bosses find potential workers among the largely unemployed ethnic minority.
“Roma work, and they want to work” is a campaign devised by IQ Roma Servis, a Brno-based organization that helps Roma find work in south Moravia.

“The attitude of employers is very similar to the attitude of the public: distrust, suspicion and xenophobic prejudices. Although by law one can not discriminate in the Czech Republic, a hidden, indirect discrimination is an exhausting experience of a large part of the Czech Roma people,” explains IQ Roma Servis Director Katarína Klamková.

Accurate figures are hard to obtain, but it’s believed some 250,000 Roma live in the Czech Republic, accounting for between 2 percent and 3 percent of the country’s overall population. However, it’s estimated roughly 70 percent are without work, compared with a national unemployment rate of just above 6 percent.

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