Illegally organising labour An international Commodity market

Black labour and criminal mimicry Subcontracting and the Dutch Koppelbaas Polish and Turkish private partnerships dodging liability

How to beat the price-wedge of the labour costs structure?  Labour costs in EU-countries: > 50 % income tax and social insurance  Flexibility of staff  Matching demand and supply  Scarcity of: * specialised and skilled labour * manual unskilled labour Shared interest in dodging the law

Keeping track of the labour commodity  Licit temp agencies: mediate for about persons  Unregistered bureaus: mediate for about persons  ‘Grey’ and fraudulent bureaus: registered, but nevertheless systematic misleading Can be extrapolated to most of the EU countries

The art of matching supply and demand  The changeable nature of the supply  The immediate nature of demand: now!  A host of small labour agencies  The grey network of friends and connections  The illegal labour matcher or ‘coupler’ ‘koppelbaas’  The symbiosis of the three parties

The emergence of the koppelbaas  The welfare state and the need of labour  The inflow of ‘gast’arbeiders  Insatiable demand in the building industry, harbour and market gardening  The licit ‘koppelbaas’ offers his services (albeit a bit unregulated)

On the edge of the law  Black wages are always better  Evasion of income tax and social insurance  Labour conditions: health and safety?  Infringement of unions’ interests: unregulated labour  Labour unrest because of wage differences. First big strike in the Rotterdam harbour

Koppelbazerij and subcontracting  New licence system (1970)  Resounding success: ‘koppelbazen’ no licence  Labour is let out as subcontracting: “accepted work, meter stucco”  Documentary fraud + income, soc-sec. + VAT  Juggling with front firms: string of front firms destined to go bust as soon as the tax service of social insurance board appears

The koppelbaas as organising crime- entrepreneur  Creating and maintaining a portfolio of principals  Continuously organising reliable + skilled workers  Monitoring the daily work  Daily transport and weekly cash payments  Establishing firms and doing (or burning) the books  Straw men for the bust firms: who is next?  Next firm must be ready and labour transferred

Severing the common interests  The law on chain liability: any contractor in the chain of subcontractor liable for fiscal debts  Management liability: 3 years retrospective disorderly or absent accountancy: assumption of proof  Bankruptcy act: 1 year retrospective liability  Blocked accounts: 40% of the contract sum on blocked account It worked: the koppelbaas lost ground

The ‘resurrection’ of the koppelbaas  Attention drained away by the organised crime panic of the 1990s  “Business crime is not organised crime”  The social and economic foundations intact  Increased cross-border labour mobility in the 1990s  Labour shortage in building and agroculture  Liberalisation of the licence system concerning labour agencies

Old and new koppelbazen Some findings of the Tilburg koppelbaas research project  Increased intertwining of interests between licit entrepreneurs and koppelbaas  make your own koppelbaas  Abuse of the E-101 posting regulation: cross- border flexibility in the in EU-labour market violations  The emergence of the Turkish koppelbaas.

Making your own koppelbaas a.Licit enterprise dismisses its staff; b. Establishes a labour firm: the new koppelbaas c. Staff transferred to the new koppelbaas labour firm d. The enterprise hires its staff back from koppelbaas e.The koppelbaas will take care of the income tax and soc-security contributions, f. But (predictably) fails and goes bust. g. New front firm is ready h.Cross-border crime dimension

The social-economic landscape  Regions of freebooters and ‘black workers’  Cultural and economic tradition from father to son  Social support by the local koppelbaas * declaration for unemployment benefit * income declaration for mortgage * income declaration for migrants  Culture of mutual silence, or else....

Abusing the E-101  The posting system in the EU: * 2/3 employment in posting country * once insured in the receiving country that system remains in force  “Self-employed” actually in employment position  Two countries are defrauded: the (cheap) posting and the (expensive) receiving country

Wandering workers in Europe  British laboureres employed by Dutch koppelbazen in Germany. The German “Krankenkasse”deceived.  Poles (with German pasport) employed in Belgium  Portuguese labourers in Belgium  Ship owners for the European inland navigation: dozens of ships but no staff: transferred to their own koppelbaas in Luxembourg.

The Turkish-Kurdish koppelbazen  Insufficient manual labourers for the labour intensive market-gardening  Large supply of migrant job-seekers around The Hague  Turkish and Kurdish residents establish employment agencies  Emergence of criminal infrastructure: black labour + illegal guesthouses, fraud with sofi-numbers  Complicity/condoning of market garderners and accountants  No overlap with other crime-markets

Organised crime? Or: the organisation of crime  How is the organisation of labour crime valued? ‘Organised crime’? *most conditions are fulfilled *continuous organisations *legal persons: onshore and off-shore *interaction with the upperworld *no violent problem solving  It has no real place in the organised crime debate or policy making

Europe, that old slow lady  Fragmented data management  Slow data exchange  Cross-border organised economic crime is approached according to national ‘slice’  E-101system needs to be centralised  Modest priority (at best)