Abstract
This article traces the course of a transnational action in the German meat industry involving an alliance of transnational posted workers, a local civil society organization and the trade union NGG (Gewerkschaft Nahrung-Genuss-Gaststätten). As labour’s channels of influence have broken down and posting of low-wage workers has intensified, trade unionists have responded by building coalitions with societal actors. The case illustrates a complementary approach to studying how resistance unfolds in transnational workplaces under conditions in which traditional avenues for protest are blocked or marginalized.
Introduction
In the European Union posting of workers has become a standard way for firms to reduce wage costs. ‘Posted workers’ are a type of labour migrant sent by their employer to work temporarily in another EU Member State. So far, this workforce has remained largely outside the scope of host country trade union representation. The high labour turnover, language barriers and limited union resources complicate the development of solidaristic relations between unions and posted workers (Wagner and Lillie, 2014). This article examines recent efforts to embed posted workers in collective representation in the German meat industry. While earlier literature argued that German trade unions are unlikely to form coalitions with other civil society organizations because of their strong institutional position (Krings, 2009; Baccaro et al., 2003), it is exactly these kinds of coalitions that seem able to build relations with posted workers and integrate them into the host country’s institutional framework.
Most of the insights concerning how trade unions try to organize this workforce stem from the construction industry (Berntsen and Lillie, 2014; Greer et al., 2013; Eldring et al., 2012; Kahmann, 2006). By contrast, we know very little about transnational employment relations and trade union–posted worker interaction in the meat industry. However, the precarious employment of posted workers is a striking feature of this industry (Sebastian, 2014). This article aims to fill this gap. Based on an in-depth case study it explores the employment conditions of posted workers in the meat industry and highlights the conditions under which resistance can evolve in these transnational workplaces. Here an alliance between transnational posted workers, a local civil society organization and the trade union NGG resisted precarious management practices. This article addresses the following questions: Under what conditions are posted workers able to exercise voice when traditional channels of representation are absent? How can we explain a shift by the trade union to interact with civil society actors? And under what conditions are these coalitions successful?
The findings contribute in a number of ways to an emergent literature discussing innovative union strategies toward labour migrants based on within-country differentiation (among them Bengtsson, 2013; Tapia and Turner, 2013; Hardy et al., 2012; Lillie and Greer, 2007). The article first highlights sectoral dynamics that explain the strategic shift from social partnership to coalition-building. Secondly, it demonstrates the conditions under which such coalitions emerge and are successful. Thirdly, it illuminates how posted workers can be embedded in the host country institutional system and voice concerns in situations in which traditional channels of representation are inefficient. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of engaging with migration and its different configurations in relation to industrial relations, an area too often neglected by industrial relations scholars (McGovern, 2007).
Trade unions and migrant labour: national or sectoral determinants?
In the research on trade union and migrant organization in the EU there is a lively discussion on whether national or sectoral dynamics can account for trade union responses to migrant work. On the one hand, research has shown that the national institutional framework shapes how trade unions respond to the inflow of labour migrants and their often-precarious workplace situation. Krings (2009) in a cross-country study highlights noticeable differences between the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Ireland in the ways the respective trade unions engage with labour migrants. Trade unions supported by a strong institutional framework in Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs), it is argued, remain in a more institutionally entrenched position toward migrant workers. Their organizational structure is embedded in collective bargaining coverage, political clout and a corporatist political system with influence over policy-making. This infrastructure propels unions to strengthen state supervision and control wage and working conditions instead of actively organizing migrant workers by, for example, forming coalitions with other societal actors (Krings, 2009: 61). By contrast, trade unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland have actively pursued organizing tactics due to the lack of a strong institutional frame. Alho (2013) supports this argument, emphasizing the fairly restrictive Finnish trade union strategies toward migrant workers arising from their institutional strength within a CME. In essence, trade union strategies are related to the degree of their institutional strength in a national setting.
On the other hand, a growing literature emphasizes the need to complement national variation in union positions with sectoral variation as a structural explanation of union choice (Bengtsson, 2013; Hardy et al., 2012; Bechter et al., 2011). For example, Hardy et al. (2012) suggest that the focus on the national level tends to exaggerate cross-national diversity. Their research on German and Norwegian trade union strategies towards migrant labour suggests that sectoral dynamics and agency of individual trade unions shape their responses. In a similar vein, Bengtsson (2013) analyses the strategies of three Swedish unions toward EU migrant workers in three sectors. He too emphasizes sectoral influences on unions’ strategic choices concerning how they will interact with labour migrants. Therefore, the results contribute to the debates on trade union strategy more generally in light of an increasingly diverse workforce (Vandaele and Leschke, 2010; Greer, 2008; Kinderman, 2005). In Germany, the comparative institutional tradition bases its analysis primarily on large manufacturing firms (Greer, 2008) within the context of the bounded nation state. However, also important are differences within countries (Bechter at al., 2011; Artus, 2007) and within transnational contexts.
Traditionally, the construction sector has attracted most labour mobility. Much of what we know about the factors that influence trade union efforts to include labour migrants in their organizational domain stems from case studies in the construction sector. We have insights on how migrant workers face precarious employment conditions in the European construction industry (Wagner and Lillie, 2014; Berntsen and Lillie, 2014; Cremers, 2011) and trade union strategies for including this workforce (Connolly et al., 2014; Greer et al., 2013; Eldring et al., 2012; Kahmann, 2006). Recent advances have been made in examining how trade unions in different sectors, such as transport and manufacturing, adopt strategies that may not be in line with common insights derived from cross-national studies (Bengtsson, 2013).
In the German meat industry the situation of migrant workers is generally precarious. Belgium, France and Austria have already accused Germany of unfair competition due to employing posted workers on ‘dumping’ wages (EFFAT, 2013). Moreover, French workers took to the streets to protest against social dumping in the German meat industry because it hurts jobs in France (Blume, 2013). Even though social dumping has caused havoc across the EU we know very little about the conditions under which trade unions strategize in this sector to counter it. If differences between sectors are arguably becoming more important to explaining trade union strategies it is necessary to understand how trade unions interact with posted workers in the German meat industry.
Transnational posting and labour power in the German meat industry
In the EU transnational subcontractors are allowed to ‘post’ workers from lower-wage to higher-wage countries under the free movement of services. These so-called posted workers move as employees of service providers. While the rights and employment relations of labour migrants who move individually are governed by the host country framework, the regulatory context for posted workers is more complex. Posted workers are regulated under the free movement of services instead of EU rules on migration. As a result, their employment relationship is embedded in (at least) two national contexts and social security contributions are paid in the country where the service providing firm is based. While migrant workers are regulated within the EU supranational framework, posting follows a transnational pattern because the posted workers’ employment relationship in the host society is mediated by their employer instead of by the host country (Lillie, 2011). Posting of workers has become increasingly important since eastern European enlargement due to socio-economic differences between EU Member States.
The meat industry in Germany has used posting extensively since 2004. Between 2001 and 2012 the sales of the German meat industry increased from €21.6bn to €36.7bn, while the employment of workers subject to social security payments in Germany decreased by almost 30 per cent, from 175,000 to 143,000. During the same period the number of posted workers in meat factories increased from 6000 to 40,000 (Brümmer, 2014). In this process the meat industry has seen a reduction in the number of companies accompanied by expansion of a few large companies, with little or no communication between them and no existing industry association for sectoral bargaining (Sebastian, 2014: 20–21).
One reason why transnational subcontracting arrangements have been used increasingly is the absence until recently of both sectoral minimum wages for the German meat industry and a nationwide statutory minimum wage. In 1996, the EU adopted the Posted Workers Directive, as implemented by the German Posting Law (Arbeitnehmerentsendegestz), establishing that posted workers are entitled to a set of statutory minimum working conditions such as the minimum wage regulation of the host state. The particularity of the Germany Posting Law is its limitation to certain sectors, instead of the whole economy, in which the hard core rules and collectively agreed wage standards hold for posted workers. While the construction sector was included in the Posting Law from the start the meat industry is set to be included 10 years after eastern enlargement in 2004. However, the most important regulatory content of the German Posting Law is the provision of minimum wages. Due to the long absence of a sectoral minimum wage its inclusion in the Posting Law was mainly ineffective (Czommer and Worthmann, 2005).
The NGG faced strong employer resistance to industry-level bargaining, culminating in the dissolution of the employers’ association in the sector, depriving the union of a centralized counterpart at the bargaining table (Behrens and Pekarek, 2012). Moreover, works councillors have no right to engage with posted workers or co-decide whether subcontractors are employed, which means there is little labour influence over subcontracting at all. This has created workplaces in which ‘home country’ conditions apply to the posted workforce. For example, a Poland-based company can legally offer to send its employees to Germany to process a certain amount of meat in a certain amount of time at a German slaughterhouse. Its employees perform their work in the German company, but their wages and employment rights refer back to the sending country standards instead of to the rules of the Posted Workers Directive.
Research methods
This article focuses on the German meat industry because posted work is increasingly used in this sector to cut labour costs and undermine worker voice (Krings, 2009). The study is based on 37 in-depth interviews with posted workers from Poland, activists from a local community initiative, NGG staff, works councillors and management from the main contractor. In addition to these interviews, several afternoons were spent at the workers’ housing sites and at the activists’ housing site where group interviews were conducted. The research data were stored and coded using MaxQDA qualitative data analysis software. All interviews are anonymized in order to protect the informants.
This case study is embedded in the context of a four-year study on posted work in the meat and construction sector in Germany and is part of a larger project comparing posted work in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and the United Kingdom (ERC Starting Grant #2637820). While the limitations of this study as a single case are readily acknowledged, it nevertheless has value as an example of union organization growing out of civil society activity, and illuminates workers’ social relations and lived experiences. In this respect, it contributes to a growing body of qualitative studies concerned with highlighting unorthodox trade union strategies toward EU migrant labour (for example, Alho, 2013; Bengtsson, 2013; Connolly et al., 2014; Eldring et al., 2012; Greer et al., 2013) which is useful for generalizing for theoretical ends (Gerring, 2004).
Transnational action in the German meat industry
Power relations in transnational workplaces
The case discussed here involves a group of 82 Polish posted workers working for a Polish company in a German meat factory. Their employer was a second-level firm subcontracted by a first-level German agency. The factory had 1100 employees in 2012, 50 per cent of whom were core personnel and the other half externally employed. Of the external employees 90 per cent were subcontracted and 10 per cent agency workers (Interview management 2012). The largest nationality groups of posted workers are Polish, Romanian and Hungarian (Interview works councillor 2012).
The transnational workplace in which the posted workers worked can be described as a highly flexible labour market, with low levels of job security and pay, and fluid composition of the workforce. The segmented nature of the industry makes possible the creation of ambiguous employment relations in which illegal practices, discrimination and exploitation are rarely noticed due to the divided labour force (Wagner, 2014) and their isolation from the main contractor’s works council. In fact, neither management nor the works councillors of the main contractor were aware of the existence of the second-level subcontractor and the working conditions of its workers.
The details of the workers’ grievances were many but essentially concerned underpayment, highly flexible working times, employment insecurity, lack of proper work clothes for the cooling chambers and substandard housing arrangements, not to mention the fact that they shared apartments with accomplices of management whose task was to oversee them. Solidarity was difficult to establish within the work team because of high labour turnover and due to management oversight in their apartments (Interview Polish posted workers, 2012). Moreover, the workers were engaged in industrialized work for the first time and had no prior experience of collective action. Such attitudes worked in concert with workers’ unfamiliarity with the union structure in Germany, fear of employer retaliation and the lack of appropriate contacts (Interview Polish posted workers, 2012). Employees had few options for expressing discontent other than unilateral exit. The material motivation of taking up work in Germany, related to paying off debts, experiences of unemployment in the home country and being able to finance medical procedures of family members increased the workers’ dependency on the job. The low-skilled nature of their work put them in an extremely poor bargaining position (Interview Polish posted worker, 2012).
A ‘moment’ of transnational action
The labour practices in the meat factory received local and, later on, national attention when the posted workers shared their grievances with a local community initiative. The local initiative was created in 2006 and consists of 10 volunteer activists who also finance it. Most of the volunteers are employed in the care sector. From the outset the local initiative was scandalized by the arbitrariness of companies and entrepreneurs in relation to their employees in the region of North Rhine Westphalia. It has organized public solidarity around and supported local work disputes on, for example, the unlawful termination of works councillors or the use of ‘one-euro jobbers’, 1 exerting media pressure. While the community initiative has had experience in mobilizing workers and in creating public solidarity, it had not yet interacted with hypermobile EU workers.
The activists are trade union members themselves, which partly motivated their interaction with the posted workers. The posted workers’ housing sites were in the same town in which two of the activists from the community initiative lived. The story begins when two activists became aware of the posted workers’ situation by chance. One activist, a Polish native speaker, overheard a conversation involving the Polish posted workers in a local shop and started to talk to them. In the opinion of the activist trust was established because of their shared nationality and language and, having immigrated herself to Germany many years ago, the workers regarded her as a confidant (Interview community initiative 2012). Meeting a fellow Polish native speaker acted as a catalyst for the workers who shared their grievances about their work and living conditions. However, after the initial chat the workers did not want to act further on their situation. Nevertheless, the two activists decided to try and mobilize the workers.
The initiative informed the NGG union from the beginning about the workers’ situation. Ideological positions influenced the likelihood of the emergence of the coalition. The activists are themselves trade union members. They believed it to be important to include the NGG in the process. Together they decided that the community initiative would try to establish further contact with the workers and keep the union informed. The initiative sought contact with workers over a period of several months by repeatedly visiting their accommodation and distributing flyers with information about workers’ rights. Finally, contact with a group of six workers was established by entering the accommodation without management noticing. The workers trusted the two activists and repeatedly visited the activists’ home on Sunday afternoons. Together they looked at their contractual situation in order to decipher what rights the workers had and how they could claim them (Interview community initiative 2012).
In response to the precarious working situation and the workers’ dependency on the employment the initiative, together with the NGG, decided on a strategy to exert media pressure and organize strike action in front of the meat factory. However, the management response to the media pressure made the planned strike action superfluous. The media strategy was to ‘shame’ the employer but also to publicize the workers’ substandard living conditions in housing owned by a municipal building company. Moreover, the initiative created an online database with detailed information on the main contractor, the subcontracting firm, the municipal housing company and employees’ testaments about their deficient working conditions. The aim was to document the situation, but also to create easily accessible information for the media and political actors. Addressing local politics was thus an essential strategy. With the workers’ consent the activists released a press statement about the workers’ precarious working and living conditions. The local and national media responded immediately.
While the workers’ initial step to alter their working conditions was to meet secretively with the community initiative, the transformative act was to speak out in a TV documentary made by a national public broadcaster. While one worker agreed to give an anonymous interview in front of the camera, others distracted management and guarded the door, in order to allow the journalist to film their apartment. Both the documentary and the media coverage by local and national media included the ‘shaming’ of the main contractor, as well as bad publicity for the municipality that hired out the flats to the Polish subcontractors. In the meantime the community initiative and the NGG prepared for a long battle that would bring company abuses to the public eye, embolden employees and force major concessions on their behalf.
However, after the airing of the documentary on nationwide television the main contractor terminated contractual relations with the Polish subcontractor. At this point the NGG became more formally involved in the process and organized a meeting with the main contractor and the subcontracted workers at the company in order to clarify their grievances and negotiate the further employment of the workers (Interview NGG 2012). The outcome was the takeover of the whole workforce by the German agency firm that previously contracted the Polish subcontractor. The workers were now employed under a German agency contract instead of a Polish subcontract. Here the agency collective agreement 2 (between the IGZ and the DGB) applies which entitles workers to an hourly wage of €7.89.
From the workers’ point of view the material gains – in this case higher wages and improved employment and living conditions – were significant. Moreover, workers did not need to feel threatened or intimidated by management anymore, and had a fixed monthly income and proper working clothes. Despite the fact that they were still used as a highly flexible source of labour, the workers appreciated that their work schedules were not as unpredictable as before and that their employment contract was prolonged for one month. Their employment context changed from being excluded from the host country institutional framework to being included through their employment by a German agency firm. Taking further legal action against the employer would have jeopardized the workers’ future employment and therefore outweighed their gains.
From the local to the national
Much of what happened in this case – the coalition between the NGG and civil society, the extensive publicity and the employees’ involvement – is increasingly being used in other regions in Germany in which meat production is located. For example, in Lower Saxony priests, ministers, politicians and community leaders are involved in extensive publicity that includes the ‘shaming’ of large meat companies employing posted workers under precarious working and living conditions. This media publicity has led to the creation of two service centres within the region funded by the Lower Saxony Land. The service centres are established within civil society organizations where project workers with relevant language skills inform posted workers about labour law and social legislations in their native language and across sectors. The project workers cooperate with the NGG on a daily basis. This development is in fact part of a wider trend in Germany to establish coalitions between trade unions and civil society organizations in order to build solidarity with the posted workforce. The German Trade Union Federation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund – DGB) has responded to the increasing number of posted workers by establishing ‘fair mobility’ centres to provide information and help to posted workers (Interview Faire Mobilität 2013). The interaction between posted workers, the NGG and various civil society actors has led to the employment of a previously posted Bulgarian worker as a contact person for the posted workforce in the area and a link between them and the NGG.
The media pressure not only led to the establishment of service centres for workers but acted as a catalyst to get employers to the bargaining table. In response to the public debate a new employers’ organization was formed that started negotiations with the NGG to agree on a minimum wage in order to restore the meat industry’s reputation. In January 2014, an agreement was reached introducing a minimum wage as of July 2014, starting at €7.75, slightly below the national minimum wage of €8.50, to come into effect in January 2015. The necessary precondition for its application to posted workers was its inclusion in the German Posted Workers Law in order to declare it as universally applicable.
Explaining transnational action and institutional change in the German meat industry
It has been argued that the institutional embeddedness of German unions and a ‘framework of employment law [that] has remained broadly supportive’, restrains unions from seeking coalitions with community organizations, mobilizing workers without using the usual tool of strike action and framing issues in terms of social justice (Frege et al., 2004: 146; Baccaro et al., 2003). A more recent stream of literature maintains this argument with regard to trade unions and EU migrant labour. It is said that trade unions in Germany are unlikely to change their modus operandi in response to EU labour migrants because they have a strong institutional position and therefore refrain from building coalitions with civil society organizations (Krings, 2009). Even as membership declines there is little incentive to change union strategy because labour protection remains intact.
The case discussed here supports a different view. First, posted work in the German meat industry illustrates not only how the German institutional system has changed but rejects the German institutional framework and social regulation wholesale by embedding posted workers in an institutional system other than the German one (Wagner and Lillie, 2014). Secondly, the industrial relations system in the German meat-slaughtering and meat-processing sector corresponds less and less to the image of an institutionally embedded German trade union secured by a stable framework of employment law. This points to within-country differentiation of power resources in relation to the bargaining power that trade unions can mobilize in relation to employers and the state (Korpi, 1998: 54). In the meat industry, as employers have broken with patterns of cooperation and transnational workplaces have increased, the NGG has sought alternative forms of leverage. The case can help identify the conditions under which trade union, posted worker and community coalitions can emerge (see below).
In contrast to established German labour practices based on relations of social partnership, punctuated by occasional episodes of collective bargaining conflict, this campaign favoured extensive media publicity, social coalition-building and local political pressure. In that sense certain features resemble the logic of so-called community unionism. This approach maintains that unions should form coalitions with other progressive social forces (Johnston, 2002). Wills argues that these campaigns need to draw on a ‘wide diversity of actors with a multiplicity of interests’ (Wills, 2008: 320), which would include trade unions and community organizations.
As Staggenborg (1986: 374) points out, ‘understanding… the conditions under which coalitions emerge and succeed in advancing movement goals is crucial’. The conditions influencing the coalition were, among others, related to a shared ideology (McCammon and Campbell, 2002). The community initiative was sympathetic towards trade unions and thought it crucial to establish the connection. Moreover, the trade union appreciated the work done by the initiative because the union itself faced several constraints. In case of resource shortage, groups may seek out coalition partners because an alliance with another group can sometimes provide them with the means to accomplish their goals (Almeida and Brewster Stearns, 1998: 40). For the trade union it can be problematic to interact with posted workers because of language differences and hiring additional personnel is often not possible due to budgetary constraints (Interview NGG 2013). Cooperating with other organizations helps to solve this problem. For the initiative, drawing on union information materials and knowledge is beneficial.
Moreover, the weak political position of the NGG has encouraged it to seek partners in order to push its agenda. In certain cases, a lack of political opportunities may spur coalition-building (McCammon and Campbell, 2002). The trade union in the case discussed here started to look for alternative sources of power by building such coalitions with societal actors and by finding issues that appeal to the broader public. Extensive publicity included the ‘shaming’ of the German main contractor by drawing attention to new forms of ‘slavery’ within a highly industrialized country such as Germany, calling for a wider understanding of social inequality. Furthermore, publicizing the municipality’s role in providing housing to the workers’ employer helped to apply local political pressure. The success of the efforts by all sides was strongly influenced by a social-justice framework that won media attention and broad public support. This development may prove problematic when the mass media seeks to build its own agenda instead of acting as a mere instrument or resource for activists. This is likely to privilege certain groups over others and affect the chances of success (Blanco, 1997).
The mobilization of posted workers in this case depended on the flexibility of the community initiative, language skills and trust related to a certain extent to a shared identity. Another important catalyst was that the community initiative served as a shield for the workers’ anonymity. While the trade union can generally protect anonymity, it has to reveal the workers’ identity in, for example, more formal legal proceedings due to the absence of collective redress in Germany. Nevertheless, it was important that the NGG stepped in formally to negotiate the takeover of the workers with the employer because it was able to draw on experiences with employers’ negotiations and established contacts with the main contractor. New experimental strategies may aim not only to revitalize previously existing institutions but also to build them (Turner, 2009: 308). Due to the nationwide effort to increase media pressure on politicians to act by exposing workers’ precarious employment and living conditions, regional government funded service points for posted workers and the employers formed an association that negotiated a sectoral minimum wage. These actions also helped to put the issue of statutory minimum wages firmly on the political agenda (Behrens and Pekarek, 2012).
These findings contribute to a recent but growing literature that examines within-country differentiation and reveals blind spots in comparative cross-national perspectives. Recent findings in different institutional contexts such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Netherlands point to similarities concerning how trade unions form coalitions with civil society actors to mobilize previously unorganized groups of workers (Bertossi, 2010; Gumbrell-McCormick, 2011). Trade unions in the United Kingdom advocate community-based approaches (Lier, 2007). Fitzgerald and Hardy report that the most innovative union strategy used to engage EU migrant workers evolved out of wider coalitions at the local level. Trade unions have forged new links with local councils, NGOs and members of the established Polish community and churches (Fitzgerald and Hardy, 2010).
Dutch trade union and posted worker interaction showed that modes of mobilization such as media exposure and access to new resources and instruments of power also required coalition-building (Berntsen and Lillie, 2014). In France increased alliance-building between trade unions and other civil society actors has been observed to counter exploitative practices affecting posted workers (Lefebvre, 2006) and immigrant workers alike (Tapia and Turner, 2013). Trade unions in Germany have adopted similar organizing tactics to those found in the United Kingdom to incorporate contingent workers in collective channels of representation (Vandaele and Leschke, 2010). The different findings point to how unions mobilize ‘invisible workers’ in the face of increasing employer opposition (Baccaro et al., 2010). These case studies can enhance our understanding of the opportunities and challenges for unions and workers in an era of increased labour mobility.
How can we evaluate these new coalitions? The first issue concerns the durability and permanence of these relationships. In the case of transnational posted work the short-lived transnational action was effective because it was able to address the immediate needs of the posted workers. On the one hand, their employment contract was extended for one month but their employment status afterwards remained uncertain. On the other hand, their ‘lived experience’ can still be classed as a low-paid, easily replaceable source of labour and the contact between the union, the community initiative and the workers disintegrated. In that sense they are not comparable either in scale or stability to US-style social movement unionism (Fine, 2006). Similar to research carried out in the Dutch and Spanish construction sectors (Berntsen and Lillie, 2014; Meardi et al., 2012) this case can be categorized as servicing the immediate needs of mobile workers instead of building sustainable solidarity.
Nevertheless, some of these workers may have gained valuable experience in collective organization and may be more predisposed to collective orientation in their next employment (MacKenzie, 2010). In that sense, even short-lived transnational labour alliances could still be useful for the purposes of transnational action (Brookes, 2013). After all, transnational solidarity does not develop automatically, but is the result of concrete struggles (Bieler et al., 2014). While economic competition is certainly an obstacle to union action, it may also initiate it because unions were in any case founded as a counterforce to the commodification of labour (Erne, 2010). However, it is too early to determine the exact impact and durability of these coalitions as a response to the new mobility of labour.
Conclusion
The contributions of this article are threefold. First, it contributes to the debate on the interactions of institutions and union activism with regard to the issue of EU labour mobility and social dumping. Similar to insights from the construction, transport and metal sectors in various EU Member States, the article accounts for sectoral dynamics that explain within-country instead of national differences. These insights are able to portray a microcosm of the conditions under which resistance may unfold in poorly regulated workplaces where traditional avenues for protest are blocked or marginalized and contribute to development of theories in this area. Secondly, it does so by examining the dynamics in the German meat industry where social dumping is widespread and trade union and migrant worker interaction have so far remained largely absent from the debate. Thirdly, it discusses the conditions under which coalitions between the trade union, community initiatives and EU mobile labour can emerge.
In the case studied here, several conditions underlie the emergence of the coalition. The preconditions of cooperation were the need to share resources; the possibility of dividing the work according to ability/expertise; and the weak bargaining position of the NGG. For posted workers it was possible to exercise voice in the absence of traditional channels of representation because of the time-intensive and flexible approach on the part of the community initiative, as well as shared language skills and to a certain extent a shared identity. Overall, the success of the effort on all sides was strongly influenced by a social-justice framework that won media attention and broad public support, including from local politicians.
Similar coalitions are forming in Germany in relation to migrant workers and contingent workers more broadly. This is also happening in other EU countries. This suggests that the findings presented here may be representative of broader trends in the EU labour market, whereby loopholes in the regulation and the growth of weakly organized sectors call for a more nuanced understanding of labour differentiation. Acknowledging different forms of labour differentiation is a key step for industrial relations actors so that they can support alternative modalities of resistance in poorly regulated workplaces. Future research may further investigate whether these practices will undermine or coexist next to more traditional forms of resistance and whether new alliances can be formed in this process.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements and funding
I would like to thank the interviewees and interpreters. I am grateful to Andreas Bieler, Knut Kjeldstadli, Roland Erne, Sabina Stan and the other participants in the conference ‘Labour and Transnational Action in Times of Crisis’ held in Oslo, Norway. I would like to thank Maite Tapia and two anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments. This research is part of the ERC Starting Grant #2637820–funded project ‘Transnational work and the evolution of sovereignty’. The principle investigator is Nathan Lillie.