Migrating Industrial Relations: Migrant Workers’ Initiative Within and Outside Trade Unions
| Author | Gabriella Alberti,Davide Però |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12308 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12308
56:4 December 2018 0007–1080 pp. 693–715
Migrating Industrial Relations: Migrant
Workers’ Initiative Within and Outside
Trade Unions
Gabriella Alberti and Davide Per`
o
Abstract
This article develops an embedded actor-centred framework for studying the
mobilization and bargaining practices of migrant workers. This framework
is applied to examine two instances of labour organizing by low-paid Latin
American workers in London showing how migrant workers can develop
innovative collective initiativeslocated at the junction of class and ethnicity that
can be eective and rewarding in material and non-material terms. In particular,
the article shows that while there is a growing interest on the part of established
unions to represent migrantworkers, their bargainingand mobilization strategies
appear inadequate to accommodate the bottom-up initiatives of such workers
who, as a result, have started to articulate them independently. On the basis of
the findings obtained, we thus argue in favour of an actor-centred framework
to the study of migration and IR to better identify migrant workers’ interests,
identities and practices as shaped by complex regulatory and social context.
1. Introduction
At a time of dramatic changes in work and employment, migration has
profoundly transformed the composition of the workforce. Tapia and Turner
(2013: 605) have suggested that unions have to move out of their comfort
zone and revise their practices drawing on lessons from social movements
to represent a changed workforce composed, especially at the low-end, ‘by
women, younger workers, ethnic and racial minorities, and to a significant
extent[...] foreign born’.Inthis article, we suggest thatwetoo asindustrial
relations scholars have to rethink some of our analytical practices and adjust
our approach to better reflect transformationsoccurring in the representation
and self-organization of workers.
Gabriella Alberti is at Leeds University Business School, Universityof Leeds. Davide Per`
oisat
Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham.
C
2018 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
694 British Journal of Industrial Relations
This article makes the case for renewing industrial relations analysis of
labour organizing by developing a framework centred around workers —
conceived as embedded and relational actors — that we developed from
key strengths of industrial relations, social movement and migration and
ethnic studies. While past industrial relations research in the field of migrant
workers has privileged institutional processes, organizational culture, union
strategy and coalition-making, between established unions and community
organizations (Holgate 2009; Tapia 2013; Tattersall 2008), we look at
migrants’ own experiences of both mobilizing and bargainingin the context of
bottom-up initiatives. In doing so, we are focusing on an analytical category
that has usually been excluded from traditional union research (see also
Alberti et al. 2013). Guided by this framework and by Fairbrother and
Webster’s (2008) recommendation of studying unionism in context — that is,
in a manner which is time and place specific — we then examine two instances
of labour organizingby Latin American workers employedin the London low-
paid service sector, namely the community-based Latin American Workers
Association (LAWAS)and the independent trade union Independent Workers
of Great Britain (IWGB).
Structurally, the article is organized as follows. It starts by providing
a contextual overview of the main employment and demographic
transformations that have characterized contemporary Britain. After
that, the article discusses the existing literature on workers’ organizing,
highlighting its strengths and limitations. Then, drawing on such discussion,
the article outlines our actor-centred framework. Following a section on our
methodological approach the article moveson to an analytical description of
two case studies of migrant workersorganizing. The final section presents the
theoretical conclusions on the labour initiatives of low-paid migrant workers
that the application of our framework has enabled us to reach.
2. Employment degradation and migration patterns in the UK
In contextualizing our cases, it is important to outline how in the last
decades a growing number of jobs in the UK have been subjected to practices
of outsourcing and fragmentation as a result of increased competition,
marketization and strategies to reduce labour costs. The jobs most impacted
by these processes such as cleaning, hospitality, health care and security
are often those that tend to be populated by migrant workers (Mart´
ınez
Lucio et al. 2017; Rienzo 2016; Wills 2009). The degradation of employment
relations, the expansion of precarious forms of work and the fragmentation
of workers’ terms and conditions have been eectively documented in the
UK (Doellgast 2012; Rienzo 2016; Rubery et al. 2005). Recent research in
the cleaning sector highlighted the impact of employers’ contractual and
procurement practices including worsening pay and working time, poor
training and career development and growing job insecurity (Grimshaw et al.
2014). The reason for using a subcontractor reflects the search for ‘ultra-
C
2018 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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