Preference for cross-border commuters
The employers under study welcomed cross-border commuters as a new flexible labour force. An Austrian businessman, head of a cleaning company in the Austrian border region of Slovakia and Hungary, points out that he prefers cross-border commuters over local workers:
As an Austrian it is not easy to admit but I prefer a Hungarian or a Slovak over an Austrian. It is because they want to work. As there are not a lot of opportunities back home they act from necessity. I call it hungry. They really want to work. […] I notice that the commitment and the willingness are higher. You get a more committed and more intelligent worker than in Austria—for the same money. A worker who is able to speak German, who is glad to have a job and who is willing to compromise. (Head of a cleaning company, Lower Austria, September 2013)
Here the employer declares his norms of decision-making that lead to a new social hierarchy between potential employees in the hiring process. At the same time as being generally positive about commuters, the employer interviewed expressed a negativity about Austrian nationals. This “good migrant worker” rhetoric is in line with various recent studies in this field (Scott 2013; Thompson et al. 2012). His image of Austrian workers builds the ground for his maxim of action. The businessman characterises negative ascriptions of work attitudes and characteristics of native-born workers, in particular those sent by the employment agency:
The process, if you are looking for somebody through the [Austrian] employment agency, is repulsive. So there are ten people coming. One smells of alcohol as soon as he enters the door. Another one has had a drinking problem and is bloated. Another one does not have any teeth anymore. And these kind of people hinder me. I mean, I also have a daily routine to follow. So then you struggle how to get rid of them. And then one of them will tell you: “Oh well, put a stamp on the sheet, you know how it works.” That’s what they want, right? Do I say yes? It is not right. I should rather note down that this person is not willing to work. But who is going to expose himself to that kind of confrontation? They [employment agency] don’t do it either. And should I? I should mess with them? So that he will tell everybody at the local tavern that the boss of the cleaning company is mad? (Head of a cleaning company, Lower Austria, September 2013)
The employer addresses the difficulty to attract and recruit local workforce for unskilled or semiskilled jobs. It is interesting to note that the comparison group the employer referred to comprises long-term unemployed persons sent through a formal channel, with low interest in settling in a job. The local inactive population is a different pool of labour in itself, segmented by gender, age, class, ethnicity, etc. Still, the main category of distinction made is Austrian versus commuters. Other businessmen in the survey shared the view that the Austrian workforce incorporates qualities that are to avoid in a worker, especially concerning the willingness to work:
[The opening of the border] I think it is good for everyone. For the Austrians it is not so bad either, to my mind. They get a little slap across the backside, so that they have to put forth more effort. In past times they were all rather relaxed, because they were thinking: “For them it is not easy anyway to find work at our place.” But it is not like that anymore, that is why—thank God—Austrians also have to make an effort and not only rest on the fact that they are Austrians. (Head of a restaurant, Burgenland, July 2013)
Based on this notion, compared to Austrians, the conditions for commuters in the job-placement process in this labour market segment are prestructured in a favourable way. This can be seen as a collective orientation and social pattern of interpretation, and it goes in line with previous studies in which employers view foreigners as a better labour force than the natives (Labrianidis and Sykas 2009; Stenning and Dawley 2009). Research in this field has shown that local workers were seen as less reliable than migrants, unable to sustain the pace of work required and less willing to work unsociable shifts, especially when the work is temporary, seasonal or unpleasant with unsociable hours. When the owner of a café was asked about the Austrian workforce in the service sector, he shared this view:
I reckon that everybody says: “Come on, I wouldn’t work for that income” or “I don’t want to work at the weekend” or “I don’t want to work here nor there”. Well, as a service provider you have to provide services. That’s how it is. (Head of a café, Lower Austria, June 2013)
Along these lines, in terms of the entry into the low-wage labour market of the Austrian border region, commuters seem to have an advantage over local (unemployed) workers. However, within the group of commuters there is a high level of labour supply and competition. Employers in the sample had noticed a continually rising job demand, particularly since 2011. According to them, the job search is not only via official channels, but also and mainly by initiative applications or simply by showing up:
Since the free movement of labour we receive many, many job requests. Constantly. Mainly from Hungary. It is sheer madness; no day goes by without me writing the sentence: “At the moment we are not hiring, we wish you the best.” I suppose that every enterprise is confronted with that. (Head of a guesthouse and restaurant, Lower Austria, September 2013)
I have to say that a lot of people come without prior announcement, they simply walk through the door and say: “I want to mow the lawn here” or “I will do any work” or “I want to work here”. (Human resource manager at a state hospital, Lower Austria, September 2013)
Every day at least one or two people will come spontaneously to introduce themselves. They are from Slovakia or Hungary, but mainly Hungary. (Head of a cleaning company, Lower Austria, September 2013)
Recent findings in the field show consensus to these insights: inner-European labour mobility from Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries is often enhanced by personal social networks, “insider” support and speculative applications (Dobson and Sennikova 2007, p. 131). The transnational job search process takes place between the commuter and the employer, rather than via formal channels such as employment agencies. This is an important finding given that, in comparison, the negotiation process of job placement for Austrians in this labour market segment is highly systematised. The high labour supply raises the question whether it leads to structural disempowerment, which gives commuters weak negotiating positions vis-à-vis their employers (Rye and Andrzejewska 2010).
Culturalisation of work behaviour
Employer discretion over their preferred employees is associated with the adoption of nationality based “shorthand” over whom to employ (Wills et al. 2009). This “hiring queue” means that employers tend to adopt national stereotypes to determine the reliability of the potential recruit. When asked about the reasons for commuters being the preferred workforce, a number of employers had a sense of a “hiring queue”. When referring to a specific kind of work behaviour of cross-border commuters, a narrative along the line of obedience was constructed: either workers were considered as too obedient or not obedient enough. A human resource manager at a state hospital in Lower Austria complained about the obedient behaviour of Slovakian workers. He established an “us” and “them” narrative and explained “their” lack of self-initiative with the cultural argument of different socialisation:
I have to say that they are used to obedient behaviour. You can tell that they are legionaries, right? That they are not at home here, not related to the region. I always call it the “seven to three syndrome”: three on the dot and work ends for them. As I said, you should not colour everyone with the same brush but this generation is simply shaped differently by their upbringing. And of course it always depends on the person. But on a large scale they do what they are told. Self-initiative is not a skill that these ladies and gentlemen have acquired. (Human resource manager at a state hospital, Lower Austria, September 2013)
This statement has to be seen in the context of the branch and working field: for example, working with people in a hospital requires more interaction and altering personal behaviour and sensitivity to deal with unpredictable situations, which is more required than when working in predictable environments such as a factory (Hochschild 1983). In other words, the requirements for self-initiative are higher in this branch. That may be intensified by a potential lack of clear definition of the range of tasks the employee is supposed to work on. The contract of employment does not and cannot specify precisely the amount of effort to be expended and the degree of initiative to be displayed by the employee (Hyman 1989). It is further notable that, unlike other domestic employment fields (e. g. department stores or restaurants), progression and upward mobility in hospitals is not possible, which can contribute to less ambitious work behaviour. These aspects may contribute to the branch-specific impression of the human resource manager interviewed. Besides, the employer refers to a lack of connection with the regional context of the workplace. This absence of local connection is also considered to be problematic by the head of an automotive factory in Lower Austria:
I think the difference is certainly the commitment to the company. In our region, the commitment of [Austrian] workers is definitely stronger. Language might play a part in the whole thing, no question. Our people live here. Czech workers arrive in the morning and leave in the evening. Thus they only spend their working hours here in this country. So you don’t really get together with them on different occasions. (Head of an automotive factory, Lower Austria, June 2012)
The passage reflects the struggle over the degree of employer control and alludes to the concept of managerial opportunism (Dibben et al. 2011, p. 4). The employer determines a lack of “getting together on different occasions” with cross-border commuters, thus a lack of engagement in roles outside their remit. It expresses the demand for flexibility beyond the bounds of agreement.
On the other side of the obedient work behaviour narrative, businessmen complained about the lack of the same: here the concept of pride was constructed as negatively interfering with work behaviour. The head of a guesthouse and restaurant on the border of Lower Austria and Slovakia considers Hungarian workers as more proud than Slovakian, meaning not as obedient:
The Hungarian minority is a little more proud. In general, Slovaks are messier and Hungarians are more
proud. They don’t make it easy for you to tell them what to do. There is some truth behind it. Just as Austrians are moaners. (Head of a guesthouse and restaurant, Lower Austria, September 2013)
The notion of pride was ascribed when the expected behaviour according to the place in the social hierarchy of the workplace was challenged. The label was also attributed to Czech workers by the head of a factory producing cables and wires for industrial applications in Vienna:
The Czechs, I believe, when you look at it from a stereotype perspective, are a rather proud nation likely to have issues when Austrians set the agenda. So their certain kind of attitude here and there can affect the outcome in a not-quite positive way. Right? I think one could generally say that. But of course there are individual people behind it. (Head of a factory producing cables and wires for industrial applications, Vienna, June 2013)
What is interesting is that, unlike in studies on European mobile workers, the notion of “hard-working nature” as a stereotypical national advantage did not come up in the interviews (Wills et al. 2009). The reliability and diligence of the workers was connected to an economic need (“hungry for work”) rather than inherent cultural traits. Submission and obedience as underlying categories, on the other hand, was omnipresent. That reflects organisation-determined aspects of the employment relationship (Dibben et al. 2011, p. 3): it is both an economic exchange (the agreement to exchange wages for work), and a power relationship (the employee’s agreement to submit to the authority of the employer). The relationship between the employer and the employee is not only a sale of an amount of labour power, but it also involves issues such as managing expectations. A primary issue in the workplace is the ability of employers to personally control their workers. Social relations in the workplace are systems of control that employers use to ensure productivity. A particular demand by employers of low-skilled jobs is to find workers who are least likely to contest their authority. Therefore, it is not surprising that the businessmen’s attitudes centre around behavioural or attitudinal traits.
Labour standards
When it comes to the wage level, the businessmen assessed the commuters’ dual frame of reference, which puts the Austrian low-wage sector in a remarkably favourable perspective. Employers perceive commuters as workers who assess their economic situation relative to the options encountered in their region of origin (Waldinger and Lichter 2003, p. 179):
Of course the value is different. If I earn 1000 € here it equals to 1500 or 2000 € there, depending on the region of origin. (Head of a cleaning company, Lower Austria, September 2013)
[They commute to Austria] because they simply earn, I would say, at least double or even triple [of the income back home]. Minimum double income, minimum. If the worker is good. I mean, when I think of my cook, he earns approximately 1500 €. He would not earn that back home in a hundred years. That [wage level] does not even exist. (Head of a café, Lower Austria, June 2013)
This is the main difference to European mobile workers who (temporarily) reside in the receiving country, such as the Polish workers in London. Here, the employees work in another member state with a higher wage level without moving their residence to that country. Yet even if they do not commute on a daily basis—as most workers do according to the employers under study—but temporarily live in the place of work, the same argument was used:
I guess that [our waitresses] earn, well, in summer between 1500 and 1700 €, during wintertime maybe between 1300 and 1500. I do not offer any accommodation but they can eat for free. That is not nothing. However, I realise that they need around 500 € for an apartment here, even here in the province. And then if you think about it, it only remains maybe 1000 €. I mean, they cannot assume that they will save the whole income; it is simply not like that. I mean, times have changed too. And if you think about what they would earn back home, it is still a good reward. (Head of a guesthouse and restaurant, Lower Austria, September 2013)
All this suggests that employers are aware of—and base some of their recruitment and employment decisions on—commuters’ employment prospects and earnings in their home country (Anderson et al. 2006). The employers recognise that the discrepancies between earnings in the low-wage sector of the Austrian border region and commuters’ region of origin mean that commuters often put up with a trade-off between wages that are poor by Austrian standards but relatively high when compared to employment in commuters’ region of origin.
Another aspect of the dual frame of reference besides wages is that workers may be willing to accept conditions substantially below host country standards, since they are still superior to those back home (Piore 1980; Woolfson 2007). What constitutes social standards and the respective social dumping can vary even between comparable countries faced with similar challenges (Arnholtz and Eldring 2015, p. 94). Usually it implies unacceptably low wages or poor conditions of work (Friberg et al. 2014). The mechanism behind this is to undercut established standards by recruiting workers from countries with substantially lower living conditions and pay rates (McGovern 2007; Woolfson et al. 2010). When it comes to the topic of social dumping, disclosure of information was a problem to some extent. Employers did not provide information on the topic nor did they confirm that this is not an issue in their organisation. For that reason, I draw on an interview with two trade unionists offering insights into practices in this field:
In agriculture what really matters is: who is cheaper will get the job. In the construction branch there are very, very shady practices. Well, I will only tell you about the very, very blatant ones. We know, for example, companies that complete their payroll accounting 100% properly, then transfer 100% of the proper wage to the account of their workers, so everything is done impeccably. And the next day the worker shows up with an envelope with 400 € inside to hand back to the employer. Of course given these kind of methods, it is very difficult to counteract. (Trade unionist, Burgenland, November 2012)
Now the regulatory function of trade unionists is to ensure that social standards are not undercut. However, due to hidden practices of employers to circumvent these standards, and due to the potential lack of knowledge of labour rights by the commuters, their regulatory influence is weakened. According to interviewees, there is also evidence that the changing legal framework resulting from opening of the labour market stimulated ways to avoid proper wage dispersal:
Before, in order to work as a Hungarian in Austria, you needed a work permit that was bound to fixed working hours. You had to work 40 h per week. A 40-hour week was indispensable and stipulated in the working contract. However, after the opening of the border, our partners and ourselves, in the course of the consultation process, we realised that many workers were re-registered to 20 h per week. For jobs that previously were done in 40 h. […] And the problem is then that they are likely to continue working for 40 h while being officially registered for 20 h. (Trade unionist, Burgenland, November 2012)
In terms of institutionalization, social dumping practices can create new social hierarchies and divisions (Bernaciak 2015, p. 232). Efforts to undercut labour standards and evade the regulatory force of trade unionists are likely to exert downward pressure on not only the wages, but also on working conditions (ibid.). From the perspective and experience of a transnational trade union, this is already taking place. According to them, not only wage agreements are undermined but also various basic labour rights:
In the gastronomy sector very often there are problems with working hours, in particular with working overtime and issues in that matter. It is not properly accounted for. We also consistently see problems with maternity protection, especially in the case of waitresses. When they get pregnant, there are problems with their maternity rights. Certain regulations are not fulfilled, such as, for example, the use of tobacco, etc. It also happens very often that employees who get pregnant are simply deregistered. That happens over and over again. (Trade unionist, Burgenland, November 2012)
Over and over, the main category the trade unionists referred to when talking about working conditions is the branch. The established narrative of branches structuring conditions is highly relevant in this context. Many of the abovementioned practices are applied to low-wage labourers in the service sector in general (Kroon and Paauwe 2014). Therefore, it remains unclear whether these practices are only applied to commuters or also to local workers in the same branch, and to what extent there is a link to new legal frameworks in the course of the opening of the labour market in 2011. Yet the debate on the issue of wage dumping is driven by various factors. According to Friberg et al. (2014), it is not only native workers, in particular those in weak labour market positions, who fear that labour mobility may deteriorate wages and labour standards; a further concern is the medium-term viability of existing labour market institutions, as increasing inequality between ethnic and national groups poses a range of challenges to their functioning and legitimacy.