News

This is our great pleasure to inform that Dr Dominika Polkowska, Deputy Director of the Institute of Sociology (UMCS), will take part in implementing the international research project called “Secure Mobility – Uncovering Gaps in the Social Protection of Posted Workers (SMUG)”, co-financed by European Commission (DG Employment). The Project Coordinator institution is University of Jyväskylä in Finland with cooperation of the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research (Austria), the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy Sciences and Arts (Slovenia) and University of Padua (Italy).

The UMCS research team consists of:
Dr Dominika Polkowska (National Level Project Coordinator/Project Coordinator within UMCS and Main researcher)
Dr Błażej Dyczewski (researcher)
Mgr Emil Bartkiewicz (organizational/technical support)

SMUG will identify gaps and inconsistences between national social insurance and worker protection systems in terms of coverage, rule enforcement, and access, which increase the precarity of mobile workers. By definition, a posted work employment relationship is regulated in at least two European countries, possibly three. A major difficulty with regulating pan-European labour markets is that regulators and worker protection systems are tied to national jurisdictions and can only regulate a part of a posted workers’ employment relationship. Despite improvements in EU rule systems and transgovernmental cooperation, the overall effect of posting has been a haphazard deregulation, with firms exploiting regulatory gaps. This research will be based on the narratives of posted workers. Researchers will collect biographical interviews of posted workers to see how the interactions between national systems affect their welfare, and catalogue their economic coping strategies, so as focus on construction, because it where posting is best established.

Project is implemented from Jan. 1-st 2021 till June 30-th 2022.