Bulgaria employment agency cracks down on posted worker intermediaries
Bulgaria’s employment agency said on February 13 that it had repealed the licences of 16 firms that acted as intermediaries for posted workers from 2015 until 2017. The agency did not specify when the licences were repealed, whether that happened recently or over a period of time.
The companies had committed various violations of the Employment Promotion Act, including collecting fees from prospective posted workers, posting workers without signing an intermediary contract with the foreign employer or the workers themselves, failing to extend an employment contract offer to posted workers, failing to provide full information about the job to posted workers, as well as not keeping electronic records of current and potential posted workers.
The agency said that it was taking active measures to offer prospective employees detailed information about the risks of work abroad, especially those relating to illegal employment.
The issue of posted workers has gained prominence within the EU since the election of Emmanuel Macros as president of France last year. France, which has one of the highest rates of “posted workers” in the EU, sees such employees – hired in the lower-income countries from Eastern Europe to work in jobs in Western European countries, while at the same time remaining subject to the labour laws from their country of origin – as undercutting it own domestic labour force.
Macron was successful in securing the support of several Eastern European members of the EU, Bulgaria among them, for his efforts to amend the draft EU directive on posted workers. The European Council for employment and social affairs approved a general approach to the new directive in October, followed by the start of negotiations on this topic in the European Parliament.
(Photo: Josh Klute/freeimages.com)
