In the opinion of Roberto Parrillo, who besides being ETF President is general manager at Belgium’s ACV-CSC Transcom trade union, measures must be taken urgently to avoid the single market becoming an “unfair market”.
As evidence to support his argument, Parrillo’s editorial cites an academic study titled Modern Slavery and Working Conditions in the European Trucking Industry: A Growing Threat to Supply Chain Resilience. It was written by Ki-Hoon Lee of Griffith University in Brisbane, as well as Wolfram Groschopf from the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Camion Pro’s Andreas Mossyrsch.
“Of 1,027 drivers interviewed for the research, mainly Belarusian and Ukrainian, most worked exclusively in western Europe rather than in the country of establishment of their employer (Lithuania or Poland). Thirty-five per cent said their employer provided falsified documents and half did not receive a salary slip,” writes Parillo.
The ETF President argues that these drivers are “real slaves” as “after a few months of work, an employer can threaten not to pay them wages owed”.
He also claims that if the growth in 3rd-country work permits for drivers continues, the “number of non-European drivers exploited like slaves is expected to reach one million by 2030.”
In order to prevent such an outcome from materialising, Parillo wants to see caps introduced to curb the number of 3rd-country drivers working in EU member states:
“At the European level, we propose to limit the number of non-EU drivers to 5 per cent of national drivers. If a country had 300,000 drivers, only 15,000 certificates could thus be in circulation. Such a ceiling would prevent the number of non-EU drivers being artificially inflated by hauliers nominally registered in the member state for social dumping elsewhere,” says the ETF President.
According to Parillo, Belgium has a workforce of 40,000 native drivers with only 340 registered as non-EU. Moreover, the ETF President claims that if France were to follow Lithuania’s lead in terms of the proportion of native vs non-EU drivers, 1.3 million non-EU drivers would circulating the country’s roads. As it stands, Parillo states the current figure is just 272.
Parillo’s proposition would nonetheless be likely to meet stiff opposition from some member states. The likes of Lithuania and Poland already have a significant workforce of 3rd-country workforce, while Western European countries like Ireland and Spain are also taking steps to liberalise their HGV driver market.
Photo: Bodo Kubrak, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (image cropped, items blurred)
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