Media and Management by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC052000 Social Science / Media Studies
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

Recent data shows that in the European Union (EU), short-term deployment of labor is more frequent than the classic long-term free movement of workers (Mussche and Lens 2018). For some workers, it is the only form of engagement available to them. One telling instance is the example of a female Croatian worker residing in Serbia. In the past four years (October 2015 to June 2019), she has been recruited eight times by different TWAs in Serbia for temporary engagements in Slovakia and Czechia. During this period, she worked in electronics, white goods, and logistics for brands ranging from Shin Hueng Precision to Samsung and Honeywell, over periods varying from several weeks to several months. Each of these engagements were “informal,” meaning that even though workers signed an employment contract, TWAs did not register their workers as employed in workers’ countries of origin, thus not paying social security contributions and depriving workers of the possibility of claiming unemployment benefits. Within these subcontracting chains, workers were often unclear about whom to contact in case of irregularities, due to the dispersion of responsibility regarding who might be their employer. For example, Serbian workers working for Samsung in Slovakia were recruited by a Serbian agency, signed the contract with a Hungarian agency, and then were paid by a Slovak agency while effectively working for Samsung. We can thus observe that, as a mediation process, subcontracting chains are intended to obfuscate employment relations, dilute an employer’s responsibilities, and (re)configure the terms and conditions of work.

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