Mobilizing Against Inequality: Unions, Immigrant Workers, and the Crisis of Capitalism by Lee H. Adler & Maite Tapia & Lowell Turner

Author:Lee H. Adler & Maite Tapia & Lowell Turner [Adler, Lee H. & Tapia, Maite & Turner, Lowell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Labor & Industrial Relations, Law, Labor & Employment, Social Science, Emigration & Immigration
ISBN: 9780801479335
Google: K80cngEACAAJ
Goodreads: 18848756
Publisher: ILR Press
Published: 2014-01-15T11:16:26+00:00

The IG BAU Case

In 2004 the German construction workers’ union IG Bauen-Agrar-Umwelt (IG BAU) established what they hoped would become a transnational union to organize and represent hyper-mobile posted workers across Europe and in a wide range of sectors.8 The European Migrant Workers Union (EMWU), however, failed to meet its targets to attract a substantial membership and support from other existing unions. From our research we believe that this case reflects the difficulty many German unions have in assisting migrant workers.

IG BAU sought to bring unorganized Eastern European (mostly) construction workers into a European wide union that would protect the construction industry labor market from nonstandard wage rates. It reached across several nations’ boundaries but was not successful in incorporating these non-German construction workers into their own EMWU or into the German union.

EMWU had some success in integrating migrants into society. It created a space for a relatively hard-to-organize group within the structure of IG BAU and provided advice and legal services. EMWU also provided support and advice to vulnerable central Eastern European workers, usually by pressing claims for back wages. It provided these services from bases in Warsaw and Frankfurt and hired staff who spoke the languages of most migrant construction workers (Polish and Romanian).

However, the organizing model created by IG BAU proved to be unsustainable. This was primarily due to its service-heaviness. It was simply not possible to attract and retain enough members facing severe problems at work to pay for the service. EMWU spent six to seven times what it earned in member dues. Furthermore, the broader trade union movement did not support EMWU due to worries about jurisdictional conflict. The trade union movement overall also lacked IG BAU’s sense of immediate crisis. This applied as much to construction unions in other countries as to other German unions. Finally, EMWU faltered due to the contradictions of IG BAU’s overall strategy, one of organizing migrant workers while favoring legislation to restrict their access to the labor market and working with the labor inspectorate to enforce these rules.9

In this sense, the IG BAU case explains that the EU’s and Germany’s trade unions are not yet able to meet the civic and union-based integration needs of migrant construction workers. IG BAU’s efforts started just before the government’s launch of the National Integration Plan, but these initiatives do not appear to have worked effectively in any mutual fashion to institutionalize migrant worker integration.

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