Gotta love the ShoreCam on days when stuck in the office.
Posted on 07/08/2002 11:09:47 AM PDT by Incorrigible
Published in the Home News Tribune 7/07/02
By JOHN LOFTUS
STAFF WRITER
[Ocean City, N.J. --] There are plenty of jobs in Bulgaria. But Ana Ivanova says the money isn't good. So for the second summer in a row, she has come to Ocean City, N.J., to work for the kind of pay college kids earn in an American resort town.
That would be about four times, maybe more, she said, than she could get back in her hometown, Sofia, the Bulgarian capital.
Trouble is, as of late June, she had not found a job.
She is not alone -- in that, or in being an Eastern European college student at the Shore.
This summer, Ocean City is thick with Russians, Poles, Serbs, Slovakians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Macedonians and Bulgarians, lots of Bulgarians.
"Too many," said Assya Doncheva, another Bulgarian student.
And that has meant that students from former Eastern Bloc countries who got to the Shore after the first few weeks of June are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to find work. Like anyone else looking for work in a resort town after the middle of June, they have found all the jobs are taken.
It isn't that employers don't want to hire them; they do.
New opportunities
In the years since the Iron Curtain rusted away, kids from Eastern Europe have been coming to the United States for summer jobs and have developed reputations as eager workers and hard workers. They're considered dependable and often ask for as many hours as they can get.
That work ethic is attractive to Shore employers who put in long hours themselves during the vacation season.
"From April 1 through September, I work seven days a week," said restaurateur Jim McGrady. This summer, McGrady and his wife, Denise, have two Macedonians and two Russians working in the kitchen of Periwinkles in Ocean City. By late June, he said, one of the students already asked him not to give her any more time off.
But it isn't just how hard the Eastern Europeans work as it is when they work. They don't have to be back in classes until October, said Joann DelVescio, executive director of the Ocean City Chamber of Commerce.
That means they're still at their shore jobs in late August and September, when American high school and college students already have left to return to school.
"That's huge," said McGrady.
The Shore is at its busiest from mid-August to early September, he said, but that's when the labor pool tends to dry up. Hiring kids who don't leave when you need them most helps a business keep going.
"It's tough staffing through Labor Day," said Brian Hartley, personnel director of Playland's Castaway Cove amusement center in Ocean City. "Aug. 15 is like a mass exodus," he said.
McGrady said that by Aug. 20 to Aug. 25, many of the American students are gone. But, by then, referring to the foreign students, "these kids, not only know everything (about their jobs), but their language has gotten so much better."
"They come here to improve their English; they come here to work, not play," said Joseph Bogle, who operates six Fudge Kitchen shops in Wildwood, Cape May, Stone Harbor and Ocean City. "They can make more money than their parents do at home," he said. "And they're selling fudge."
That late-season availability has made foreign students a big part of many businesses.
International help
Bogle estimates a third of his summer help is from overseas. Hartley put his number at 40 percent. Playland employs students from 10 different countries, most of them in Eastern Europe, he said.
Hartley said Playland began seeing more and more Eastern Europeans about three years ago.
He said at least 15 foreign students apply for Playland jobs daily, but he is fully staffed. "I just don't have the positions."
He estimated Ocean City might be seeing a surge of 25 percent more Eastern Europeans this year.
But how do so many kids from countries many Americans probably couldn't find on a map find Wildwood, Point Pleasant, Seaside Heights, or Ocean City?
They get help.
Businesses such as InterExchange and Council Exchanges for years have been smoothing the way for students from Ireland, England and now Eastern Europe.
Casey Slamin, program manager for the work and travel program of InterExchange, said most of the 3,000 kids his nonprofit company helped bring to the United States this year will stay on the East Coast.
In New Jersey, he said, the biggest employers of foreign students are Great Adventure in Jackson, Morey's Piers in Wildwood and WaWa convenience stores throughout the state.
DelVescio said Ocean City businesses have been using InterExchange for at least a decade. For a fee of roughly $1,500, InterExchange helps the students with jobs, visas and round-trip tickets.
Word of mouth is another factor, said Bogle. The kids go home, and they tell others where they can find good jobs and good employers. Bogle uses InterExchange, but only 15 percent of the 50 foreign students he employs this summer were hired through the agency. He said InterExchange recommends kids who speak English.
The Internet, too, has made it very easy for students a half-world away to apply for many jobs in the United States. Playland's Hartley estimates he gets 40 e-mail applications per day between November and May.
Bigger checks
Eastern Europeans have in the last decade become a big part of the mix, said Slamin, but the majority of students his agency helps still are from Ireland.
Irish kids have been summer regulars at the New Jersey Shore for decades. Wildwood still attracts plenty of Irish students, Slamin said, but others are traveling to Cape Cod, Rhode Island and Delaware resorts.
For years, those Irish students have said American pay is about twice what they would get at home.
For Eastern Europeans, however, the pay difference is more dramatic.
Ivan Jovanovic, 24, a Serbian student working in the kitchen of the Island Grill in Ocean City, says his earning potential is many times what he could get at home. Jovanovic has two jobs.
Jovanovic paid a $1,500 fee for his air fare, visa and other paperwork, but he feels his earning potential makes the outlay worth it.
The arithmetic is not difficult. Multiply minimum wage by 80 hours, and the result is more than $400 a week. Multiply that by four, and the result is better than $1,600 per month. Multiply that by the four months the students are permitted to stay in this country, and the result more than $6,000.
And that's basing earnings on minimum wage. Some students earn more. Hartley said Playland is paying more than minimum wage.
Kalin Atanasov, a 21-year-old Bulgarian student, is making more than $8 a hour at Bogle's Fudge Kitchen store Ocean City. Atanasov said his father works in his country's defense department and earns about $200 monthly.
That's good pay in Bulgaria, he said.
Americans would find it impossible to live on such a wage. It's not so much easier for Bulgarians, he said, and most don't make more than half that. "Our government says you need $300 a month to live," he said, putting the real figure at $500 a month.
Like many, Atanasov is planning on taking money home. Just like any college student anywhere, he wants to buy a car.
John Loftus: (732) 565-7215; e-mail at jloftus@thnt.com
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
If our immigration spigots must continue to be wide open, at least there are substantial numbers arriving from the same Eastern European countries that assimilated at the turn of the 20th century.
We are both progeny of Europe; and to cop a phrase from Buchanan, these folks will assimilate more quickly than "Zulus."
Gotta love the ShoreCam on days when stuck in the office.
Yeah. The economy picked up so much in Ireland you couldn't even find an Irish bartender or carpenter in New York City after 1992.
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I have no idea why, but last years kids kept saying that they that's the way they act in Ireland so they felt they should be able to act that way in Chicago too. I'd tell them that they weren't in Ireland anymore, but they'd look at my like I was speaking Serbian to them. I don't get it. We even had an American born girl of Irish decent renounce her heritage last year it was so bad. Thank God the new group has been great.
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