Textile and automotive industries competing in rights violations and poverty wages
More than 150,000 people in Serbia work in the textile and automotive industries, often in factories that are part of supply chains for German and other EU companies.
Wages in these sectors are generally around the minimum wage, while workers face excessively high production quotas, continual overtime that becomes the norm, inadequate occupational health and safety standards, and constant fear of dismissal, according to research by the Centre for Politics of Emancipation (CPE).
As Bojana Tamindžija from the Centre for Politics of Emancipation told Biznis.rs, both sectors in Serbia are characterised by labour-intensive production, demanding and repetitive physical work, and pressure from high quotas and extremely short deadlines.
“Demanding manual labour, as our research shows, is accompanied by regular violations of labour rights and poverty-level wages. When discussing these two sectors, it’s important to keep in mind that nearly all production in Serbia is part of the global supply chains of large multinational corporations. We live in a world where 85 percent of global trade is controlled by multinationals, and where dependent economies like Serbia are forced to compete with other semi-peripheral and peripheral capitalist countries by eroding labour rights and lowering wages to attract investment. It’s the so-called ‘race to the bottom’,” Tamindžija explained.
She said it is difficult to determine which sector is in a more alarming state, but CPE’s research confirmed that workers in the textile industry earn significantly lower wages and have particularly weak trade union organisation.
On the other hand, global dynamics in the automotive industry make the sector currently unstable, and in some cases, the continuation of production is uncertain.
The research found that Serbia’s textile, clothing, leather, and footwear sector employs 60,725 workers, making up 12 percent of the total workforce in manufacturing. The average net salary paid to surveyed workers last year was around 65,000 dinars, including bonuses, overtime, and night shifts. However, contracted salaries were significantly lower, averaging around 50,000 dinars. This sector includes 1,687 registered factories, while textile, clothing, leather, and leather products account for 5.8 percent of Serbia’s total exports. Roughly 80 percent of exports consist of garments, leather goods, and footwear, indicating the sector’s heavy orientation towards “ready-made” production for major fashion brands.
In the automotive sector, CPE’s research shows that 94,876 people are employed in this field and its related activities. The average net salary of those surveyed was about 70,000 dinars, including bonuses, overtime, and night shifts.
Tamindžija noted that workers in these industries most often complain about excessive and inappropriately set production targets, poor ventilation and air conditioning, denial of sick leave, unpaid or poorly paid overtime, and above all, low wages that force them to work overtime—often taking on additional jobs.
When asked which countries the automotive and textile factories in Serbia come from, and why Serbia is attractive to such investors, Tamindžija explained that these are mostly European companies drawn by low production costs and various subsidies.
“In the automotive sector, production in Serbia is mostly for German companies, while in textiles the picture is more diverse, though Italian brands dominate. Serbia attracts all these companies solely due to cheap labour, that is, lower production costs. The minimum wage in Serbia is a politically negotiated figure that bears no relation to actual living costs and hovers around the poverty threshold for a family of three. Yet even such a low wage is considered ‘too much’, so increasingly generous subsidies, tax reliefs, and free infrastructure are offered,” she said.
Regarding workers’ rights in these industries, Tamindžija pointed out that Serbian labour legislation over the past three decades has been shaped to increasingly favour employers.
“This is, alongside cheap labour, one of the desperate tactics used to attract foreign investment. Additionally, existing laws are not enforced, the labour inspectorate is ineffective, trade unions are often weak and powerless… All of this is a direct consequence of the dependent position of the domestic economy, as well as the economies of the region, in the globalised production world,” she stated.
Overtime, bullying over sick leave, and inhumane working conditions
CPE’s research found that in the automotive industry, workers in most factories report working an average of 44 hours per week, with workweeks exceeding 60 hours not uncommon.
In practice, instead of hiring more workers in line with production needs and paying them decent wages, employers maintain a small workforce with low contractual pay, offering the prospect of additional income through overtime.
In the textile industry, working hours are heavily influenced by order volume, and when production increases, Saturday shifts are introduced across the board.
A particularly troubling finding was the testimony from automotive industry workers who stated that they are penalised for taking sick leave. The most common penalty is the loss of attendance bonuses, but this also includes various forms of pressure, bullying, threats of dismissal, or transfers to more demanding roles.
The situation is no better in the textile sector, where nearly half of the surveyed workers said they were dissatisfied with workplace safety. In one of five surveyed factories, all ten female respondents expressed dissatisfaction with occupational health and safety conditions.
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