The question is why UAB Kovenda pays salary far below the minimum wage in the Swedish collective agreement? What is the reason for that? Is not the company bound by collective agreement? Are you counting the allowance in the salary? Will not this social dumping affect your customers as we in Sweden have the main contractor’s responsibility? You have only notified three people to the Posting-register in January 2017, but all the salary from the company was paid for work in Sweden. Why is that? Likewise in March, all wages must have been paid for work performed in Sweden – based on the tax you have payed for the workers in Sweden. Or what is the answer why the difference is so big. In total, you have had 243 workers working here in Sweden since 2013. Do you have large staff turnover?
Thank you for your letter and questions. I will explane the situation. In our days in Lithuania average salary in construction market is 900 – 1500 euro per month. Because of renovation programs of old buildings, facade specialists are on huge demand and earn at least 1500 euro. That’s right, as you saw, we have big rotation of employers, it’s very hard to find good people and no one will travel to Sweden and work for the same Lithuanian salary it’s impossible and has no logic at first. From this point we go further. Number of employed people in ’’Rekvizitai’’ shows all company’s people employed in the company during one month period, it’s only statistic figures because it shows people who worked only one day per month too! The indication provides information about people that are:
1. Employed and working all month.
2. Employers that worked one day during all month.
3. Employers that are on vacation.
4. Employers that are just formaly employed but they have actualy left company without filling all necessary documents. In Lithuania this very common behaviour that workers just go and then company have to do everything in written form and that can take months and more.
You have to look not only to number of employers and payed taxes but to working hours and payed taxes. If you do calculation your way you get completely strange numbers that are not reflecting actual situation in regard to basic salary levels even in Lithuania. In Sweden we have agreement with Byggnads, we pay agreed wages per hour (or by accord) and we have proven that many times.
Posting registration we do once per month and we register planed number of workers which during the month changes, people leave earlier and etc.. If we will not register worker on time it can create big problems.
Since spring 2015 UAB Kovenda has registration in Sweden. Workers that have worked longer than 6 months pay all income tax in Sweden, social insurance remains at home, we provide A1 form and we pay travel allowance. If you look at Swedish income tax numbers you will see what are salary levels. Company as well pays profit taxes on permanent establishment projects. From May this year we have totally employed 14 people in Swedish AB Kovenda and we pay completely all taxes in Sweden (salary rates are totally the same as in UAB Kovenda otherwise we would have problems with employees it would not work). From this facts you can see the tendens of how everything is developing and I hope it answers your questions. We think that in time all serious companies will have to have staff employed in Sweden and we have done already first steps.
