The future of crowdemployment in Western Balkans

Abstract

The development of ICT and the extensive use of different digital tools makes significant changes in modern society. These changes assume the evolution of new forms of digital labour with special emphasizes to crowd employment. The crowd employment is the direct consequence of the marriage between Big data and robotization. This phrase uses Degryse to identify the second wave of digitalization. Also, the new forms of employment are the direct consequence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution called the Digital revolution whose main aim is automatization of industrial production. The increase in the number of crowd employment employees spreads all around the world, especially in the current pandemic. This influence is present in our region. The Western Balkans countries develop new forms of work, such as crowd employment. This paper aims to show the demand for these workers in Western Balkans. The main research question is: what is the future of crowd employment in Western Balkans? To answer this question, we will present the current situation in our region with emphasize to Serbia. On the beginning, we need to find the effects of the digital labour market and the digital economy in Westers Balkans. We use political sociology approach to describe these effects. Also, we will use the Online Labour Index (OLI) as a valid indicator for the development of crowd employment. Researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute created this index to show the increase in the number of employees at the digital labour market. Some research from our region examines the socio-economic status of crowd employment employees. The current situation shows that the rights of crowd employment employees degraded, as well as that there is no adequate protection of these rights. Trade unions around the world are trying to find proper strategies to protect the rights of these workers. This job is difficult because a large number of these employees are formally unemployed. The question of the future of these forms of work remains open, and it depends on the coming legal protection of fundamental employment rights and trade union strategies.