The number of electronically registered seasonal workers in agriculture has reached almost 100,000 in less than six years, since the reform of seasonal employment began. The portal and application for online registration of seasonal workers have so far been used by almost 900 employers, who have paid 1.9 billion dinars to the budget for taxes and contributions.
The „Seasonal Workers“ portal, which was initiated by NALED with the support of the German Development Cooperation implemented by GIZ, has been operating since the beginning of 2019 and allows workers to register on a daily basis. The portal was completely handed over to the Serbian Tax Administration, and the number of registered seasonal workers is growing from year to year, so during 2019 there were about 28,000 of them, and three years later, in 2022 – 49 thousand.
These data show that the reform has had a significant impact on the suppression of the grey economy and illegal business, because according to estimates, the number of illegal workers engaged in agriculture before the establishment of the electronic reporting system was more than 90%, it was said at the panel of the CORE days conference, which is held within the Partnership for a Competitive Region (CORE partnership) platform.
„Before the start of the reform, only a little more than 3,500 workers had a contract, out of the number of seasonal workers engaged in Serbia’s agriculture, which is estimated to be between 65,000 and 80,000. Half of them are now engaged through the system, i.e. introduced into legal flows. The Law on Simplified Work Engagement in Seasonal Jobs in Certain Activities, which has been applied since 2019, has proven to be a good solution for combating seasonal undeclared work, which benefits both workers, the private sector and the state – said Amira Omanović, GIZ Project Manager.
She emphasized that the success of the reform lies in efficiency, because the procedure of signing contracts on paper and going to the counters of institutions has been replaced by an application through the portal. This enabled employers, for the first time and natural persons, households, not only companies, to register seasonal workers in just a few minutes and settle their obligations to the state only for those days for which the workers actually worked. This law, Omanović emphasized, has also helped the employees a lot, who have now become more visible. For the days during which they are engaged, in addition to remuneration for work, they are now also entitled to pension and insurance in case of injury at work.
A simplified system of registration of seasonal workers in Serbia could soon become a regional success story. Through the CORE partnership, which was established as a platform for dialogue and the best reform solutions for a sustainable Western Balkans, GIZ and NALED provide support to the governments of the countries in the region to transfer the experience of introducing such a model of good practice from Serbia to the rest of the Western Balkans Six.
„Montenegro, in cooperation with GIZ, is working on the Draft Law on Permanent Seasonal Workers and we are trying to implement the best practices from Serbia and Croatia in our country, to organize the labor market, to open it in accordance with EU standards, while retaining our citizens. We are also facing a shortage of labor and last year alone, more than 30,000 work permits were issued for foreigners, while 38,000 of our citizens were unemployed. We hope that the Law on Permanent Seasonal Worker will help both employers to bind those employees who come from foreign countries, and who are of high quality, as well as our citizens to look for their job primarily in Montenegro – said the Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Dialogue of Montenegro, Naida Nišić.
An analysis of data from the sezonskiradnici.gov.rs portal has shown that employers have so far reported more than 6.1 million days of seasonal worker hiring, mostly in the period from June to September, when the greatest need for work in agriculture is. The largest number of workers registered on the portal belongs to the categories from 18 to 30 years of age and from 46 to 60 years of age. There has also been an increasing trend in the hiring of foreign workers, for whom the application procedure has also been simplified. More than 3,100 workers who do not have Serbian citizenship have been hired since the beginning of the portal’s commissioning. In 2024, about 1,000 foreign workers will be hired for seasonal jobs in agriculture. For them, employers can also obtain a residence permit in the Ministry of the Interior.
NALED and GIZ are in favor of extending the reform of seasonal employment to domestic and auxiliary jobs, construction, hospitality and tourism, where there is also a large number of undeclared workers. The new circumstances on the labor market, especially with regard to the holding of EXPO 2027, will further increase the demand for jobs in these sectors. Work on a draft amendment to the law that would extend the simplified procedure for registering seasonal workers to other professions began in 2022, the document passed a public debate, but did not enter further procedure. Zoran Martinovic, Assistant Minister of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs, announced the reactivation of the working group in order to adopt a regulation that would enable seasonal workers in other sectors to apply through the portal.