Challenges of Europe Inclusion and Exclusion in Contemporary European Societies

Trade Unions and the Free Movement of Labour: Heterogeneous Attitudes towards a Fundamental Citizens Right?

Author: Benedikt Linden Email: [email protected] University of Trier Economic Sociology

Paper for the

extra-curricular international (post) graduate course:

CHALLENGES OF EUROPE: THE QUEST FOR 7 - 11 April 2014

Inter University Centre (IUC) Dubrovnik (Croatia) Table of Contents 1. Introduction...... 2 2. The Theoretical Framework: Important Factors...... 4 2.1 The Power of the Unions...... 5 2.2 Economic and Labour Market Forces...... 6 2.3 The Context of Labour ...... 6 2.4 The Agency of the Unions...... 7 3. The Comparison: Empirical Evidences...... 8 3.1 Economic and Labour Market Forces: Development...... 8 3.2 The Power of the Unions: Development...... 11 3.3 The Context of Labour Immigration...... 13 3.4 The Agency of the Unions...... 16 3.5 Summary...... 17 4. Conclusion...... 19 5. References...... 20

List of Figures Figure 1: GDP Development in Euro per Inhabitant 1999-2013...... 8 Figure 2: Development of the Unemployment Rate 1999-2013:...... 9 Figure 3: Atypical Employment in % of Total Employment 1999-2011...... 10 Figure 4: Collective Agreement Coverage in % of all Employees 1999-2012...... 12 Figure 5: Immigration from the New Member States (NMS) 2002-2011...... 14 Figure 6: Percentage of People believing that Immigration is a Problem and that there are too many Migrants in Germany and the UK 2008-2011...... 15

List of Tables Table 1: Shadow Economy in % of GDP 2003-2013...... 10 Table 2: Density in % of Labour Force 1999-2011...... 11

1 1. Introduction

The Free Movement of Labour is (part of) one of the four fundamental principles of the and therefore, inherently, a right to European citizens (Dølvik/Visser 2009: 492). But for all that, because of some concerns of the “old” (Western and Southern) EU member states about a huge inflow of migrants due to big differences in living standards and wages, there is an opportunity to introduce so called transitional constraints on the of Labour (and services) when new member states enter the EU (Lorenz 2010: 10-11). These constrains were implemented by the majority of the old EU-15 member states when the EU-East-Enlargements in 2004, 2007 and 2013 took place1 and enabled those to restricted the labour market entry of immigrants on basis of national law for a maximum of seven years, with the possibility to end the constrains after 2 or after 5 years (the so called 2+3+2 model) (Lorenz 2010: 10, Pohl 2007: 38). However, the compulsive end of transitional labour movement constraints to Romanian and Bulgarian workers in 2014 made several political actors raise their voices and articulate their concerns about the (imagined) implications of this development. Many of those temporary detractors, like the British Conservative Party or the German Christlich-Soziale Union, may be driven by the fear of voter losses and/or concurrence on the political right. Therefore, they pronounce the dangers of the free movement of labour (like an abuse of social security systems), and sometimes even question the principle of freedom of movement in Europe as a whole (Spiegel 2013a, Spiegel 2013b). Though, looking back at the EU-East-Enlargments in 2004, 2007 and 2013, the transitional constraints implemented in Germany had not only been favoured by political right wing actors, but also by the German trade unions (Krings 2009: 79-82, DGB 2012, European Commission 2014). In contrast, the constraints implemented in the in 2007 and 2013 didn’t found British Union support2, but the renouncement to introduce such measure in 2004 strongly did (Krings 2009: 76-78, European Commission 2014, TUC 2014). Therefore, this paper deals with the question of trade union’s position towards “one of the most attractive and civilised features of the EU” (Donaghey/Teague 2006: 652). Insofar as there doesn`t seem to be a unique trade union response on large scale worker immigration (resp. the Free Movement of Labour), the reasons for the divergent

1 In 2004 ten states from eastern Europe entered the EU (Cyprus, , Estonia, Hungary, Lativa, Lithuania, Malta, , Slovak Republic, Slovenia), the biggest enlargement at a single blow ever. In 2007 Bulgaria and Romania followed, and Croatia joined in 2013 (FAZ 2013, Spiegel 2013a). 2 In 2004 Britain was one of three countries from the EU-15 which did not implemend any labour market constrains (Pohl 2007: 38). In 2013, in contrast to 2004 and 2007, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) did not formulate a formal position towards the transitional measures introduced on Croatia, but insists that they did not deviate from their former standpoint of an open labour market for every EU worker (Personal Communication with the TUC migration policy officer R. Crawford, 9 May 2014).

2 positions should be examined. Besides the topicality of the theme, detecting the reasons why trade unions differ on such a fundamental question may give additional insight about the hindrances on the way towards a real united European trade union movement. To some scholars, like Donaghey/Teague (2006), constraining the Free Movement of Labour is “working against the ideals of a European identity and European citizenship” (653). Such strong allegations make it worth to look for reasons why some trade unions, despite their general commitment to international solidarity (Lindemann 2013: 26-27, Castles/Kosacks 1985: 127-28), indeed acted this way – and others did not. Insofar as the short paper will only be able to touch lightly the surface of this complex theme, the evidence presented here should be understood as a suggestion for further research. Furthermore, a historical comparison with the “Guestworker” period from the 60s to the early 70s, also it surely would be very fruitful3, can not be realized here. Trying to give an answer to the reasearch question, the structure of the paper is as follows: Chapter 2 presents the theoretical background and studies the research is founded on and argues for important factors to be examined in order to answer the research question. The whole Chapter 3 contains the empirical comparison of the important factors turned out in Chapter 2 and will end with a summary linking the empirical results with the theoretical background and answers the research question. Chapter 4 finally sums the whole study up in a short abstract.

3 During this time, union attitude towards foreign worker immigration was kind of diametral to the positions nowadays, with British trade unions in direction against, and German Unions in favour of workers immigration (Castles/Kosacks 1985:138-45, 129-32).

3 2. The Theoretical Framework: Important Factors

According to Penninx and Roosbald (2000: 4-12) there are several dilemmas trade unions must solve when dealing with large scale immigration: The one which is of interest here, is the question whether to support or oppose immigration (and with that, the labour market entry of foreign workers) in general. As already mentioned, on the one hand, at least rhetorically, trade unions stand up to an internationalist tradition which often regards the antagonism between capital and labour as the momentous difference of human society (in contrast to e.g. differentiating by race, sex or ) and calls for international solidarity. On the other hand, some tangible reasons make the unions deviate from this theoretical point in practice (Penninx and Rossbald 2000: 4-8). Many of these reasons can be subsumed under the notation “social dumping”. This is defined as “placing downward pressure on the established social and living standards” (Donaghey/Teague 2006: 657), including “wage dumping and job displacement” (Donaghey/Teague 2006: 665), because due to the circumstances in their home countries immigrants tend to accept a low pay, bad working conditions and unwanted jobs more often than indigenous workers (Castles/Kosack 1985:112-115)4. Furthermore, additional (negative) effects of a labour surplus through immigration for unions are the growing possibilities for employers to rely on an alternative source of labour during industrial disputes. This definition of the problem already gives some hints which factors might be important for the stance trade unions take towards the free movement of labour for Eastern European workers. Due to the limited space of the paper, a deep theoretical foundation can not be achieved here. Instead and in the following, I will heavily rely on the studies of Penninx/Rossbald (2000) and Krings (2009) with presenting some potential decisive factors, which are checked for in Chapter 3. The study of the former compares trade union action connected to immigration in seven Western European countries in the period from 1960 to the early 90s. Krings (2009) investigates the reasons for the different trade union stances in 2004 and 2007 in Ireland, Britain, Germany and Austria. Insofar as the research question of the latter is quite similar to the one presented here, the current study should be seen as an extension, renewal and (partly) a critic to the study of Krings (2009), as it looks at the data even until the accession of Croatia in 2013. Thus, it might contribute in a similar way to theory than his study does. Penninx and Rossbald (2000: 12-16, 200-06) assume four factors to be crucial for trade unions attitudes towards immigration. In contrast to Krings (2009, see below), they do not root their factor selection in any specific theory, but as “Social History” researcher they developed an analytical

4 On the macroeconomic level, the simple gain in labour supply through immigration may also cause wages to be lowered (or at least to slowdown the future increase), independently of the foreigners willingness to accept lower pay and working conditions (Castles/Kosack 1985: 128, Footnote 1).

4 framework, which “contains a number of reflections on factors that might explain the evolution […] [of] variations between these countries” (Penninx/Roosbald 2000: 12). These factors are (a) the position of the unions in the power structure of society/economy and the union structure itself, (b) the economic and labour market condition of their national context, (c) the historical and contextual factors of the society (resp. of important institutional actors) towards immigration and (d) the characteristics or perceptions of the immigrants. Krings` (2009: 65-74) framework is somehow similar. Although he uses the Varieties of Capitalism theory (and its distinction between liberal market economies and coordinated market economies) as footing for his work, he also presents four important factors: a) the institutional position of the unions and the structure of collective bargaining, b) the labour market forces, c) the context of labour migration and d) the agency of the unions. The framework used in this study will be a composition of the factors of both studies. The statement of grounds for the selection for each factor and the specific definiton is as follwos:

2.1 The Power of the Unions This variable subsumes the power of unions concerning “hard” facts, like membership or union density, as well as additional resources through institutional embedding in the political economy of the , provided e.g. by statutory guaranteed concerning the collective bargaining process (Krings 2009: 65-67). Following Krings (2009: 65) it can be argued that trade unions which are highly involved in collective bargaining and cover a huge part of the labour force are more likely to see immigrants (especially control-free immigration like the one following the EU enlargement) as a potential threat; due to the already mentioned possibility of social dumping which may exert downward pressure on the collective agreements. Unions which can rely on labour market regulation that prevents the workforce from entering a “race to the bottom” (Krings 2009: 119), like a statutory minimum wage or a obligation for employers to take place in collective bargaining should not carry this concerns. Likewise, unions which are not in a strong position (anymore) are supposed to be more open towards social change (including growing immigration), e.g. because they view immigrants as a new group for recruiting. In opposition to Penninx and Roosbald (2000: 202-03) with this factor I will neither take the level of centralisation of unions in account nor the strength of their linkage to a certain political party. The reason for that is once again the limited space of this study and, in addition, the fact that those factors may explain the influence unions may have on immigration politics (and therefore maybe their power), but it is hard to argue from that in which direction they are going to use it.

5 2.2 Economic and Labour Market Forces The reason to pick this factor is self-explanatory. As Penninx/Roosbald (2000: 14) phrase it, “obviously in times of ample national labour supply trade unions will tend to oppose further immigration of labour”. Eventually the broader economic development might have a similar effect. In times of economic prosperity (and the expectation that this is going to translate into a greater labour demand) trade unions have less reason to speak out against workers immigration. Additionally the institutional configuration of the labour market is of interest here. In this case especially the question about a two-tiered labour market, represented through the growth of the informal economy or the spread of precarious (often atypical) jobs, is of interest5. Two-tiered labour market refers to a situation, where one part of the labour force is (still) protected by collective agreements and/or statutory regulation and is “standard” employed, whereas a (growing) portion of workers experiences unregulated and precarious, sometimes even illegal, working conditions. The literature often connects the latter to atypical or nonstandard employment, which includes e.g. (marginal and substantial) part-time jobs, unsecure and fixed-term contracts and bogus self- employment (Allmedinger et al. 2013: 32, 75)6. Since it is reasonably to assume that migrants are (still) overrepresented in this low skill, low wage categories (Lindemann 2013: 19; Castles/Kosack 1985: 79-87), trade unions are likely to see one of their core demands (“”) and their power position threatened, if this mostly non unionised categories are already an important part of the labour market and may even grow in the light of further worker immigration (Krings 2009: 71, 170-73).

2.3 The Context of Labour Immigration Penninx/Roosbald (2000) and Krings (2009) have a different understanding of this factor. The former authors take it as a very broad historical variable and look for some kind of path dependency in migration systems, combined with the view on e.g. the public discourse on immigration, or the “way other important institutional actors, such as national authorities, churches, political parties or movements, react to immigration and immigrants” (Penninx/Roosbald 2000: 15). Contrastingly Krings (2009: 69-71) aims at indicators like the percentage of immigrants in society and the level of the inflow in recent years. Furthermore he looks on the strength of certain sectors in the different labour markets. For the current research the factor includes some data about the recent inflow of

5 Krings (2009: 170-73) subsumed the informal economy and the precarious jobs under the „context of labour migration“ variable, but due to the fact that this variable already is quiet hazy, I categorise this under 2.2. 6 Krings (2009: 48) emphasises that precarious work cannot be totally equated with atypical or nonstandard employment. That is, because the latter does not necessary produce essential circumstances like economic and social vulnerability, insecurity and instability, which need to be fulfilled to make work precarious (Krings 2009: 38). Nevertheless, there is still a strong link between atypical and precarious jobs and the usage of the former as an indicator seems justified (Krings 2009: 38-39).

6 foreigners from the new member states (NMS), combined with a rough view on the public discourse, which is represented here through the public opinion and the media reception about Eastern European workers immigration. Thereby the underlying assumption is that maybe the experience of a huge inflow of immigrant workers at least in a problematic economic environment (or simply the negative public perception of it) may bring the trade unions to a critical stand on immigration. This should already contain Penninx and Roosbald`s (2000) point “perception of immigrants”, as, at least in such a bluntly view on the public discourse like it is undertaken in this study, it does not seem appropriate to make a distinction between the perceptions of immigrants and of immigration. What cannot be done here is to circumstantiate the preferences of other important institutional actors.

2.4 The Agency of the Unions The last factor concerned here, “the agency of the unions” exists due to the assumption that “trade union policies are influenced by structural factors such as the institutional framework […] [but] they are not wholly determined by [it]” (Krings 2009: 71). The Self-understanding of the unions, their history and ideology, briefly speaking their identity, may lead two trade union movements in different countries to different stances on a certain topic, although the structural factors are almost the same (Krings 2009: 71, Penninx/Roosbald 2000: 205-06). This “identity factor” may be the last element in a decision chain, in which the variety of possible decisions is shrunken by the structural factors, but where is still a choice left. At this point it is of interest if e.g. the union behaves very pragmatic or puts a high value to ideology, sees itself as supporter of marginalised groups or as spokesman of a majority, stands in opposition to the political mainstream or sees itself as an integral part of the political system and so forth.

7 3. The Comparison: Empirical Evidences

In the following, each factor outlined in Chapter 2 will be presented for the two countries in a way that allows direct comparison. However, every section will contain a short argumentation why certain indicators were chosen to represent the specific factor. Concerning the data presented here, the study relies on secondary scientific literature and empirical data from the OECD, EUROSTAT, the national statistic agencies and statistics published by governmental institutions.

3.1 Economic and Labour Market Forces: Development As mentioned above, one indicator used to describe the economic circumstances will be the GDP. It allows an assumption about the general condition of the economy. Due to the fact that the economic situation of the recent years will certainly influence the perception of the instantaneous of the economy, the data presented here starts, where possible, in 1999 (5 years before the first EU- Enlargement).

Figure 1: GDP Development in Euro per Inhabitant 1999-2013

40000 o r 35000 u E 30000 n i t 25000 n a t i 20000 b a h 15000 n i r

e 10000 p

P 5000 D

G 0 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Year

European Union (15 countries) Germany United Kingdom

Source: Own depiction after Eurostat (2014). As we can see in Figure 1, the United Kingdom until 2007, performed better than Germany until 2007. The GDP per inhabitant grow stronger and was way above the average of the (western) old EU Member States, whereas Germany, in comparison, was lacking a bit behind. However, the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2007 brought the GDPs of all old Member States to fall off, but the descent of the British economy was quite sharp. While Germany just experienced a one year GDP per inhabitant downturn (2008 to 2009) of ca. 1000 Euro and exceeded its former level already

8 again in 2010, the GDP of the UK sank in two years (2007 to 2009) by nearly 9000 Euro per inhabitant and has not reached its pre-crisis level yet. A second important indicator for the economic and labour market situation is the unemployment rate. Quite intuitive, opposition to immigration by trade unions is expected to be more likely in times of high unemployment (Penninx/Roosbald 2000: 14).

Figure 2: Development of the Unemployment Rate 1999-2013:

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10 %

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e 8 t a r

t

n 6 e m y o

l 4 p m e

n 2 U 0 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Year

European Union (15 countries) Germany United Kingdom

Source: Own depiction after Eurostat (2014). Looking at Figure 2, the interpretation is similar to the one above. The United Kingdom, again, performed better than Germany until 2009. However, Germany’s unemployment rate was shrinking since its peak in 2005 from nearly 12% and continued to do so (with a short period of minimal growth in 2008-2009) despite the financial crisis to nearly 5% in 2013. The British rate, in contrast, rose from below 5% in 2004 to above 8% in 2011 and seems to stagnate at that level. Besides these indicators for a general impression of the economic and labour market environment in which the EU immigration took place, the size of the shadow economy as well as the spread of the atypical employment will be taken as indicators for estimating the pressure that an unregulated part of the labour market exerts on one of the traditional goals of trade unions. That is, assuring equal pay for equal work mainly through collective agreements (Krings 2009: 54).

9 Table 1: Shadow Economy in % of GDP 2003-2013

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 United 12,2 12,3 12 11,1 10,6 10,1 10,9 10,7 10,5 10,1 9,7 Kingdom Germany 17,1 16,1 15,4 15 14,7 14,2 14,6 13,9 13,7 13,3 13

Source: Own depiction after Schneider (2013: Table 1). Following Schneider (2013: 2-5), the percentage of the shadow economy as portion of the GDP in both countries is below the EU average. Furthermore, Table 1 shows a constant decline of the shadow economy since 2003. Although both countries are in the same group of Western European countries, which are expected to have a smaller shadow economy in relation to the other (Southern and Eastern) European states (Schneider 2013: 2), Germany's proportion is 40% higher than the British numbers in 2003, and still one third higher in 2013. In opposition to the continuous decrease of the shadow economy, the atypical employment in both countries increased from 1999 to 2011 (Figure 3). Hereby the numbers of the UK seemed quite stable at around 36% non-standard employment (of total employment) since 1999 until 2008. Then the figures rose to 39%, again implying a crisis effect. In Germany the numbers where constantly rising since 1999. Starting with 33% they reached 41% in 2011.

Figure 3: Atypical Employment in % of Total Employment 1999-2011 t n

e 43 m y

o 41 l p

m 39 e

l a t 37 o t

f o

35 %

n

i 33

t n

e 31 m y o l 29 p m

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l a c i 25 p y t 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 A Years

Germany United Kingdom

Source: Own depiction after Allmedinger et al. (2013, country tables).

10 3.2 The Power of the Unions: Development

To describe the general development of organised labour power, the percentage of unionised workers (of the total workforce) is often used as an indicator (Krings 2009: 169). Looking at Table 2, it is obvious that both countries underwent a decline in relative unionisation of the workforce since 1999, which fits in an often mentioned assumption of a serious “weakening of organised labour” (Krings 2009: 142). Thereby, the numbers of Germany are constantly lower than the ones in Britain.

Table 2: Trade Union Density in % of Labour Force 1999-2011

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Germany 25,32 24,57 23,75 23,51 23,02 22,17 21,68 20,72 19,89 19,13 18,93 18,56 18,05 United 30,13 30,18 29,55 29,28 29,56 28,86 28,42 28,06 27,88 27,08 27,08 26,36 25,62 Kingdom Source: Own depiction after OECD (2014, theme: Labour, subtheme: Trade Union). However, the data about the proportion of employees who are covered by collective agreements points to another direction (Figure 4). Although in general the number of employees covered is dropping in both countries since 1999, too, German trade unions are way better off concerning this factor. As we can see British coverage rates have already been very low in 1999 (ca. 37%) and dropped below 30% in 2012. In opposition, in Germany the rates are constantly much higher. Even in the eastern part of Germany, which in general has a weaker trade union rootage, collective agreements still cover 50% of all employees in 2012, starting by nearly 60% in 1999. The western part of Germany, which contains the vast majority of the total German population (Statistisches Bundesamt 2014), even covered 70% in 1999 and still holds 60% in 2012.

11 Figure 4: Collective Agreement Coverage in % of all Employees 1999-2012

80 %

70 n i

e

g 60 a r e

v 50 o c

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n 40 e m e

e 30 r g a

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C 0 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Year

United Kingdom Germany (West) Germany (East)

Source: Own depiction after Bispinck (2014, table 1.6), DBIS (2014, table 2.4b). Accounting for this stronger position of the German trade Unions, although the trade union density is quite low, is the higher institutional embedding in the political-economic system (Krings 2009: 65-67). Institutional resources, like statutory guaranteed rights or duties prevent trade union power (partly) to erode in times of declining membership (Krings 2009: 66). The ICTWSS database makes many of those institutional differences visible (ICTWSS 2013). For instance, in Germany the wage setting is strongly coordinated, follows formal and informal patterns and predominantly takes place at the sector or industry level. Furthermore, minimum wages are largely set by collective agreements between employers and unions, however, there is a possibility to extend those agreements (and minimum wages) to non-organised firms by public law. Finally, work councils have statutory guaranteed economic, social and codetermination rights and the social partners are partially involved in “government decisions on social and economic policy” (ICTWSS 2013: Codebook, page 17). Contrary to that, in the UK bargaining is fragmented, uncoordinated and predominantly at the company or local level (if at all). Additionally, there is no “legal provision for mandatory extension” (ICTWSS 2013: Codebook, page 12) of collective agreements. The national minimum wage is statutory and hence out of reach of the social partners, which are rarely involved in governmental policy decisions. After all, the work councils only have “information and consultation rights without judicial redress” (ICTWSS 2013: Codebook, page 18).

12 3.3 The Context of Labour Immigration

As Clark/Hardy (2011: 8) put it, it is quite difficult to measure the labour immigration from the NMS, mainly because states can constrain the labour market entry for the Eastern European workers, however, every EU citizen still enjoys the freedom of establishment (Lorenz 2010: 8). As a consequence not everyone who enters the country is going to work there, whereas many may enter the country as non-workers and start working at a later time, sometimes illegally, so the following numbers should be read as an approximation. Figure 5 shows the national insurance number (NINo) registrations of the NMS from 2004 and 2007 in case of the UK. A NINo registration “is generally required by any overseas national looking to work or claim benefits/tax credits in the UK, including the self employed or students working part time” (DWP 2013b: 1). Thus, it measures the inflow of working migrants, but does not regard the emigration or overall population and might even underestimate the real numbers. The data for Germany is taken from the OECD International Migration Database, and shows the inflow of the foreign population from the NMS countries, which is registered by a “residence and/or work permit” (OECD 2014, information on the International Migration Database). Since, it is not possible to distinguish between working and non-working immigrants, the data probably overestimates the immigrant workers. On the other hand temporary workers with a very brief abidance might be not included (OECD 2014, information on the International Migration Database). As we can see, the UK experienced a huge inflow of NMS workers, due to its open labour market policy in 2004. The numbers rose from below 50 000 (2003) to 250 000 (2005) and had their peak in 2007 with over 350 000 immigrants a year. Afterwards the figures fell back to 200 000 in 2009 and are slowly growing again since this time.

13 Figure 5: Immigration from the New Member States (NMS) 2002-2011

450000 400000 350000 S

M 300000 N

e h

t 250000

f o

s

t 200000 n a r 150000 g i

m 100000 m I 50000 0 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

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Germany United Kingdom

Source: Own depiction after OECD (2014, theme: Demography and population, subtheme: International migration database), DWP (2013). Differing from that, the German development already started with higher numbers in 2002 (150 000), presumable because of the geographic proximity (Lorenz 2010: 11), which grew constantly to nearly 250 000 in 2009, before they went up 150 000 persons in two years (2011: 400 000). The recent increase was probably supported by the end of the transitional constrains implemented for seven years on the ten EU accession countries of 2004. How did the public and the media react to this immigration? Clark/Hardy (2001: 4-5) analyzed the news coverage of the EU immigration from the middle of 2003 until the end of 2004. They found that the reporting often did not differentiate between , EU immigration or asylum seekers, but mixed it all up under the term “immigration”. Also some newspapers spoke in favour of the freedom of movement, the fear that immigrants might abuse the social security system was a frequently used topic. Clark/Hardy (2011: 5) conclude that the media had been hostile towards immigration in general and especially after the rise of numbers in 2004, and that this even influenced the (pro freedom of movement) Labour government to make some steps back. For Germany, Bauder (2008) analyzed articles from five major German daily newspapers published between July 2001 and August 2005 about immigration7. He states that their was a “strong media support for [skilled] labor immigration” (Bauder 2008: 72), but at the same time “at several points

7 It is important to note that Bauder (2008) searched for articles in relation to the new that was developed at that time and finished in 2005. However, as this dominated the debate on immigration it might give a good overview on the media perception of this theme, too.

14 during the study period, centrist newspapers presented immigration as a liability in a period of high unemployment. This representation of immigration was fed by fears that immigrants would either steal the jobs of German workers or become a burden to the welfare system. Occasional challenges to this negative representation of immigration were restricted to the left-wing press” (Bauder 2008: 72). Concerning the public opinion, Clark/Hardy (2011: 6) show that in the late immigration had not been that much of an important and negative issue to the people in Britain, but grew in importance and in negative perception since then. The international comparative study “Transatlantic Trends” conducted (telephone) interviews with around thousand people each in several countries from 2008 to 2011, Germany and the UK included, and ask about their stance toward immigration. As figure 6 shows, the support for the statement that “immigration is more of a problem than an opportunity” (Transatlantic Trends 2011: 5) in the UK has constantly been higher than 60%, whereas the numbers in Germany were always below 45%. Concerning the statement, that “there are too many immigrants” (Transatlantic Trends 2011: 6) in one`s country, the gap was even greater, with German numbers constantly below 30% and British numbers always above 55%.

Figure 6: Percentage of People believing that Immigration is a Problem and that there are too many Migrants in Germany and the UK 2008-2011

80 %

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i 70

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s 50

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40 g n i t

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Immigration as problem (Germany) Too many migrants (Germany) Immigration as problem (UK) Too many migrants (UK)

Source: Own depiction after Transatlantic Trends (2011: 5,8).

15 3.4 The Agency of the Unions

As Hyman (2001: 1-5, 66-142) shows in his seminal study about the diverse underlying conceptions of European trade unions, the German and the British movement came from very different directions. The British unions had a so called voluntary tradition, which means that “the state was reluctant to intervene directly in labour relations” (Hyman 2001: 69). Due to this very low level of regulation, there were for a long time no “positive right[s] to unionize, to bargain and to strike” (Hyman 2001: 69) and former prohibitions were just removed. As a consequence, e.g. “collective agreements [were] binding in honour only” (Hyman 2001: 70) and the whole trade union movement largely relied on its direct strength (that means strength in membership and the ability to mobilize them). In addition, the industrial relations where largely seen as an adversarial confrontation of strictly opposing classes (Hyman 2001: 119). In opposition, in Germany most of the time the “industrial relations might involve conflict, but within the framework of clear (and partly legally prescribed) rules of the game” (Hyman 2001: 120), as employers and unions where largely seen as social partners. This less adversarial notion was supported by a consensual framework about the main social goals shared by all actors, and by statutory guaranteed rights and institutions (like the work councils) (Hyman 2001:119-121). Trade unions, as Dörre (2013: 95-98) explains, from voluntarily traditions (i.e. without formally established institutions) are more likely to adapt faster to fundamental changes in their source of power (i.e. membership numbers), whereas institutionalised systems which (partly) conserves union power even if their foundation is shrinking, can lead unions to keep up to their old action strategies. This seems to happen since the power of the British unions had been seriously shrunken during and after the reign of the conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher (Hyman 2001: 110-11, and see chapter 3.1). British unions, facing stronger statutory restrictions of union activities and a huge loss in power, are now trying to find new ways to organize members, are increasingly regarding themselves as protectors of marginalised groups and are aiming at migrants as a new potential member group. Furthermore, ideology (e.g. living up to the ideal of internationalism and international solidarity or fighting racism and discrimination) is playing a bigger role compared to the times of greater involvement in “traditional” trade union activities like collective bargaining (Hyman 2001: 110-11, Clark/Hardy 2011: 16-20, Krings 2009: 173-78). Whereas there are some signs that German unions try to (slowly) develop such new strategies, too, they are in general keeping up to the traditional action strategies and institutions and thus to the national8 workforce as primary point of reference (Dörre 2013: 95-111, Krings 2009: 173-78). Organizing migrants and seeing themselves as advocates for minorities is not (yet) central to the German trade unions. 8 National workforce does include „native“ workers as well as long term foreign residents/workers (Krings 2009: 80).

16 3.5 Summary

After the confrontation with the empirical evidence in the previous subchapters, the question remains what we can make out of it. First of all, as already mentioned at other parts of the study, it is clear that the conclusions drawn here can just be understood as hints in a certain direction and should not be seen as ultimate results. One reason for that is e.g., that the complexity of the four factors has been reduced to few empirical graphs and tables, although one could easily argue about the appropriateness of the indicators (cp. Clark/Hardy 2011: 6, Penninx/Roosbald 2000: 12-17). Furthermore, the argumentation of the trade unions themselves about why they picked up a certain policy was not part of this study, although in a more detailed analysis it would probably be helpful. A third point of criticism may be neglection of an detailed analysis of the different direct statutory labour market regulation , e.g. through a statutory minimum wage, which is very likely to have a big influence on the trade union’s decision examined here (Krings 2009: 169-70, 184-85). Finally, a fruitful approach for future studies could be a historical comparison with the guestworkers period and the trade unions stances towards immigration in this time. Like the critics above, the explanation why this has not been done is the limited space of the study. Nevertheless, there are several provisional interpretations supported by the paper. First of all, the section about the economic and labour market factors revises a part of Krings` (2009) conclusion. Although he acknowledges that those factors alone cannot account for the variation in trade union policies, he still supports the notion that especially the unemployment rate is “one of the most important factor[s] that influences union attitudes towards an additional inflow of labour” (Krings 2009: 166). As Krings published his study in 2009 and was only able to look at the EU-Enlargements in 2004 and 2007 this conclusion seems plausible, since concerning the GDP and unemployment rate development the UK was way better off than Germany until 2008 (cp. Chapter 3.1). However, when the crisis brought Germany better numbers from 2009 until today, this did not seem to have any influence on the German trade union decision concerning the freedom of movement of Croatian workers in 2013; like the worse circumstances in the UK had no effect on the TUC`s policy, too. The assumption about trade union resistance towards east European immigration due to the fear of an emerging two-tiered labour market sits somewhat uneasily, too. One the one hand, although the shadow economy declines in both countries, the German numbers are still higher than the British ones and the “threat” of unregulated labour therefore might be more urgent to the German trade unions. On the other hand, the percentage of the atypical employment in the pre-enlargement period in Germany has been lower than in the UK. Though, whereas the British numbers were relatively stable until 2009, the German numbers have already been on the rise

17 during this period and that might have enhanced the urgency of the problem to the trade unions. This development may interact with the power variable (Chapter 3.2). Here the trade union density proofed to be an insufficient indicator, because in spite of an equally shrinking power foundation the German trade unions keep their seriously higher influence in traditional trade union activities like collective bargaining or involvement in political decision making. Nevertheless, the argument that this higher institutional involvement and thus the bigger responsibility for collective bargaining outcomes makes the German trade unions “fear” the potential negative impacts of immigration more than British counterparts, which are “relieved” from such responsibilities, seems further on plausible. In opposition, the context of labour immigration (at least in the sense it is understood here, cp. Chapter 2) does not seem to have a linear link to the trade union’s decisions (Chapter 3.3). Britain experienced an incredible inflow of migrants from eastern Europe in the aftermath of the enlargement in 2004, and although this (combined with an increasingly adverse public opinion) brought the government to step back from the open labour market policy in 2007, the trade unions kept up to their decision of supporting the free movement of labour. Contrary, a relatively immigration friendly public opinion in Germany did not keep the trade unions from supporting transitional constrains to the freedom of movement. Additionally, as rough as the analysis may have been on this point, there are no signs that the media reception of (EU-) immigration has been worse in Germany compared to Britain (if ever, it seems the other way round). To sum up, a simple causal chain which leads from a huge (perceived) immigration and/or an unfriendly media reception and/or public opinion to trade union opposition towards immigration, does not exist. Finally, the perception of the different trade union identities (and their crisis and developments in the last decades) seems an appropriate explanation for the differing approaches towards migrant workers and then again, the union’s decisions towards immigration. The German unions still stuck to a greater extent to the traditional and pragmatic trade union activities, institutions and ways of organizing their members, due to the just subtle shrinking influence. The British Unions, hit far more seriously by the anti- union government agenda since the late 70s (Krings 2009: 50), reorganized along more ideological lines, new forms of organizing, new activities and a new target group. Looking at the four factors submitted by Krings (2009) and Penninx/Roosbald (2000) and examined here, this study suggests that the interaction of the trade union power and the trade union agency is the crucial point to explain their position towards the free movement of labour in the EU. This is not to say that the economic/labour market factors or the context of immigration are without influence, however, their effects are not as apparent as one may assume on first sight and have to be examined in more detail in future research.

18 4. Conclusion

The study tried to explain the different stances trade unions in Germany and Britain hold concerning the free movement of labour for workers from the new EU accession countries in 2004, 2007 and 2013. Therefore it roughly compares the development of four factors (economic/labour market factors, the power of the unions, the context of immigration and the union agency) which have been identified as potentially important by former research. It concludes, that the power variable and the union agency (and the interaction between both) are the crucial factors for explaining the variation in trade union stances. Due to the limited space the study had to cut back on certain issues and had to deal with some aspects very roughly. Future research therefore should examine the factors investigated here in more detail and additionally take the sphere of statutory labour market regulation in account. Furthermore, taking a look at the self-explanation of the trade unions and enlarging the number of the countries examined, as well as the historic comparative perspective, seems a promising task.

19 5. References

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