Explaining ‘varieties of solidarity’: labour mobility and trade unions in an enlarged Europe

Abstract

German

French

The enlargement of the European Union in 2004 and 2007 simultaneously extended the freedom of movement to workers from new Member States and sharpened existing economic inequalities within the EU. Drawing on the data of three projects, this article examines the conditions under which, and in what ways, real (as opposed to rhetorical) solidarity is forged by trade unions within and across boundaries in relation to migrant workers. Sectoral dynamics provide important insights into cross-country commonalities. In particular, the data demonstrate the importance of the strategies of individual unions and the agency of individuals within them in explaining ‘varieties of solidarity’ and their varying success. The article concludes by arguing that the growth of right-wing xenophobic parties and the failure of social democratic parties to offer an alternative narrative mean that trade union strategies are being formulated and executed in an increasingly hostile political climate.

Keywords

Labour mobility solidarity migration trade unions New Member States EU enlargement

Introduction

The accession of ‘new’ Member States to the European Union in 2004 and 2007 sharpened existing economic inequalities within the EU. In addition, it opened up the possibility of increased labour mobility, albeit that the labour markets of existing states were opened up differentially and with different time scales. This posed a new set of challenges for the labour movement in terms of the potential for wage competition, social dumping, workplace cohesion and the loss of social capital from sending countries (Dundon et al., 2007; EIROnline, 2005; Kvist, 2004; Visser and Dolvik, 2009). If East-West relationships pose the ‘most serious test to cross-border trade union solidarity’ as Meardi (2012: 100) suggests, then tensions around the issues of migration and labour mobility have been heightened by ongoing austerity in Europe. These are reflected in the significant vote in elections to the European Parliament in May 2014 for xenophobic and overtly fascist parties, with some populist anti-immigration parties, such as the UK Independence Party in Britain, seeing a meteoric rise. Rather than challenge these ideas social democratic parties have adopted ‘soft’ xenophobic discourses, which have contributed to a hostile political climate in which trade unions are addressing increased labour mobility and migration.

The conceptual framework for understanding the mobility of labour is informed by two competing logics. The first logic is the inherent and dynamic unevenness of capitalism that provides the objective conditions for competition between workers in different countries through social dumping and wage competition. The second logic is that of trade unions as solidaristic organizations committed, in principle, to defending both the wages and working conditions of members, and simultaneously combating divisiveness and inequality – aims that may not be necessarily viewed as congruent. Therefore the overarching question that is posed in this article is, in the context of open labour markets, under what conditions, and in what ways, is real (as opposed to rhetorical) solidarity forged by trade unions within and across boundaries in relation to migrant workers. By integrating an understanding of both sectoral specificities and in particular focusing on the strategies and agency of trade unions and their members, the analytical framework posited goes beyond the institutional frameworks of receiving countries as the most salient explanatory factor.

The article draws on the empirical data gathered from three projects conducted and led by the author between 2008 and 2012. The first project focuses specifically on the cross-border relationships between trade unions in Poland and the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2009 from both a sending and a receiving country perspective.¹ The second project compares the response of trade unions to migrant workers in three receiving countries (Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom) in three sectors (care, food processing and construction).² The third project was research commissioned by the European Public Services Union (EPSU) on the labour mobility of health workers and trade union responses.³

The article is structured as follows: the second section theorizes labour mobility in an enlarged Europe by arguing that it is structurally underpinned by the unevenness of capitalism in terms of wages and working conditions and institutionally mediated by national and supranational states. The third section examines the literature on cross-border solidarity and outlines the possible repertoire of responses that trade unions can adopt in both sending and receiving countries. Section four examines the limits of institutional analysis in explaining the extent and form of solidarity by drawing on a three country, three sector study and the case of Britain as a liberal market economy.

Section five focuses on the importance of agency in explaining solidarity. This draws on the UK case and contradictory outcomes that have emerged within national boundaries in the first part and the propensity of health unions from new Member States to engage with EPSU in forging solidarity across boundaries in the second part.

A conceptual framework for understanding labour mobility

This section elaborates a conceptual framework of labour mobility in which the possible interventions by and responses of organized labour can be understood. Migration is posited as a structural phenomenon that lies in differential returns to labour and needs to be understood as intrinsic to capitalism (Stan and Erne, 2013). While labour mobility is not a new phenomenon the widespread development of wage labour under capitalism in the 19th century saw movements of people on an unprecedented scale. Since then the dynamic capacities of capitalism at the end of the 19th century and post-Second World War have intensified the push and pull factors of migration. The inherent inequalities in capitalism and constantly changing material incentives and needs of the system make the mobility of workers central to its dynamics.

Some sections of capital, in both production and services, are outwardly mobile, and, to varying degrees, can defend or enhance their competitive position through seeking lower production costs. This broadly corresponds to foreign investment whereby mobile production and services pit workers against each other in terms of labour costs. However, as Harvey (2006) points out, while some sections of capital can be mobile other sections, such as those related to domestic infrastructure and social reproduction, are fixed. Airports, logistics, construction and retailing are, by definition, immobile in that they are produced where they are consumed. In some ‘old’ Member States, for example, these labour markets employ a disproportionately high number of migrant workers; in particular, the care and health sector has relied very heavily on migrant workers in both skilled and unskilled positions. Migrant workers thus play a distinct role in capitalism as a reserve army of labour. However, employers do not simply want additional labour – they want to obtain labour that can be used under specific conditions which embody a form of control that presupposes the powerlessness of the workers.

The economic push and pull factors of labour mobility are therefore determined by the intrinsically uneven nature of capitalism characterized by divergent socio-economic conditions, developmental capacities and institutional arrangements (Smith, 2006; McKinnon, 2011). Manifestations of unevenness between old EU states and new Member States (and between Member States) are reflected in disparities in wage levels, which provide the incentives for migration. The disadvantaged starting point of new Member States is their position as economically less developed peripheries of the EU; they inhabit the bottom of the table in terms of wages, working conditions, public expenditure per capita and public spending as a percentage of GDP (Eurostat). However, it might be noted that from the point of view of foreign investors in new Member States, lower wages and social wages coupled with relatively high levels of education could be considered a comparative advantage.

While inequality and unevenness in the EU were exacerbated by the 2008 crisis, this was experienced differentially by the new Member States. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia were considered to experience a ‘soft landing’ with relatively small falls in GDP and in the case of Poland a small increase. The Baltic States, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria experienced the crisis in its most acute form, with the sharpest contractions in GDP. Conditionality from the IMF (in some countries) has meant that since 2008 public sector workers in central and eastern Europe have faced particularly drastic reductions in the value of pay through extended wage freezes (EPSU, 2012). Subsequent austerity measures implemented, to varying degrees, in all countries have had a particularly deleterious effect on the public spending budgets of new Member States, and as a consequence put pressure on wages and working conditions in the public sector as well as the delivery and quality of services (Hardy et al., 2014; Bach and Bordogna, 2013; Hermann, 2014).

The 2008 crisis restructured economic incentives (and disincentives) to labour mobility within the EU with the consequent reduction in the attractiveness of receiving country destinations such as Italy and Spain (for Romanians), Greece (for Bulgarians) and Ireland (for Poles, Latvians and Lithuanians). However, incomplete or non-existent data and pendular or circulatory migration mean that the scale of changes in labour mobility is poorly understood.

Therefore the overall assumption that underpins this article is that migration is constitutive to capitalism in the context of uneven development, in that it both shapes and is shaped by it. However, labour mobility is not only determined by the logic of capital. It is also an institutionally constructed process whereby it is facilitated (or constrained) by the EU and its constituent nation states – which may have conflicting agendas. The EU’s neoliberal agenda has attempted to institute a level playing field on which trade, capital and labour can move freely. However, the dilemma of nation states and individual sectors and firms is to access the skills and labour across borders without incurring the cost of their reproduction. As the recovery from the crisis is chequered and slow, some politicians in old Member States are challenging the very concept of intra-EU labour mobility.

Key to this article is the proposition that workers are not the passive victims of the ‘logic of capital’. Rather, structures, institutions and the action of labour individually and collectively are mutually constitutive – in other words the strategies of workers, through contestation or cooperation, can potentially constrain, facilitate or change the structural conditions of unevenness and alter the form and content of governance. Therefore, the context of the increased transnationalization of labour markets, production and capital demands a focus on the potential for workers collectively to engage in solidaristic activities across and within borders.

Solidarity within and across borders: the literature

Solidarity within and across borders is aimed at addressing and preventing the wage competition and exploitation of migrant workers produced by the unevenness of European capitalism. In relation to solidarity within borders Penninx and Roosblad (2000) suggest that trade unions have three main choices in relation to migration. Initially, unions have a choice of whether to resist migration, for example, by demanding quotas, or to engage with it by trying to influence policies. Secondly, on the arrival of migrant workers, trade unions face the dilemma of whether to seek to recruit and organize them or simply to ignore their presence, which may be possible if these workers are geographically and occupationally segmented. Finally, if immigrants are recruited, questions are raised as to how far additional resources should be used to integrate these workers into union structures and support their specific needs.

With regard to receiving countries there are two sets of salient literature. The first body of literature relevant to considering trade union responses to migrant workers relates to organizing contingent workers and to those employed in ‘atypical’ employment beyond traditional job territories. Contingent workers are generally contrasted with ‘standard workers’ on open-ended permanent contracts. Heery and Abbott (2000) suggest that there are five trade union responses to contingent workers: exclusion, servicing, partnership, dialogue and mobilization. However, there may be tensions between these strategies in terms of prioritizing the recruitment of new members over the need to service existing members, which ‘relegate[s] current members to sub-standard representation and disenchantment’ (Hurd, 2004: 11).

The literature on organizing contingent workers offers useful insights as migrant workers have been part of the drive to create a flexible labour market, particularly in the UK, and evident in the widespread use of employment agencies (Heery, 2004; Peck and Theodore, 2007). This enables setting the problem of organizing migrant workers both in the context of wider trade union debates and union deficiencies and specific problems of organizing in these sectors.

A second strand of literature that sheds light on organizing migrant workers derives from what can broadly be termed community unionism approaches. These strategies are based on the idea that at the lower end of the labour market, where migrant workers are concentrated, new organizational forms draw on a variety of actors to provide services and advocacy for unrepresented workers (Heckscher and Carré, 2006; Osterman, 2006). These campaigns, it is argued, need to draw on a ‘wide diversity of actors with a multiplicity of interests’ (Wills, 2008: 320), which would include trade unions, community organizations and enlightened employers. Therefore, the interconnection between work, home and community is emphasized to advocate these more community based approaches (Datta et al., 2007; Lier, 2007).

In relation to solidarity across borders engagement between trade unions regarding migration in sending and receiving countries has received limited attention (Meardi, 2012). Although there are some relatively optimistic accounts of transnationalism (Bieler and Goudriaan, 2011) the literature on cross-border collaboration tends to be pessimistic, being described variously as an activity often of the last resort (Frege and Kelly, 2004), at best difficult to coordinate (Gennard and Newsome, 2005) and potentially competitive. Much of the existing work has focused on single-industry case studies such as motor vehicles, shipping and textiles (Anner et al., 2004), or on European Works Councils (Meardi, 2004). Moreover, attempts by the German IG BAU in 2004 at organizing migrant workers in construction across different countries were less than successful (Greer et al., 2013).

Furthermore, it has been suggested that cross-border collaboration is not necessarily a positive experience as relationships between unions can be characterized more by competition than cooperation (Lillie and Martinez Lucio, 2004). For example Bernaciak (2011) cites the example of a lack of cooperation between trade unions from eastern Europe and western Europe in GM/Opel who were rivals in a zero sum game for a new round of investment. Some literature has pointed to a situation where some weaker trade unions in ‘new’ Europe have colluded with employers in ‘old’ Europe to supply labour at wages below the ‘going rate’ (Woolfson, 2007). This raises issues as to how unions are cooperating and exchanging information across national boundaries to try to prevent the undercutting of wages and working conditions (Dølvik and Eldring, 2006a, 2006b; Hardy et al., 2012). Bernaciak (2011) points out that the participation of unions from new Member States on wider political issues at EU level is largely driven by leaders and therefore unlikely to provide the basis for sustained East-West relationships between labour organizations. Therefore the question of scale is important and for solidarity to have substance it needs to go beyond the routine rhetoric of trade union leaderships (Hyman, 2011); ‘transnational solidarity will have strong leverage only when shared by rank and file workers’ (Lindberg, 2011: 206).

There has been very little attention paid in the academic literature to the strategies of labour in sending countries. Workers can make an individual calculus regarding their mobility; collectively they can organize to reduce unevenness in general and disparities in wages and working conditions in particular, thereby decreasing the incentive for outward migration. It has been argued that migration after 2004 has produced labour shortages, which offer the potential to place unions in a more powerful negotiating position (Meardi, 2007, 2011). Kaminska and Kahancová (2010) suggest that there is a relationship between individual choices and collective potential. Where there is significant outward migration (in the health sector for example) they posit ‘that this situation could offer grounds for unions in sending countries to enhance their position vis-a-vis governments and employers to regain societal legitimacy, and strengthen the existing bargaining institutions’ (Kaminska and Kahancová, 2010: 9).

The key question is what determines the exclusion or inclusion of migrant workers by trade unions, and, in the case of the latter, what are the factors that explain the form and substance of solidarity. The next section explores the limits of institutional explanations.

The limits of institutional explanations

There is a body of literature that analyses employment relations, and by extension trade union strategies regarding mobility, within a framework of methodological nationalism (Hall and Soskice, 2001; see also Erne, 2013; Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman, 2013). Some have distinguished between the positions taken by unions in relation to the free movement of labour within the EU in terms of contrasting the liberal market economies of the UK and Ireland and the more cautious attitude of their counterparts in Germany and Austria – coordinated market economies (Krings, 2009; Menz, 2008). In the UK the opening of labour markets was not opposed and discussions took place on how the labour movement could positively respond to the arrival of migrant workers from new Member States. For example, in 2004 the British TUC (Trade Union Congress) was successful in lobbying the government and getting the Home Office to print leaflets in eight languages informing arriving migrant workers of their employment rights and entitlement to join trade unions. By contrast, in Germany trade unions did not oppose transitional measures restricting access to the labour market.

The purpose of this section is to examine the limitations of viewing institutions as the sole determinant of trade unions solidarity strategies. The argument is first developed by drawing on a three country, three sector study to interrogate the relationship between national institutions and sectors. Secondly, the relationship between the specificities of UK neoliberal capitalism and strategies towards migrant workers is examined.

Institutions versus sectors: a three country, three sector case study

Hardy et al. (2012) investigated trade union strategies in a cross-country comparison of Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom (coordinated market economy, a Nordic country and a liberal market economy) in three sectors: care work, construction and food processing. It was found that a purely institutional analysis detracts from commonalities within sectors and across countries that are driving the restructuring of labour markets and affecting the impetus for mobility. In all three sectors in the case study countries migrant workers were increasingly employed as part of a competitive strategy to reduce costs, and in the care sector in the context of increasing privatization. Nevertheless, trade union responses were conditioned in part, by the national institutional structures that frame industrial relations.

At the time of the research, at one end of the spectrum, German unions were more heavily reliant on the introduction and enforcement of collective agreements in sectors that employed migrant workers. In Germany the experience in all three sectors reflected national characteristics, which place a strong emphasis on state regulation and transitional rules. However, it should be noted that the IG BAU leader is on record as stating that collective bargaining agreements had become irrelevant in the German construction sector. Sectoral differences were apparent. For example, while the experiment in organizing migrant workers by the IG BAU had largely been abandoned (Greer et al., 2013), there were new and embryonic strategies for organizing migrant workers by ver.di, which represented care workers. At the other end of the spectrum, the UK’s low union density and paucity of formal collective agreements meant that there was a reliance on the organizing model.

However, despite the influence of national institutions, an examination of different sectors revealed differences within countries in organizing and integrating migrant workers. The Norwegian experience illustrates this argument. While the trade union in the fish and seafood processing sector had little orientation towards or success in recruiting or integrating migrant workers, in construction establishing a minimum wage enabled a focus on servicing and recruiting migrant workers which resulted in considerable success in recruitment. This underlines the importance of the strategies of individual unions and the agency of individuals within them.

The next section examines in greater detail the extent to which the role and strategy of UK trade unions in relation to migrant workers can be understood in the context of a liberal market economy.

Neoliberal British capitalism and strategies towards migrant workers

Rather than the institutional focus of the liberal market economy approach, it is argued here that the analysis needs to be set in the context of the specificities of British capitalism and the neoliberal agenda which has been pursued more rigorously than in other European countries. In the UK migrant workers have been used as a reserve army of labour to fill job vacancies, but also as a special category of workers that can be exploited in the private sector where there is low union density. Migrant workers are disproportionately found in sectors that are newly privatized (care) or subject to intense competition (food processing and distribution) that are characterized by precarious work and flexible contracts.

This has required ‘thinking outside the box’ for UK trade unions and has been reflected in approaches that have extended existing strategies and/or introduced novel initiatives. First, an organizing model was extended to recruiting migrant workers. These are often employed in non-unionized private sector workplaces and, even where there was a will to recruit, significant challenges existed on the ground. Given language barriers and in some cases distrust of trade unions the first step was persuading migrant workers to join. Once recruited, turning migrant workers from passive into active union members and supporting them in the workplace, proved to be difficult. Interviews were conducted in a banana packing factory where the GMB (general) union had recruited workers extensively in the aftermath of the alleged abuse of a worker that had been reported in the national press. Shop stewards were elected to represent the workers, but their lack of knowledge of English and trade union negotiating procedures, coupled with the limited resources of the union, made it hard to represent workers and extract concessions from management.

However, despite considerable challenges the organizing model included two strategies that were particularly successful. The first was the use of the union learning agenda (ULA) where migrant workers could access tangible benefits such as learning English or getting training and certification to operate a forklift truck. The second was where unions managed to recruit a layer of activists from new Member States, they were able to act as a conduit between the union and migrant workers and enabled language barriers and lack of trust to be transcended.

Secondly, unevenness within British capitalism led to different sub-national strategies on the part of trade unions. For example, in the North West region of the UK, with an ageing demographic, migrant workers were welcomed as providing a young and enthusiastic workforce and trade unions worked with regional development agencies on labour market strategies.

Thirdly, strategies were pursued in cities, towns and in even smaller communities that came under the broad umbrella of ‘community unionism’. The most interesting, imaginative and effective initiatives were to be found in the ad hoc local networks that were aimed at firefighting problems faced by migrant workers in the workplace and communities and at building cohesion. This included working with local councils, churches and NGOs, although some trade unions voiced reservations about being drawn into promising services that they could not deliver.

However, the strategy of inclusiveness and the tactics identified cannot simply be framed as a response to the neoliberal agenda. Since the mid-1970s trade unions in the UK have adopted policies which are explicitly anti-racist and anti-fascist, and issues of equality and anti-discrimination are mainstreamed into the policies and activities of all British unions. This political context is key to understanding why working with migrant workers was adopted positively. For example the executive officer of a large general union said that they were prepared to ‘champion migrant workers’ and that there should be ‘no no-go areas from trade unionism in the twenty first century’ and that they should ‘speak out in favour of migration to make sure that others [from the far right] do not fill the space left.’ (Fitzgerald and Hardy, 2010: 137). Therefore for UK trade unions strategies aimed at working with and including migrant workers were consistent with three decades of campaigning for equality and against racism across the whole movement.

The limits of institutional analysis

The data reported support the arguments posited by other academics that the emergence of supranational regulation and governance undermines the analytical usefulness of mainstream institutional theory and that studies concerned with the national level tend to exaggerate cross-national diversity (Greer et al, 2013; Marginson and Sisson, 2004). The conclusions from the data are in line with that of Meardi (2013), who, citing Penninx and Roosblad (2000), argues that there is no historic link between welfare states, varieties of capitalism and union approaches to migration. The strategies of trade unions cannot be read off institutionalist logics and an analysis based solely on national industrial relations characteristics has difficulty in explaining various sub-national strategies (Hardy et al., 2012).

Furthermore, it is the case that in the UK neoliberalism has shaped the role of migrant workers in the labour force and presented challenges for trade unions ‘on the ground’. However, within this broadly positive picture there are contradictions and unevenness, which underline the importance of trade union strategies and individual agents within them. It is to this that we turn in the next section.

Agency and strategy within and across borders

The historian James Barrett (1987) argues that ‘the existence of separate racial and ethnic communities could lead either to unity or fragmentation, depending on the role played by community leaders or institutions’. Given the competing logics of competition between workers and the solidaristic aims of trade unions, it is not automatic that solidarity will prevail. Solidarity has to be constructed through the agency of workers; trade unions are contested terrains between their different departments, and between full-time union officials, activists and other lay members. This argument is illustrated with two examples. First, focusing on the UK, even though responses towards migrant workers by trade unions have been largely positive, solidarity is not an automatic outcome. The second example looks at how solidarity has been forged between health worker trade unions in old and new Member States, but with the differential engagement between them.

Contradiction and complexity in the UK

In the UK there are many positive examples of solidarity demonstrated through working with and integrating migrant workers (Fitzgerald and Hardy, 2010). One example of this is the highly successful cross-border collaboration initiated by a small British trade union, BFAWU (Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union) who pioneered an innovative form of cross-border collaboration with agencies and employers. They took the view that ‘…if people are coming from Poland to here why wait until they get here?’ (Fitzgerald and Hardy, 2010). In 2006 they concluded an agreement with a UK-based employment agency, which went further than the rights that other unions have negotiated with agencies (T&G and Manpower for example), by negotiating a broader remit to audit Polish agency accommodation (Fitzgerald, 2010). The agreement is that the agency ‘suggests’ to its new recruits in Poland that they join the union, while on their side BFAWU suggests to locally based employers that they engage with this agency as they are ‘reputable’.

However, even within a broad policy of solidarity there were differences within the UK trade union movement about how it should be forged and the details of implementation. One debate which emerged related to how ‘inclusivity’ should be packaged. One view was that it should be embedded in wider issues, such as organizing strategies and union learning agendas (ULA).⁴ Most significant was the shift by the TUC to include migrant workers under the umbrella of vulnerable workers and this was reflected in their national document ‘Organising Migrant Workers: A National Strategy’ in 2006. This was because it was claimed that this was not about people’s nationality, but their employment status. However, a representative from another major union claimed that this ‘diluted the issue’ and that migrant workers needed to be treated as a specific group.

The fine line between solidarity and competition and the importance of agency was starkly demonstrated by the ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ dispute. This referred to the complex events during the Lindsey oil refinery dispute. In January and February 2009, about 6500 construction workers affiliated to the Unite union went on strike, in contravention of trade union legislation, protesting against the increased use of posted workers from various subcontractors using workers from Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, which contravened the sector’s national agreement (Hardy et al., 2012: 356).⁵ The then Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s slogan ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ had a strong influence in the first wave of strikes, and the role of Unite was ambivalent (Gall, 2012). It is not the case that the dispute was overtly xenophobic as the slogan was quickly replaced with one of ‘Fair Access to Local Labour’ and the British National Party (fascist) and UK Independence Party (right-wing populist), which sought to capitalize on the dispute were turned away from picket lines. However, it demonstrated the potential for division between native and migrant workers in general, and native and posted workers in particular. The contradictory and volatile nature of solidarity is revealed, when demands for discrimination in favour of native workers were parallel to solidarity initiatives with migrant workers in other workplaces.

‘Sending’ country engagement

Most research on cross-border collaboration has focused on receiving countries and much less on the role played by sending countries in forging solidarity. The varied engagement of sending country health unions from new Member States clearly illustrates the importance of the agency and the strategy of individual trade unions. In the health sector the loss of human capital and implications for services were of particular concern to new Member State sending country trade unions who initiated a debate in EPSU (European Public Services Union) to address the issue of outward migration (Hardy et al., 2014).

EPSU organized a ‘South East Europe Conference on Migration of the Healthcare Workforce’, in Bucharest in February 2013. As an indicator of engagement with EPSU, 20 delegates from four unions – two from Romania and two from Bulgaria – attended. First, the delegates focused on cross-border cooperation such as: transferring trade union membership to other countries and the use of electronic membership cards, and an increased role for Public Services International and EPSU in facilitating bilateral agreements between trade unions. A second set of suggestions coalesced around better information and training, for example the development of a webpage to set up a forum for discussions on migration, including legal counselling from the destination countries. Furthermore, the need for better education for trade union leaders on migration was urged alongside the inclusion of migration on the agenda of the regular training activities for health professionals. The third strand of policies discussed was to put pressure on the EU to move more quickly to harmonizing professional qualifications.

However, for trade unions from new Member States, which have struggled to restructure and revitalize themselves, very different levels of engagement were evident. Romanian, Slovakian, Bulgaria and Latvian trade unions had a significant degree of engagement with EPSU. This was reflected in their desire to influence agendas and enabled them to incorporate campaigning issues into national or local negotiations. EPSU has provided a forum for raising issues about migration and formulating strategies that we focused on a number of concrete issues around which to organize, such as ethical recruitment and the transfer of trade union membership, which open a structured dialogue between the unions in sending and receiving countries.

Some trade union leaders from new Member States spoke of the positive experience and solidarity from membership of EPSU. The president of the health workers union in Slovakia (SOZZaSS) described their relationship with EPSU as ‘…very long-term and good quality…We campaign with EPSU on a regular basis, for example on the “right to water” campaign where SOZZaSS pushed our own government.’ (Hardy et al., 2014) The President of LSVADA (Latvia) claimed that ‘through solidarity with Europe we have gained new experience’. The example of learning cited was how to create much more lively campaigns using t-shirts and flags to create higher visibility and a ‘buzz’ for those taking part (Hardy et al., 2014).

However, in other countries engagement was non-existent or pursued independently of EPSU. The Hungarian trade union that represented health and care workers had retreated into autarchy and engagement was only noticeable by its absence. The well organized and lively Polish Nurses and Midwives union was in the process of initiating the planning of cross-border collaborations with nurses in other countries, but at the time of writing this was outside of the framework of EPSU (Hardy et al., 2014).

Some of these cross-border solidarity policies are not dramatic, but reflect ongoing piecemeal achievements to ensure that the economic unevenness that underpins the mobility of health workers in this sector is not reflected in different working conditions, wages and opportunities in receiving countries. Furthermore, it underlines the way in which the different levels of engagement by sending countries affect the propensity for building solidarity.

Conclusion

Labour mobility and migration are intrinsic to capitalism; in the EU unevenness has been more sharply extended as a result of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements and deeply engrained inequalities have been further exacerbated by the crisis and subsequent austerity measures, which have had a particularly deleterious impact on some new Member States and southern states. This has restructured incentives for mobility and produced new challenges for trade unions. The main conclusion that can be drawn from the data gathered from the three research projects is that trade union responses to migration are complex between and within countries and across sectors. While the institutional settings of sending and receiving countries will broadly condition the responses of collective labour, the specificities of different sectors and the agency of individual unions and individuals within unions play a critical role in shaping the responses of groups of workers. Therefore, in line with arguments posited by Meardi (2012) and Lillie and Greer (2007), it is suggested that the analytical lens needs to move from an exclusive focus on institutions to the agency of workers and the strategies of organized labour and, in particular, those pursued lower down the echelons of trade union hierarchies.

The example of the UK illustrates how different responses can exist simultaneously. While evidence of ‘thinking outside the box’ to recruit, integrate and represent migrant workers provides positive examples of good practice, ‘the British Jobs for British Workers’ dispute underlines the potential for divisiveness when workers are faced with their wages being undercut.

At the time of writing it is not clear how the context of the large vote for racist and xenophobic parties across Europe in the May 2014 European Parliament elections will affect how trade unions formulate their strategies on migration and mobility, particularly in the absence of a challenge to these ideas from social democratic parties. However, the role of organized labour has never been more important in both providing an ideological counterweight to the normalization of these anti-immigration discourses and challenging the economic conditions which are a fertile breeding ground for xenophobia.

Footnotes

Funding

This work was supported by an award from the Economic and Social Research Council, UK, Cross Border Trade Union Collaboration and Polish Migrant Workers in Britain (number RES-000-22-2034). The data draw on research commissioned for the European Public Service Union, Opportunities and Challenges Related to Cross Border Mobility and Recruitment of the Health Sector Workforce.

Notes

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