Associations of industrial, mining, construction materials and cement manufacturers demand resumption of employee reservation, which stopped after the government had suspended the process of assigning critical status to enterprises.

"After the president drew attention to the fact that the number of reservations had tripled, the Cabinet of Ministers made a decision to suspend the recognition of enterprises as critical. I emphasize that we are talking about new enterprises, and not about those that have long been recognized as critical for the country's economy and must only confirm this status. In fact, at the level of the Ministry of Economy, the entire reservation process has been suspended. We are not receiving confirmations for enterprises previously recognized as critical, and we cannot reserve employees," said Oleksandr Kalenkov, President of Ukrmetalurgprom, at a press briefing at the Interfax-Ukraine agency.

Industrial enterprises are experiencing a serious personnel crisis. According to Kalenkov, for manufacturing companies, the reservation of 50% of employees is not enough, since the staff at the enterprises is already maximally optimized. Work in complex production requires a certain qualification and it is impossible to quickly replace mobilized workers.

"People do not come to work for us because we work transparently. Representatives of Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers simply go to our checkpoint at the beginning of the day, where a thousand people pass daily, hand out summonses and fulfill the work plan for the month ahead. This leads to the fact that people do not come to work for us, because they are afraid that we will not have time to reserve them and they will be taken the next day. This has really happened, since we do not even have time to go through this procedure," he explained.

The situation with hiring employees at enterprises in regions close to combat zones is even more difficult, said the executive director of the Ukrainian Association of Ferroalloy Producers (UkrFA), Serhiy Kudriavtsev.

"We would like to increase the percentage of reserved workers. An enterprise located in a combat zone does not have the opportunity to replace a mobilized employee. We have repeatedly raised the issue with the Ministry of Defense about increasing the share of reservations to at least 70%," he said.

It is also important to allow enterprises to independently manage the reservation process in terms of changing the distribution of reservations among employees and clarifying the lists depending on the needs of enterprises, Kudriavtsev believes.

Changes should also be made to the process of recognizing an enterprise as critical, said the head of the Association of Cement Producers of Ukraine Ukrcement, Pavlo Kachur. According to him, the process of confirming the criticality status should be automatic based on established criteria.

One of the fundamental problems with the reservation mechanism is the lack of systematic information on the number of enterprises and their staff in Ukraine, emphasized the president of the Ukrainian Union of Construction Materials Producers, Kostiantyn Saliy.

"In three years, it would have been possible to create a system where the prime minister and relevant ministries could see their industries and which enterprises are critical, and could automatically notify managers about plans. No one knows how many mid-level enterprises we have that are truly critical. However, the government lacks responsible persons who would communicate and monitor the situation. We have an entire ministry for digitalization, digitalize these processes," the expert said.

In addition, the processes of reserving employees in the mining, metallurgical industry and related areas require a specialized approach, taking into account the specifics of the work of their specialists, said Heorhiy Popov, a representative of the National Association of Mining Industry of Ukraine. According to him, the current reservation periods are often insufficient, since individual projects in these areas take up to five years and require the participation of highly qualified specialists.

"I support the proposals of my colleagues: we need the right digitalization process, we need a specialized approach to the industry, taking into account its specifics and differences from other businesses. At the beginning of the full-scale war, there was a lot of talk about reservation of specialists in the IT industry. However, we should not forget that the mining business, the mining and metallurgical complex are responsible for the lion's share of tax revenues, "white" employment and foreign exchange earnings," he emphasized.

"Supporting the president's decision that it is necessary to bring order to the reservation process, we appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers to solve the problems in this area. Not to stop the processes, but to conduct an audit and figure out where so many reservations came from in six months. If the current situation drags on for days and weeks, then this will lead to a stop in our work," Kalenkov summed up.