A new sign and thirty permits: amendments for a group from Kyrgyzstan in one week

01 / Thursday, 8:00

The new sign went up before people understood what it meant

At eight on Thursday morning a truck crane stood by the gate of an agricultural company in the Poltava region. Two fitters were taking down the old sign, under which the farm had worked for almost twenty years, and bolting up a new one bearing the name of an agricultural holding. Kanybek, leader of the group from Kyrgyzstan, took a photo on his way to the storage building and sent it to the family chat. By lunchtime the photo had gone round chats in Karakol, Tokmok and Naryn, and by evening Azamat, our Worker Relations Manager for Kyrgyzstan, had eleven messages. The shortest came from Ermek's wife, asking whether it was true they had been sold along with the company.

For Nataliia, Head of our Documents team, the story had started a day earlier. At 16:20 on Wednesday the company's lawyer sent us an extract from the state register: the reorganisation was complete and the new name had been registered that day. Nataliia opened the group's deadline register. Thirty rows, thirty work permits, and every one of them showed the old name as the employer.

On a sheet of paper next to her monitor she wrote three numbers: 30, 30 and 3. Thirty people. Thirty days, which the law gives an employer to apply for amendments to a permit. And three working days, within which the employment centre has to make a decision. Below them she added a fourth number of her own: 7. That was how many days we gave ourselves for all thirty packs.

For the company it was a new name. For thirty people from Kyrgyzstan it was a question of whether their documents were still about them.

02 / How the group came about

Thirty people from Kyrgyzstan for the fields, stores and packing

This group has been ours since the first interview. The company grows grain and vegetables and has its own vegetable stores and a section where vegetables are sorted and packed for retail chains. At the start of the year it came to Olena, who runs client projects at WORKIN, with a task: by spring, thirty people for sorting and packing vegetables and working in the stores, some before the season began and the rest by May. The company did not talk about a country, it talked about people: experience with vegetables, steady work in a group, and understanding the agronomist and supervisors without an interpreter.

We proposed Kyrgyzstan. In the Chuy valley and around Issyk-Kul many families grow potatoes, carrots and onions, and experienced packing teams work at vegetable warehouses outside Bishkek. Russian is widely spoken there, and the company's agronomist speaks it fluently. Citizens of Kyrgyzstan enter Ukraine without a visa, the route takes four to seven weeks and fitted both dates. Our licensed partner in Bishkek had a reserve of candidates for exactly that spring. The company agreed.

Azamat interviewed in Karakol, Tokmok and villages of the Chuy region in Kyrgyz and Russian. In the trial, candidates sorted vegetables by size and picked out damaged ones, and the packers showed how they fill a net to the right weight. Kanybek is forty-four; he grew potatoes on family land near Karakol for twenty years and spent five seasons at a vegetable warehouse. Chynara is thirty-six, comes from Tokmok and packed vegetables at a company outside Bishkek. Talant is twenty-seven, and this is his first trip abroad. The company approved thirty people and four reserves.

Each of them received an information sheet in Kyrgyz and Russian: the position, the contract term, pay from the draft contract, the dormitory address and documents for the border. It also stated that the candidate pays nothing for the job: a rule of our contract with the partner. The first wave of eighteen people arrived in March and the second of twelve in May. Both went through visa-free entry without delays, filed for temporary residence permits in their first weeks and have lived in the company's dormitory in a neighbouring village ever since. We put the group together under mass hiring and have managed its documents under migration support since then, which is why the deadline register was with Nataliia rather than in an HR drawer.

The company's task

30 people for sorting, packing and storage

Why Kyrgyzstan

Vegetable experience, Russian, visa-free route, partner reserve

Waves

18 people in March, 12 in May

Documents

One-year permits, residence permits, registration at the dormitory

03 / What the law says

A new employer name means amendments to each of the thirty permits

The employment law expressly lists a change of name and a reorganisation of the employer among the cases in which a work permit must be amended. The employer applies no later than 30 days after the event, in our case the registration of the new name. No fee is charged for amendments. The employment centre decides no later than three working days from the registration of the application and sends the decision to the employer electronically. An employer that fails to apply for amendments within 30 days is liable under the law.

On Thursday Nataliia called the company's lawyer to agree a plan. The lawyer suggested there was no rush: the first wave's permits would have to be extended in winter anyway, so why not add the new name then, in one go. Nataliia opened the register and showed her the dates. The first wave's permits expire in early February, and the law allows an extension application no earlier than 50 and no later than 20 calendar days before the end of the term. That window would open in mid-December, while the thirty days for amendments ran out in early December. One go was simply not possible.

The lawyer agreed within five minutes, and the conversation moved on to practicalities: who signs thirty applications, where we take the name from and when the company would provide its documents. The decision was simple: we file the amendments now, all thirty, and in winter we go for the extension with permits that already carry the new name.

When amendments are needed

Change of name, reorganisation or spin-off of the employer

Deadline to apply

No later than 30 days after the event

Fee

None

Decision

No later than three working days from registration of the application

If not filed

The employer is liable under the law

04 / Deadline register

Thirty rows, two waves and one date to count from

We keep a deadline register for every group from the day the permits are issued. For each worker it holds the name in Latin letters exactly as in the passport, the passport number, the permit number and term, the position, the date of the employment contract, the residence permit filing date and the extension window. On Wednesday evening Nataliia added three new columns: date of the event, last day to apply for amendments and date of decision.

The date of the event is the same in all thirty rows, the day the new name was registered, and the thirty days run from it. The group has two extension windows, though. For the eighteen people of the first wave it opens in mid-December, for the twelve of the second in mid-February. The register showed one more thing: no other changes fell in that month. No new passports, no transfers to other positions, so in each pack only the employer's name had to change and nothing else.

05 / Packs

Seven days for thirty packs and the name taken only from the register extract

Nataliia's first decision was where the new name would come from. There is one source: the state register extract, with the full name, the legal form, the quotation marks and the spelling letter by letter. On Thursday HR sent over the new letterhead, and on it the holding's name was spelled slightly differently: without the hyphen in the middle of the word that appears in the register. In a letter that is a trifle. In thirty applications that the employment centre will check against the register, it is not. We took the name for the applications from the extract, and HR corrected the letterhead the same day.

Then came the mechanics. Nataliia checked the company's filing documents against our checklist, so that the details of the employer, its director and the authorised person already carried the new name. The applications were produced from a single template into which each worker's data was pulled from the register: name, passport number, permit number, position. Nothing was typed into an application by hand except the signature.

Every finished pack was checked by a second person in the Documents team, who opened the register row, the copy of the current permit and the application and compared them. The employment centre checks whether there are grounds to leave an application without action on the very next working day after registration, so each pack had to be complete first time. On Monday, day five, all thirty packs were ready. The company's director signed the applications with an electronic signature in the employer's online account, and filing began.

1. Wednesday, 16:20

   Register extract with the new name, three new columns in the deadline register.

2. Thursday

   Call with the lawyer, filing plan, name checked against the letterhead.

3. Friday

   Company documents with the new name, application template, first packs.

4. Monday

   All 30 packs checked by a second person, director's signature, first ten filed.

5. Tuesday

   Second ten applications.

6. Wednesday, day 7

   Third ten. All 30 applications filed.

06 / Talking to the group

What Azamat explained in Kyrgyz at the dormitory

On Thursday Azamat left Kyiv after lunch and was at the dormitory by seven in the evening. The group gathered in the canteen: thirty people, some still in work clothes. He began with what everyone had seen: the sign had changed because the company had joined an agricultural holding and received a new name. The work, the positions, the contract terms and the dormitory stay as they were, and the HR director, who came to the meeting with him, confirmed it.

Then he explained what changes in the documents. Every permit shows the old name as the employer, and the law requires the company to amend them. We do this together with the company; people do not need to travel anywhere or pay anything, because amendments are free. There will be a decision on each permit within a few working days of filing, and everyone will get a copy of the decision for their folder, to keep next to the copy of their permit.

There were plenty of questions. Ermek asked whether he would have to cross the border again to get new documents. He would not. Chynara asked whether her name would be written correctly, because the new HR order had it in Cyrillic. In a permit amendment the name stays exactly as in the passport, and Nataliia takes it from the register, not from the order. Talant wanted to know what to say if an inspection asked for documents before the decision came. Show the copy of the permit, say that the amendment application has been filed and give Azamat's phone number for any questions.

At the end Kanybek asked for a voice message for the families. Azamat recorded two minutes in Kyrgyz: what had happened, why the sign had changed and that people's documents were in order. Kanybek forwarded it to the family chat, and nobody there wrote again about people being sold along with the company.

1. 01

   What stays the same

   The work, positions, contract terms, dormitory and registered address.

2. 02

   What changes

   The employer's name in the permit, through the company's amendment application.

3. 03

   What each person does

   Pays nothing and travels nowhere, and keeps a copy of the decision in their folder.

4. 04

   Whom to call

   Azamat, with any question about documents, in Kyrgyz or Russian.

07 / Filing and decisions

Three batches of ten and every decision checked letter by letter

We filed in batches of ten from Monday to Wednesday, and that was deliberate. Had the employment centre raised a comment on the first ten, we would have had time to fix it in the other twenty packs before filing them. There were no comments. Decisions on the first ten arrived on Wednesday, on the second on Thursday and on the third on Friday, each within three working days.

Nataliia opened every decision next to its register row. She checked the new name against the register extract, the Latin spelling of the name against the passport, the passport number, the position and the permit term, because the amendment must not touch anything but the name. The decision date went into the new register column the same day. By Friday evening there was not a single empty cell left in the decision date column.

On Saturday Azamat brought printed copies of the decisions to the dormitory and put them into the folders people have kept since day one: passport, copy of the permit, contract, residence permit, registration. Everyone checked their name and signed for their copy. The HR director received a list with the decision date for each worker, and the HR documents that are the company's responsibility as employer are described on the employer duties page.

• the employer's name is taken only from the state register extract;
• applications come from one template filled with data from the deadline register;
• every pack is checked by a second person before filing;
• we file in batches of ten, so that a comment on the first batch is not repeated in the rest;
• every decision is checked against the register and its date entered the same day.

08 / Next

The extension under the new name and a WORKIN contract updated the same week

The name did not change only in the permits. That same week Olena drew up an addendum to our contract with the company: the new name, the same terms, the same deadline register as an annex. For the group this meant that everything we did before the reorganisation carries on without a break under migration support, including the WORKIN replacement guarantee. It runs for at least 6 months from the worker's first shift, provided the agreed working, pay and housing conditions are kept: finding a replacement is not charged again, while state fees, the migration partner's services, travel and living costs for the new worker are paid by the company.

The next event in the deadline register is now in mid-December, when the first wave's extension window opens. Nataliia has already put the date she will start gathering the packs into the calendar shared with the company, and the applications will go in on permits that already carry the new name, so no mismatch between the name on a permit and in the register will become a question at the employment centre. How we run such an extension for a large group is covered in the scenario on a second year for operators.

09 / Summary

Thirty permits with the new name in nine days and calm in the family chats

Event

Company reorganisation and a new name in the state register

Law

Permit amendments within 30 days, free, decision within three working days

Our deadline

All 30 packs in a week, the name taken only from the register extract

Decisions

30 out of 30 within three working days of each filing

People

A talk in Kyrgyz on the day of the new sign, copies of decisions in their folders

A company's reorganisation should never become a problem for the people we brought in. Our job at such a moment is to turn the law's thirty days into a week of calm work with the register and, on the day rumours reach the family chats, to go to the people and explain what is changing in their folders. How we amend a permit when a candidate gets a new passport is covered in the scenario on two routes and one start, and how we check every month that a group's permits are in order in the scenario on monitoring the social contribution. The whole journey from request to first shift is on the How it works page. More on the pages on workers for agriculture, address registration and general labourers from abroad.

10 / FAQ

Questions and answers