Law on Seasonal Workers Bringing Foreigners to Construction Sites as Well

The draft law on labor contracts due to the increased volume of work in certain fields recently went through a public review, which will be followed by an amendment and the adoption, but, at this stage, it has experienced resistance from lawyers and trade unions. They believe that this law does not provide sufficient legal protection to workers, that the draft is unconstitutional, that it benefits only the employer and not the employee and that there is no need for it, because it could all have been done through smaller amendments to the already existing laws.

Bojan Urdarevic, a professor of labor law at the Faculty of Law in Kragujevac, highlights Article 6, which pertains to foreign labor force.

– That part is truly problematic, because, the implementation of the new law, in which the sectors of construction, tourism and hospitality, as well as home jobs, enables the bypassing of the Law on the Employment of Foreign Nationals and allows for the employment of all those who can enter Serbia without a visa. As you know, there are many of those, from workers from the neighboring states, workers from India… – the professor reminds.

He adds that it is precisely in the construction sector that a number of 130,000 employees has been mentioned, but that it is not known how many of them are workers from Serbia, and how many are foreign workers, because Serbian workers often go to work abroad.

The part that pertains to hiring foreign work force is there in the draft because of the previous experiences with the lack of workers in agriculture, the NALED notes.

Irena Djordjevic from the NALED reminds that, in over a year and a half, in agriculture, a total of 30 foreigners were registered, of a total of 53,000 seasonal workers registered within the system. This proves, she adds, that foreign labor force will not replace local workers this way.

– This system merely enables them to be registered. Taxes and contributions are paid for them, they are insured in case of workplace injury, and the state gets paid to the budget from their work. The system is certainly not made so that migrants would be hired at construction sites in large numbers. Those same workers are already hired anyway, but the point is that they’re not visible in the system. This law allows us to see who they are, how many there are, and to create solutions for them – Djordjevic announces.

NALED Beograd

Pravni fakultet Kragujevac

Irena Đorđević

Bojan Urdarević

draft law on labor contracts due to the increased volume of work

Law on the Employment of Foreign Nationals

seasonal workers

employment of foreigners