Name and Surname
Milan Škobić
Affiliation
PhD candidate in sociology at Northeastern University in Boston, USA
Contact email
Short Biography
Milan Škobić was born in Belgrade in 1991. He completed basic studies in Ethnology and Anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade, and master’s studies in Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies in sociology at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. In his doctoral dissertation, he studies the position of employees of foreign investors in Serbia and the process of creating industrial policy and corporate management strategy in Serbia. He hopes that by paying more attention to this process, we could better assess the effects of institutional arrangements of labor and exchange and propose solutions that serve more sustainable wealth creation and redistribution.
Research abstract
This research starts from the fact that one of the main challenges to building solidarity in industrial workplaces is the fragmentation of the workforce according to different short-term interests, affiliations, local class and political dynamics, and connections with workplace management. The thesis that we want to examine is that the business practices of companies, conditioned by their specific position in global supply chains, lead to different lines of division among workers, and therefore different obstacles to the development of solidarity relations. Therefore, this research claims that at this moment it is not enough to detect the general problems of labor in Serbia, but that it is necessary to examine the concrete process of the emergence of various problems and lines of division among workers. Thus, concrete policies and ideas can be identified that can support and encourage the workforce in naming and building the necessary solidarity relations. This research would rely on the study of publicly available company business documents, on reconstructing the network of suppliers, customers, and supply chains in which the factory is located, and on interviews with former and current employees in production and administration. By combining these data, one can get a precise picture of the position of those factories within the companies they belong to, a clear idea of the position of those companies in global supply chains and a cross-section of the state of industrial relations between workers and managers. Such an understanding of the position of individual factories can provide a better overview of the opportunities for public policies that can support the building of institutional inclusion and solidarity, to support and encourage the development of solidarity bonds among the workers themselves, and to harmonize the principles of solidarity with economic and industrial development.