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29 August 2015

Inclusion or Exclusion? Trade Union Strategies and Labor Migration

Title

This research identifies and analyses immigration-related strategies of the Finnish Construction Trade Union (FCTU) and the Service Union United (SUU): how do they react to labour immigration, do they seek to include migrants in the unions, what is the position of migrants in the unions? The study also analyses experiences migrants working in these sectors have with trade unions. Results indicate that immigration is a contradictory issue for both unions. On one hand, they strive to include migrants as members and to defend migrants’ labour rights. But on the other hand, together with the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), they also seek to prevent labour migration from outside EU and EEA countries. 

A key common trade union strategy is to guarantee that migrants’ working conditions do not differ from those of the natives. Both inform migrants about Finnish collective agreements and trade union membership in the most common migrant languages. Even if interviewed migrants perceive the importance of trade unions in protecting their working conditions, they stress that migrants’ knowledge of unions is often very limited. However, the number of migrants in both unions is increasing: in the SUU, a considerable proportion of the new members are migrants. The FCTU is in a more challenging situation as migrant construction workers often work for short periods in Finland and are consequently not interested in becoming union members.

As migrants encounter specific problems in terms of working conditions, both unions demand more state intervention to protect their labour rights. For instance, some of the interviewed migrants had received trade union assistance in claiming unpaid wages. Without unions’ intervention, these problems would be more common.

Unions’ strategies differ when it comes to means used to attract migrant members. While FCTU was the first Finnish trade union to establish a branch specially targeting migrants in order to facilitate their inclusion and highlight specific problems, SUU insists that such a special strategy would exclude migrants within the union. Regardless of channel strategies, migrants are still underrepresented among union members and officials; which some of the interviewed migrants saw as a problem. Immigrants’ perception of trade unions was pragmatic: they had joined unions when membership yielded concrete benefits.

While trade unions actively defend current labour migration restrictions by drawing attention to high unemployment figures and breaches of working conditions migrants encounter, employer organisations promote a more liberal state policy because they see it as a boost for business. Unions belonging to the Confederation of Unions for Professionals and Managerial Staff in Finland (Akava) also embrace these liberal stances. Both the unions and the employer organisations ground their arguments on national interest.

The study demonstrates that immigration is a power resource issue for the unions: successful immigration-related strategies strengthen unions –and vice versa. The research also shows how the unions’ operating environments constrain and enable their immigration-related strategies. 

The two unions were chosen because the workforce in the sectors they represent is migrant-dense.

Details

Authors
Rolle Alho
Geographic area
Finland
Contributor type
Academics and experts
Original source
Posted by
Krister Bjorklund
Country Coordinator

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