Financial aspects of unregistered employment in Poland and other Eastern European countries

A review of the specialist literature and analysis of own study results reveal that a scale of the phenomena of undeclared work is both globally and locally significant and differentiated. Comparative research for the entire geographical area is difficult, as these are countries with very diverse economies. This was due to historical conditions, dynamic of socio-political changes and ties with other political alliances, membership in organizations and economic partnerships. The aim of the empirical research was to identify the financial aspects of undertaking work in the grey zone from the workers point of view. The study target group were chosen from unemployed registered at the Municipal Employment Office in Płock, Mazovia Region. Results show that the unemployed turn to undeclared work for financial reasons, such as higher reimbursement, unsatisfactory income or excessively high social insurance contributions. Respondents assessed their financial situation most often as bad, and indicated difficulties in finding work through registered employment. People who undertake work in a grey zone are predominantly those from low income groups, socially excluded, migrants, long time unemployed.

Vulnerability and Risks of Undeclared Work through the Eyes of Employees from Bulgarian Economy

The article presents recent empirical data from a national representative survey amongst Bulgarian employees, conducted within the framework of a project implementation by BICA studying undeclared work and the risks of its occurrence in enterprises. The study focuses on establishing, explaining and analyzing the relationships between the nature of employment and its duration and the propensity of undeclared work emergence, taking into account the growing spread of atypical forms of employment coupled with accelerated digitalization. The risks of inclusion in undeclared work practices of different categories of people, according to their basic characteristics, such as educational status, qualification and professional and specific experience in employment, have also been studied. The article presents new empirical data, which is valuable for allowing, based on their analysis, the formulation of relevant policies and measures for reducing and preventing undeclared work.

Addressing the issue of undeclared work – Part I: Applying associative classification per the CRISP-DM methodology

Addressing undeclared work is a high priority in the labor field for government policymakers since it adversely affects all involved parties and results in significant losses in tax and social security contribution revenues. In the last years, the wide use of ICT in labor inspectorates and the considerable progress in data exchange have resulted in numerous databases dispersed in various units, yet these are not effectively used to increase their functions productivity. This study presents a detailed analysis of a data mining project per the CRISP-DM methodology aiming to assist the labor inspectorates in dealing with undeclared work and other labor law violations. It uses real past inspections data merged with companies characteristics and their employment details and examines the application of two Associative Classification algorithms, the CBA and CBA2, in combination with two types of datasets, a binary and a four-class. The produced models are assessed per the data mining goals and per the initial business objectives, and the research concludes proposing an innovative inspections recommendation tool proved to offer two major benefits: a mechanism for planning targeted inspections of improved efficiency and a knowledge repository for enhancing the inspectors understanding of those features linked with labor law violations.

Offering undeclared workers financial help during Covid19 pandemic can bring them out of shadows into the declared economy

Purpose The authors wanted to examine why undeclared workers had not received financial assistance in Europe during the pandemic and find the best way to help them and bring them out of the shadows. Design/methodology/approach To identify those whose paid work is entirely undeclared, a Eurobarometer survey of undeclared work in Europe is reported conducted in September 2019, just prior to the pandemic, and involving 27,565 face-to-face interviews in 28 European countries. Findings The paid work of one in every 132 citizens in Europe comprises wholly of undeclared work and one in 28 work at least some of the time in the undeclared economy. These workers have received no support, but they are more likely to be financially vulnerable. A high percentage of undeclared workers are widowed, divorced and living in households with multiple persons. Originality/value The authors argue that short-term support for these individuals could not only help them to survive the pandemic financially, but also transform undeclared work into declared work with long-term benefits for individuals and the wider economy.

THE LABOR INSPECTOR SEARCHING FOR …GODOT: UNDECLARED DISTANCE WORK

Undeclared labor has become an increasingly present phenomenon nowadays. Due to the pandemic context, there has been a transition towards working from home or under telework regime. These particular forms of individual labor contracts allow for greater flexibility in terms of the place where a natural person works but, on the downside, they allow the parties to disguise the agreement or to avoid fulfilling the formalities imposed by the Law, such as concluding the contract in a written form and registering its elements in the General Record of Employees. In light of the aforementioned, we aim to identify if the labor inspectors have effective means of identifying the cases of undeclared labor when natural persons are working remotely. Through this paper, in the first section, we discuss the legal background both at the national as well as at the international level, in order to shed light on the concept of undeclared work. The following two sections will be dedicated to analysing if the inspection has any perspective of being an effective mean of identifying the situations of undeclared labor. Finally, several directions of action are contoured – as de lege ferenda proposals – so as to tackle the issue of undeclared work.

Explaining different types of undeclared work: lessons from a 2019 Eurobarometer survey

PurposeUntil now, most scholars have used one of four competing theories to explain undeclared work. Political economy theories explain undeclared work as resulting from the exclusion of workers from formal work and welfare, neo-liberal theories explain such work as a voluntarily chosen rational economic decision and neo-institutionalist and post-structuralist theories explain those engaging as social actors who disagree with the formal rules or seek to help others out respectively. Recognising that each theory focuses upon different employment relationships, this paper evaluates the proposition that these different theories are more explanations of different types of undeclared work.Design/methodology/approachTo evaluate this, data reported is collected in 2019 across 28 European countries (the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom) in special Eurobarometer survey 92.1 involving 27,565 interviews.FindingsOf the 3.6% of citizens participating in undeclared work, 10% engage in undeclared waged employment, 42% in undeclared self-employment and 48% in undeclared paid favours. Reporting their rationales, 7% state purely political economy exclusion-driven reasons, 19% solely neo-liberal rational economic actor reasons, 20% purely social actor reasons and 54% mixed motives. A logistic regression analysis finds those engaging in undeclared waged employment significantly more likely to state purely exclusion-driven rationales, those engaging in undeclared self-employment significantly more likely to state neo-liberal rational economic actor and neo-institutionalist social actor rationales and those engaging in undeclared paid favours post-structuralist social actor motives.Practical implicationsThis finding suggests that the policy initiatives required to tackle undeclared work will vary according to the type of undeclared work addressed. These are outlined.Originality/valueEvidence is provided that a different weighting needs to be given to different theories when explaining each type of undeclared work.