The globalisation has removed many barriers for the free exchange of goods and services, and together with the increased use of new technology, i.e. the internet, new business models and sharing economy/peer economy, it has created new, better and cheaper products and services for the costumers. But at the same time it has created the possibility of social dumping.

Social dumping has neither a generally accepted definition, nor easily definable limits. It is rather a set of practices on an international, national or inter-corporate level, aimed at gaining an advantage over competitors, which could have important negative consequences on economic processes and workers’ social security.

Examples include actions taken by actors from ‘low wage’ States to gain market advantage over actors from States with higher pay and social standards; multinational companies from ‘high wage’ countries searching for ways to avoid legal constraints by employing subcontractors from low-wage countries; and companies engaging cheaper and more vulnerable temporary and agency workers, or relocating production to lower wage and less regulated locations.

Social dumping takes different forms in different sectors. Within the transport sector it is present in aviation and commercial road transport.

Aviation is by nature a cross border industry, and the production means (aircrafts and crew) can easily be moved to new bases. In aviation some point-to-point airline companies have in a systematic and extensive way used: short term contract or self-employed crew members, opening of many home bases and use of subcontractors to gain flexibilities and lower their cost.

In commercial road transport illegal cabotage is often an effect of social dumping.

Keld Ludvigsen has extensive insight from analyzing the nature of social dumping in order to find ways to prevent it. He is one of the most experienced and knowledge people in this area:

• He was the chairman of the governmental working group that drafted the Danish Report on Cabotage, published in 2013;
• He was the chairman of the governmental working group that drafted the two Danish Reports on Social Dumping within Aviation, published in 2014 and 2015;
• He was as a keynote speaker on this subject at many conferences and meetings, i.e. the EU High Level Conference, a Social Agenda for Transport and the European Economic and Social Committees Hearing on Social Dumping in the Civil Aviation Sector, both in 2015.