Union Campaigns as Countermovements: Mobilizing Immigrant Workers in France and the United Kingdom
| Author | Lowell Turner,Maite Tapia |
| Published date | 01 September 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12035 |
| Date | 01 September 2013 |
Union Campaigns as
Countermovements: Mobilizing
Immigrant Workers in France and
the United Kingdom
Maite Tapia and Lowell Turner
Abstract
In this article, we compare recent innovative union campaigns: the ‘sans
papiers’ campaign in France and the ‘Justice for Cleaners’ campaign in the
United Kingdom, both based on a sustained grass-roots mobilization of immi-
grant workers. Rather than focusing on the ‘usual suspect’ explanatory factors,
such as contrasting national settings, union power structures or traditions, our
cross-national comparison highlights important underlying similarities in
unions’ strategic responses to a growing precarious immigrant workforce. In the
absence of established channels of representation, both unions decided to act
like social movements fighting for social protection. Using Polanyi’s frame-
work, we view both case studies as examples of countermovements against
heightened levels of global liberalization and precarious employment.
1. Introduction
Among the many challenges that global liberalization has posed for trade
unions in the global North, the growth of precarious immigrant workforces
lacking any collective representation stands out as both a major threat to
solidarity and an organizing opportunity. Precarious immigrant workers,
often termed ‘workers at the margins’, make up a substantial and growing
segment of the workforce in many countries (Thornley et al. 2010). Even
though labour and immigration are inherently connected — people primarily
migrate to find better employment opportunities — immigration as a
topic has all too often been neglected by industrial relations scholars
Maite Tapia is at the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State
University. Lowell Turner is at the Department of International and Comparative Labor, ILR
School, Cornell University.
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British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12035
51:3 September 2013 0007–1080 pp. 601–622
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2013. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
(McGovern 2007; for exceptions, see Fine 2006; Holgate 2005; Milkman
2006; Wills 2004).1
In this article, we compare recent innovative union campaigns in two
countries: the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT)-led ‘sans papiers’
campaign from 2008 to 2010 in France, and the ‘Justice for Cleaners’ cam-
paign led by the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU)/Unite
from 2005 to 2010 in the United Kingdom. Surprisingly, in spite of deep
differences in union traditions and structures, as well as political-economic
context, campaign strategies are more substantially similar than different.
From an analytical perspective, we consider the campaigns as examples
of ‘countermovements’ against the expansion of increasingly unregulated
labour markets (Polanyi 1944).
Both cases took place in a context of economic instability following 30
years of global liberalization. In both cases, unions broke with their own past
ambivalence and organizational inertia to craft comprehensive campaigns
that moved beyond traditional channels to promote the interests of low-wage
immigrant workers. In both cases, unions deployed an arsenal of overlapping
tactics: rank-and-file mobilization, coalition building, media attention, social
justice framing that won public support, pressure on employers through
strikes and demonstrations, and pressure on local and national governments.
In addition, in both cases, unions came up against limitations in internal
resources as well as relationships with external allies. Specific goals varied —
in France the focus was on the ‘regularization’ of undocumented workers, in
the United Kingdom the focus was on a ‘living wage’ — but in both cases,
unions enrolled significant numbers of new members, emboldened immigrant
workers to fight for their own interests, and raised the profile and promoted
the interests of hard-working but vulnerable members of a growing service
sector workforce. The result in each country was a broad comprehensive
campaign of a kind that until now has been uncommon in the European
context.
We ask the following questions: how can we explain a simultaneous shift
by two very different unions in distinct national contexts towards compre-
hensive strategies based on the grass-roots mobilization of immigrant
workers? And what common factors account for the considerable successes
of both campaigns?
More generally, what can these cases tell us about contemporary debates
in comparative political economy and industrial relations? What do similar
mobilization-based responses tell us about the relative usefulness of a com-
parative institutional framework compared with a theoretical perspective
based on the dynamics of deregulation in a capitalist global economy (Hall
and Soskice 2001; Streeck 2009, 2011)? How can and should unions relate
to immigrant workers in an era when labour mobility is both intensified
and politically contested (McGovern 2007)? To what extent might cam-
paigns addressing the interests of growing immigrant workforces contribute
to renewed union solidarity and vitality (Le Queux and Sainsaulieu
2010)?
602 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2013.
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