Trade union renewal and the challenges of representation: Strategies towards migrant and ethnic minority workers in the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article examines trade union responses to migration in the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. We explore how national regulatory structures and industrial relations traditions shape these responses, reflected in different ways of working with the state, employers, union members and the migrant worker community. We identify three main logics that inform trade union action: class, race/ethnicity and social rights; these are used implicitly or explicitly in building representative action. Our analysis shows how trade unions in each country tend to give priority to certain specific logics rather than others. Our findings also show how, in each country, trade union renewal in relation to migration implies engaging with new logics of actions which have not been part of the historical trade union approach. Hence the question of migration brings specific challenges for union identity and strategy. We argue for an approach that goes beyond assumptions of path dependency, and stress the complexity of representation and the challenge of balancing different interests and strategies in the process of social inclusion.

Unpacking the Category of Migrant Workers in Trade Union Research: A Multi-Level Approach to Migrant Intersectionalities

“…First, Connolly et al (2014) seem to treat class, race/ethnicity, and social rights as independent factors and look which one has the main effect -very different from thinking about intersectional processes or systems (e.g. Choo and Ferree, 2010).…”

“…Within IR research, scholars such as Connolly et al (2014) have covered the meso level by comparing union responses towards migrant and ethnic minority workers in the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands.…”

“…Questions about whether, and if so how, unions organise and engage a diverse workforce, including migrant workers, have therefore become an important stream of research within the sociology of work and industrial relations (e.g., Connolly et al, 2014;Fitzgerald and Hardy, 2010;Heyes, 2009;Holgate, 2005;Tapia et al 2017). i Building on previous debates, and focusing on the UK context, we call for an approach that considers 'migrant intersectionalities' to understand the relationship between migrants and trade unions and to do so at different levels: the macro (the influence of a changed socio-economic climate), the meso (unions' policies and strategies), and the micro (migrants' subjective and different experiences of work and unionization).…”

Stepping up to strike: a union mobilization case study of Polish migrant workers in the Netherlands

“…The unions therefore began by establishing relations with the main contractors or client firms rather than with the contractual employers. This had been done successful previously, for example, in the organising campaign in cleaning (Connolly et al 2014). The unions' built pressure on management using media coverage, collective actions and legal proceedings.…”

“…Some point out that unions have yet to arrive at a viable way of representing these workers ). Yet several trade unions in Europe have adopted organising tactics to recruit migrant workers in their ranks, with mixed success (Bengtsson 2013;Connolly et al 2014;Eldring et al 2012;Hardy et al 2012). Fitzgerald and Hardy argue that in the UK context, migrant organising strategies can work with the so-called 'A8' migrants (from the eight central and Eastern European countries which acceded to the EU in 2004).…”