Pushing the envelope: the `informalization' of labour in post-communist new EU member states

Abstract

From 2004 to 2007 he was resident in the Baltic states as European Commission-appointed Marie Curie Chair based at the University of Latvia, conducting teaching and research in the three Baltic new EU member states. Recent publications have been on questions of labour migration, labour rights, industrial relations and workplace environment conditions in the context of European accession.

Explaining the Prevalence of Illegitimate Wage Practices in Southern Europe: An Institutional Analysis

“…Until now, this illegitimate wage practice has been mostly studied in Eastern and Central European countries (Neef 2002;Sedlenieks 2003;Karpuskiene 2007;Williams 2007;Woolfson 2007;Ž abko & Rajevska 2007;Meriküll & Staehr 2010). In recent years, however, the prevalence of this illegitimate practice has also started to be studied in South-Eastern Europe (Psychogios & Williams 2010;Williams 2010aWilliams , 2010bWilliams, Fethi & Kedir 2011;.…”

“…The way in which this illegitimate practice operates is usually that when an employee is appointed the employer agrees with the employee an official declared salary, which is detailed in a formal written contract, but they also come to a verbal unwritten agreement regarding an additional undeclared (envelope) wage (Woolfson 2007;Williams 2009;Chavdarova 2014). This verbal unwritten agreement may be simply that the employee will be paid a higher wage than is in the formal written contract.…”

The prevalence of envelope wages in the Baltic Sea region

“…Previous studies of envelope wages have tended to be small-scale qualitative studies which have provided in-depth portrayals of this wage practice primarily in Baltic countries such as Latvia (OECD, 2003;Sedlenieks, 2003;Žabko and Rajevska, 2007), Lithuania (Karpuskiene, 2007;Woolfson 2007) and Russia (Williams and Round, 2007) but also in several other East-Central European nations such as Romania (Neef, 2002) and Ukraine Williams, 2007). For instance, the study in Lithuania by Woolfson (2007) is an in-depth case study of one person, albeit a cause celebre, whilst the Latvian study by Sedlenieks (2003) reports 15 face-to-face interviews conducted in Riga.…”

“…For instance, the study in Lithuania by Woolfson (2007) is an in-depth case study of one person, albeit a cause celebre, whilst the Latvian study by Sedlenieks (2003) reports 15 face-to-face interviews conducted in Riga. Although the Ukraine survey covers 600 households, it is limited to three localities (Williams, 2007), whilst the evidence from Russia is based on interviews with 313 households in three districts of Moscow (Williams and Round 2007).…”

Explaining Cross-National Variations in the Prevalence and Character of Undeclared Employment in the European Union

“…This is where the employee is not in a declared employment relationship. Recently, however, especially in East-Central Europe, it has been recognized that declared employers sometimes pay a declared employee both a declared salary and an additional undeclared ('envelope') wage (Karpuskiene, 2007;Neef, 2002;Sedlenieks, 2003;Williams, 2007Williams, , 2009Williams, , 2010Williams and Padmore, 2013;Woolfson, 2007). In this article therefore, not only wholly undeclared employment but also under-declared employment is considered.…”