Effect of the integration into Global Value Chains on the employment contract in Central and Eastern European countries

Abstract

Research background: In the era of globalization, there is a need to address decent work deficits in Global Value Chains (GVCs). The forms of working conditions reveal a broad dispersion of contents. The literature review exposes hardly any Europe-focused research assessing the socio-economic impact of global production links and going beyond their pure economic effects assessed in terms of employment, productivity or wages. Purpose of the article: This paper investigates how involvement in GVCs affects labor standards. In particular, we assess how the integration into GVCs impacts the probability of having indefinite type of employment contract, which stands for one of the decent work indicator. Moreover, we draw individual and firm-level characteristics determining the type of employment contract. Methods: We use linked employer-employee data from the Structure of Earnings Survey merged with industry-level statistics on GVCs based on World Input-Output Database — the sample is composed of over 5 million workers from 10 Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) observed in 2014. The involvement into GVCs is measured using a novel approach based on the concepts of global import intensity (GII). We employ logistic regression with robust standard errors. Findings & Value added: Controlling for individual and firm-level characteristics (sex, age, education level, length of service in enterprise, size of the enterprise) we find that greater integration into GVCs increases the probability of having temporary type of employment contact, mainly in tradable sectors. However, across CEE countries the relation between GVC and employment type is mixed. In this way we expand the existing literature by reporting the effects of GVCs on labor standards in CEEC.