As many as a quarter of all Danish companies with foreign staff is at risk of the illegal hiring practice known as social dumping, according to a new report from the Danish National Centre for Social Research and Analysis (Det Nationale Forsknings- og Analysecenter for Velfærd, Vive).
Social dumping is the practice by which foreign workers are used to circumvent Danish collective bargaining agreements, saving employers money by hiring staff on wages and working conditions inferior to those set by the Danish labour model.
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“We can see that the lower the level of education, the lower the pay and longer the working hours at the company, the higher the risk [of social dumping],” Jan Hyld Pejtersen, senior researcher with Vive, said in a press statement.
The research organisation looked at 59,355 Danish companies which have foreign nationals on their payrolls. Some 23.4 percent of those companies were found to be at risk of committing social dumping.
The risk was considered to be the highest in the construction, agriculture and hospitality sectors.
“There is also a tendency for small businesses to be more at risk of committing social dumping than large businesses,” the report also states.
The methodology used by the researchers, termed “random forest”, does not set a specific number of businesses found to be in violation of social dumping rules, but rather estimates a risk of the practice occurring at workplaces.
This involves using existing data relating to reprimands given to businesses for violations of work health and safety, tax and immigration laws to give an overall assessment of the risk level.
However, the method has been criticised by the Confederation of Danish Employers (Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening, DA), which describes the findings as “deeply misleading” and an exaggeration.
“For example, if a company receives a notice from the Danish Working Environment Authority to tidy up a cable on the floor in one of its departments – where there may not even be any foreign employees – then all departments across the country will automatically be categorised as being at risk of social dumping involving all its international employees,” DA director Jacob Holbraad said in a press statement.
“It goes without saying that this is completely flawed,” he added.
Pejtersen rejected the criticism and said the conclusions of the report are not misleading.
“We look at a range of factors. One of them is whether companies with foreign employees have committed serious breaches of health and safety legislation,” he told news wire Ritzau.
“If they have, we consider them at risk of social dumping,” he said.
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