Krapte lures thousands of migrant workers from far outside Europe
One in six workers posted to Belgium comes from outside the EU. The proportion of Ukrainians, Belarusians and Brazilians has multiplied in a short time. Seconded workers have become indispensable for certain sectors, De Standaard writes on Thursday.
Source: BELGA
In 2016, 4 percent of workers who died working in Belgium through secondment came from outside the European Union. In 2020 that was already 15 percent. In concrete terms, many thousands of Brazilians, Ukrainians, Bosniaks and Belarusians are legally employed in Belgium. Detachment is an important channel for labor migration.
The figures from a study by the University of Antwerp. The results are presented by a team led by Professor Ive Marx. This takes place during a research conference at the end of a project, in collaboration with the federal migration center Myria, on the labor market situation of migrants.
Construction and transport
Secondment is a system for engaging foreign employees for temporary assignments. Strictly speaking, they remain employed by their employer in the country of origin, and also pay social security contributions there. It is the first time that the volume of secondment per sector has been mapped out.
The research shows that secondment has become indispensable for the Belgian origin. In 2020, 24 percent of the labor volume in construction was performed by posted workers. In the transport sector this was 23 percent, in the electrical installations sector it was 14 percent. But secondment is also used in sectors with a high added value, such as the pharmaceutical industry and the petrochemical industry. These are often highly specialized profiles.