Trade Unions and Migrant Labour in the “Global Age”: New Alliances or Old Antagonisms?

Abstract

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, European trade unions are at a crossroad. In most countries unions struggle to adapt to contemporary processes of global change that have strengthened the position of capital vis-à-vis labour. While unions are still primarily organized at the national level, multinational companies are increasingly organized as global production networks that show little regard for national boundaries (Castells, 2000). As a result of globalization and EU enlargement, trade unions face a two-fold challenge. On the one hand, they are confronted by the relocation of parts of production to Eastern Europe and Asia in the name of “competitiveness” (or the threat of it to keep wages down). On the other hand, the inflow of migrant workers into service industries that cannot be “offshored” can fulfil a similar purpose of reducing wage costs (Menz, 2005). While the challenges that unions face in the light of economic internationalization and the growing mobility of transnational companies features in quite a number of publications (cf. Ferner et al., 2006; Hoffmann, 2002; Rigby et al., 1999), relatively little research has been carried out on trade union responses to the recent increase in cross-border mobility of people (for some exceptions see Haus, 2002; Watts, 2002). This may come as a surprise as “immigration is in important respects a matter of labour” (McGovern, 2007, p. 231).