Work, sweat and disenfranchisement

Heading to Serbia hungry for bread, foreign workers can come across a factory - like Linglong - where the working conditions are below any human dignity. The case of workers from Vietnam and later workers from India who worked on the construction of a tire factory in Zrenjanin is one of the more extreme cases of exploitation of foreign workers by foreign investors. They also lacked the basics - food and water. So, for example, since they were hungry and their salaries were delayed, they set traps around the factory and hunted game in order to survive.

This is an extreme case, but that's not all. Foreign workers in Serbia often work illegally, without registration. These are mainly jobs in construction, catering, seasonal and other jobs for which there is a lack of domestic labor. In all these jobs, they often experience gross violations of basic labor and other human rights.

And that this is true is shown by the recent Report on the work of the Labor Inspectorate for the year 2023, in which it is written that during the inspection inspections, the labor inspectors found foreign nationals with whom the employers did not conclude employment contracts and were working "illegally" registered them for mandatory social insurance and provided them with permits to work in the Republic of Serbia.

During the inspections, the labor inspectors found that out of the total number of foreign nationals found at work, the employers for 11 percent of them did not previously secure work permits in the Republic of Serbia, and for 6 percent of them they did not conclude work contracts and did not report them to mandatory social security insurance", the Report states.

photo: jadranka ilić / tanjug

During 251 inspection inspections, labor inspectors found a total of 7781 foreign nationals at work, of which 867 did not have a work permit in the Republic of Serbia. Of those 867 workers, 687 are from Turkey, 36 from China, 24 from Cuba, 26 from India, nine from the Russian Federation, 14 from Turkmenistan, 15 from Uzbekistan, 22 from Egypt, and three are citizens of Tajikistan...

Of those who were caught working last year, most of them were from the People's Republic of China, 5952 of them, followed by Turkey - 1183, Egypt 256...

450 foreign citizens, mostly Turkish citizens, 335 of them, were found working "on the black", without a concluded employment contract and/or without applying for mandatory social insurance.

During the inspections, the labor inspectors found that 4099 persons, i.e. 53 percent of the total of 7781 foreign nationals found, were employed by a foreign employer in a foreign country, and that he, in accordance with the Law on the Employment of Foreigners, referred them to work. with an employer registered in the Republic of Serbia for whom they perform contracted work, while 3682 found foreign nationals (47 percent) were hired by employers registered in Republic of Serbia.

During the performed inspections, the labor inspectors found 632 seasonal workers, of which 287 had not filed registration reports.

(NE)AWARE OF YOUR STATUS

The president of the Association Center for Dignified Work and research associate at the Institute of Labor Law, Mario Reljanović, tells "Vreme" that the logic of hiring foreign workers "on the black" is the same as that of domestic workers - the employer tries not to pay taxes and contributions and in this way save, i.e. that the worker costs him less.

"What is indicative in those inspections is that labor inspectors have been finding unregistered employers for years. It is not only a story about workers who work without a legal basis, that is, 'on the black', but also about employers who are not employers in the sense that they are registered in the APR. Therefore, the story is quite bad, and this is especially true of the building," Reljanović points out.

When asked why this happens, especially to foreign workers, Reljanović says that the matter is clear because most foreign workers come in what demographers and economists call cyclical migrations.

"They stay with us for a very short time, usually a few months to a year, finish the job they came for and return to their country of origin or go to some similar job with the basic tendency to end up in a country where the working conditions are better, therefore in the European Union", explains Reljanović.

He adds that there are also data that the found workers "illegally" came with a tourist visa, and some did not even need one, so their movement is relatively free. However, they cannot get a job legally, and it also happens that they want to work "on the black" because they know that it is not possible to issue work permits for them even if the employer wants it.

"The third factor is actually that most of these workers come to perform jobs that require unskilled or low-skilled labor. They do not know the language of the host country, very often they do not know the English language, nor what is needed to start working here. "Many of them were promised that they would work legally, but they don't, many of them don't even know that they are not working legally because it all takes place according to some established schemes where they are isolated from the public," says Reljanović.

Our interlocutor points out that, for example, if an injury occurs at work, these workers go to private clinics or are treated on the spot: "They have minimal contact with the outside world, they think that's how it should be and that it's simple as it is done, completely unaware that they are in some illegal status."

THE WORKERS DON'T KNOW WHO TO CONTACT

When we combine all these factors, continues Reljanović, we get that foreign workers are in some way more susceptible to working "on the black" and that even if they think something is wrong, they don't know who to turn to, they don't know that there is an inspection. of work, and in some rare cases when they themselves alerted the state authorities, as a rule they called the police because they know that the police exist everywhere.

"They called when their passports were confiscated or they were treated in a particularly inhumane manner." Although this has not and will not be determined by a court, it is about human trafficking. Therefore, only when they find themselves in extremely unfavorable conditions, these foreign workers turn to the police, and sometimes it reaches the wider public. In other cases, they don't know who to turn to," states Reljanović.

Zoran Stojiljković, professor of the Faculty of Political Sciences and former president of the trade union "Nezavisnost", tells "Vreme" that a similar thing happened with workers from Serbia who went to work abroad, and that it is important whether the worker goes organized with his company to some kind of training or additional arrangement, which is the most favorable case.

"The second thing is through the exchange concept that the National Employment Agency works with the appropriate institutions in the country. And the third level, where incidents are possible, is through agencies that make deals with similar agencies or, for example, through a connection system that implies individual coping - for example, through advertisements," says Stojiljković.

WHAT THE NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT SERVICE DOES?

How often does the inspection check the status of workers? Stojiljković says that we have had announcements for a long time that the inspection would come, although the announcement is not an obligation. He also emphasizes that there is a servile attitude towards foreign corporations in Serbia: "We had the biggest scandals with foreign workers when they were hired by a foreign corporation, so the Vietnamese came to work for the Chinese."

Reljanović explains that the labor inspection is not the primary body that would have to deal with all workers, and that it is more important that in the recent past, from the cases of Indian workers in 2019 to today, through many scandals that have been reported through the media, we have had a very strange role as the National employment services. Namely, the National Service should review the employer's documentation, the contract that the employed foreign worker has with the employer and which determines his labor-legal status, that is, determines what type of permit the worker can obtain.

It very often happened, Reljanović continues, that the factual situation on the ground and the situation in the documentation did not correspond to the type of permit that the employer claimed to have received from the National Employment Service. That issue was never resolved, and the interlocutor of "Vremen" says that the National Service never gave an explanation, nor did any of its representatives appear at any meeting, conference or forum where someone could ask them why they didn't.

"It was particularly interesting in the case of the Vietnamese workers in Linglong because it was the best documented. We had different claims, different findings, even in one and the same report of the labor inspection, mutually contradictory information about how many workers there are without a permit and what type of permit the workers who are present have," says Reljanović.

He adds that the Labor Inspection, due to its very limited capacities, cannot be blamed for being completely passive. "They carried out supervision, and they were especially active this year, and this is not seen in this report, but will be seen in the next one." Due to the high temperatures, and until now we had those two heat waves, they were active in June and July with extraordinary inspections, and it is very interesting that they found both domestic and foreign workers 'on the black', as well as unregistered employers. So the labor inspection is a basic mechanism that can serve to protect those workers", Mario Reljanović points out.

He goes on to say that the inspection carries out some 60000 to 70000 inspections per year, which is good in relation to the number of inspectors, but is clearly insufficient considering the number of economic entities and how much time can pass on average until it is someone's turn to be inspected.

Because, explains Reljanović, if six, seven or eight years pass between two inspection inspections at an employer, then employers see their chance to avoid compliance with the law, and this is usually done through illegal work, reduced wages, etc.

DIGNIFIED WORK?

At the beginning of last year, the Law on the Employment of Foreigners in Serbia was amended, but it happens that the contracts concluded are not in accordance with the law.

"Let's say, the contracts that the Linglong company, as a domestic employer in Serbia, concluded with Vietnamese workers were illegal in two thirds of the cases and had nothing to do with our labor law. This is where the lack of education and ignorance of those workers, their lack of knowledge of the labor and legal system of Serbia, but also their lack of information as to whether they have the right to four weeks of annual leave or not, is used. It's easy for them to spread false stories", emphasizes Reljanović.

Foreign workers are not a homogeneous group. Some of them belong to middle and senior management in various companies, but the largest number do physical jobs as unskilled or low-skilled labor.

"Most of those who work legally share the fate of domestic workers. Those who work illegally usually do not even have the basic conditions for the normal performance of their activities", concludes Reljanović.