Organizing a transnational hyper-mobile workforce in the Dutch construction sector1
By
Lisa Berntsen
email: [email protected]
Nathan Lillie
email: [email protected]
University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics and Business
Department of Global Economics and Management
for presentation at
Transnational Industrial Relations and the Search for Alternatives
31 May – 1 June 2012
University of Greenwich, UK
Abstract
The establishment of free movement of labour and services has facilitated an increase in
short-term cross-border labour mobility within the European market. This has driven the
growth of a transnational hyper-mobile labour force, particularly in the construction industry.
Organizing these workers is challenging for unions, as few native union members remain to
serve as an organizing base. In fact, on large construction sites, where the majority consists of
migrant workers, this membership base may be completely lacking. Dutch unions, and in
particular, the FNV, have developed strategies based on US model organizing, and applied
these strategies to successfully organize migrant workers in the cleaning sector. We will make
the case that although the cleaning sector experience does provide lessons for organizing
posted workers in construction, construction is fundamentally more challenging to organize
due to the pan-European nature of the labour market. While the union has adopted a very
proactive approach, combining rank-and-file organizing and legal servicing, success remains
elusive. The paper is based on interviews with union officials and migrant workers as well as
observations of and participation in union organizing tactics.
This research was funded by European Research Council Starting Grant #263782, “Transnational
Work and the Evolution of Sovereignty.” We gratefully acknowledge the interviewing assistance and
methodological advice of Erka Çaro, Ines Wagner, and Alex Veen in conducting the field work.
Thanks is due to our interpreters, Urszula Zelazek, Filipe Jesus de Montes, Piotr Zakrzewski, Murat
Shahinturk and Anna Rajtar, and to Nuon, the FNV and our interviewees, for their cooperation and
facilitation of the research process.
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1
Introduction
In recent years, the number of construction workers ‘posted’ abroad in the European Union
(EU) has risen, driven by the accession of Eastern European countries and changes in
regulation of intra-EU mobility. National labour markets are breaking into tiers, with
transnational migrants, employed through subcontractors, making up the lower tier. More than
any other industry, construction has been affected by this trend, with trade unions struggling
to maintain their influence over a labour market increasingly dominated by low-paid, nonunion, temporary workers, brought in by transnational work agencies and subcontractors.
While many trade unions, including the Dutch unions, have successfully applied the
“organizing model” to the organization of immigrant and low-paid labour, in construction it is
more difficult to generate a self-sustaining shop-floor organization, and the union has had to
maintain an on-going servicing role. We argue two main points 1) the difficulties encountered
organizing the posted workforce at Eemshaven construction sites in northern Netherlands are
symptomatic of the mismatch between the national scale of the construction labour unions,
and the pan-European scale of the labour market, and 2) in the circumstances encountered on
an international site such as the one in the Eemshaven, an ongoing servicing role for the union
helped to support the “organizing model,” by establishing trust relations with the workforce.
The Dutch building sector unions are well resourced and characterised by a strong social
partnership tradition and primarily servicing model. However, the Dutch FNV trade unions in
Eemshaven (Bouw and Bondgenoten) have, as far as possible, applied what are considered to
be state-of-the-art “organizing model” tactics for organizing and representing migrant
workers. These organizing tactics were adapted from those of the US unions, most notably the
SEIU, and were successfully tested by FNV Bondgenoten in a campaign to organize the
mostly immigrant cleaners at Schiphol airport, public railways and banks. In construction,
FNV Bouw and FNV Bondgenoten have put considerable resources into a bottom-up
organizing campaign, supplemented by an investment in on-site migrant servicing, to reach
migrant construction and metalworkers employed in the Eemshaven. They have also
attempted to exert influence directly through main contractors and through the media.
Legal uncertainty and the partial legal immunity from local labour standards provided by the
EU regulatory framework has been found to inhibit trade union representation of posted
workers in other cases (Lillie and Sippola 2011). The legal situation, per se is only part of the
problem in the Eemshaven; the main barrier to the successful application of the immigrant
“organizing model” has been the temporary and mobile nature of posted workforce, which
prevents workers from taking the personal risks involved in being or becoming a trade union
activist. Since the “organizing model” (Conrow 1991) depends on identifying and
empowering worker-activists to take a central role in their own representation, the hypermobility of the posted workforce seriously undermines prospects for achieving stable bottomup migrant unionism in the European construction industry.
Organizing Migrants
Willingness to represent them, however, is only one aspect of union relations to immigrants.
‘Like recruits like’ is a basic principle of the organizing model (Heery et al. 2000). Inclusion
of migrants in activist and leadership positions is a further and more difficult step but one
which is seen as important to successful recruitment and representation (Holgate, 2005;
Milkman, 2006). Migrant organizing therefore requires difficult organizational adaptations,
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although in the case of the FNV the political battle to make this possible seems largely to
have occurred before the Eemshaven case became prominent. Still, tensions remain, as can
be seen from the constant need to justify migrant organizing and servicing expenditures in
terms of the interests of current members.
In the last two decades, “union organizing research” has become an established literature
within international and comparative industrial relations. Together with the union organizing
tactics this research agenda investigates and promotes, it has expanded from its 1980s origins
in the peculiarities of the US union-election system across the Atlantic to the UK (Heery et al.
2000), across the Pacific to China (Mingwei, 2010), and across the English channel to the
Netherlands (Mundlak 2006), Germany (Turner 2009), and Poland (Mrozowicki, Pulignano,
and van Hootgem 2010). It is closely associated with idea of labour movement revitalization
through staff-initiated rank and file involvement, strategic unionism, corporate campaigning,
social movement linkages and similar (Frege and Kelly et al 2004; Brinkmann et al. 2008).
Two aspects of this debate concern us here: first, the application of the organizing model to
the Dutch context, and secondly, the special problem of organizing a transnationally hypermobile workforce.
The principle tactics of the “organizing model” were developed and tested in the United
States in the 1980s and 1990s, and came to be a dominant paradigm with the ascendency of
John Sweeney to presidency of the AFL-CIO in 1995. It was a reaction to more passive
organizing paradigms, which simply involved leafleting at the factory gates, or organizing in
“hotshops” where discontented workers clearly demanded elections. Key aspects of the
strategy included identifying worker-activists within target firms to build organizing
committees, relying on the workers for most of the organizing work, meeting with workers
away from the workplace, keeping the organizing secret as long as possible in order to avoid
management reprisals, emphasizing dignity and rights over bread and butter issues, and
seeking supermajorities in elections to counter the usual fall-off in support due to
management counter strategies late in the campaigns. Bronfenbrenner found, using AFLCIO about tactics and wins/loses in NLRB elections, that this bundle of rank-and-file oriented
tactics resulted in higher union win-rates than more passive traditional tactics
(Bronfenbrenner 1997). The NLRB election union system is unique to the North American
context (Canada has a similar system, but with election rules more favorable to the union),
however. Unions must collect sufficient signatures from workers showing that there is an
interest in union representation, and show these to the NLRB to schedule a vote. If more than
50% of the workers in the bargaining unit vote for union representation, then the employer
has a legal obligation to bargain with the new union. Presumably, then, a union organization
will form in the workplace and a collective bargaining agreement will be signed, although this
is not always the case, as many employers continue to oppose union representation even after
the election (Bronfenbrenner 2001). The structure of labor law incentives employers to
oppose unionization strongly, since it will likely raise labor costs. It also gives them
opportunities to do this, by allowing a period between the time management is aware there is
a union drive (after cards have been submitted) and the actual election: this gives management
a chance to launch an anti-union campaign of its own (Bronfenbrenner 1997; 2001).
This organizing model is counterposed with “servicing models” in a normative sense. In
order to “revitalize” stagnant organizations, unions need a ‘bottom-up’ or ‘social movement’
approach (Johnston 1994; Turner and Hurd 2001). Doing this, however, requires trade-offs in
terms staff orientations and union resources, implying substantial changes union structures,
personnel, and identity. The same staff well suited to servicing existing members are not
3
always the same types of people needed to persuade workers to risk their jobs, or to organize
street protests (Voss and Shermann 2000; de Tuberville 2004). Organizing is costly, both in
terms of union finances, as well as in terms of activists’ time and energy. However, our
evidence here suggests that servicing may be the only practical way to gain the cooperation of
highly mobile workers in maintaining labour standards, because in the context of
hypermobility there is no time to generate self-sustaining member-driven structures.
The organizing concept is inevitably context dependent: what union membership means,
when and how it can be obtained, and how unions go about representing workers are all
different from place to place. The original organizing model is clearly the product of the US
environment: low union density, few and weak legal protections, hostile employers,
workplace level bargaining, and legal channels for unionization focused around workplace
elections. Heery and Adler, in a five country study on organizing patterns, connect the
adoption of the organizing model with national institutions: in some contexts, focused
workplace campaigns to activate rank and file workers to obtain a collective agreement
simply makes no sense (Heery and Adler 2004). In the Netherlands, in common with
Germany and many other European countries workers already have a collective agreement via
legal extension, and can join the union whenever they like. Workplace campaigns might focus
on other issues (Mundlak 2007), or seek to establish workplace structures such as works
councils, as happened in the Schlecker campaign in Germany (Bormann 2008: 45-50). What
organizing actually means, what the goals are and which tactics are used depends very much
on institutional context, but the core idea of strategic, staff-driven engagement with rank and
file workers, with the goal of building power through increased activism, remains central as
both a methodology and ideology.
The organizing model is by definition about union-building among unorganized workers, and
therefore focuses in part – although not by any means exclusively – on more repressed and
marginalized groups. Organizing among immigrants and minorities therefore features strongly
in the literature (Holgate 2005; Milkman 2000; 2006) Although trade unions have a history of
contentious and contradictory relations with immigrant communities (Virdee 2000), based on
contradictory imperatives to exclude from the labour market and to organize and represent
them (Penninx and Roosblad 2000), it is now accepted that immigrants are often quite eager
to join unions, although unions must sometimes adapt their strategies and structures to be
attractive for them (Milkman et al. 2000; Milkman 2006).
Posted workers, and similarly employed hyper-mobile migrant workers on contemporary
European construction sites, are another story. These face uniquely difficult organizing
conditions, including linguistic, physical and social isolation, a full range of employer
reprisals, insecurity and dependence in a foreign environment, and limited access to labour
rights in a de jure sense and even greater limitations in a de facto sense. Unions have not had
much success in organizing them, even in contexts where union organization is very strong,
such as in Denmark and Finland, where unions rely on secondary industrial action to defend
their legally extended collective agreements (Eldring et al. 2012; Lillie and Sippola 2011;
Lillie 2012). Innovative projects to provide specialized servicing structures such as the
German European Migrant Works Union, and thereby attract them into membership have
failed (Greer, Ciupijius and Lillie 2013). More successful have been Norwegian efforts,
which engage and mobilize posted workers in ways similar to those suggested by the
organizing model; these, however, are in perpetual tension with the ephemeral nature of the
construction industry which tends to erode organizing gains quickly (Eldring et al. 2013).
4
Method
This article presents a case study of two construction sites in Eemshaven. The case is based
primarily on (participant) observation of FNV organizing tactics and on interview data, from
interviews and group discussions with workers and trade union officials, supplemented by
media and government reports. Case studies are the best method for researching power
relations and complex social interactions, particularly where these are in flux (Kitay and
Callus, 1998) and new theory is needed (Eisenhardt, 1989). This is the situation in
construction, where national institutions are being undermined and the line between legal and
illegal or formal and informal employment is blurred. Official data sources and statistics are
unreliable or unavailable and in any case do not address the key question of this study: why
do trade unions have such difficulty in representing posted migrant workers?
We focus on the construction industry. This is not the only industry with a pan-European
labour market, but in construction the transnational labour supply system is at its most
developed. Because of the way construction is organized, project sites are where the dynamics
affecting posted workers – relations between main and sub-contractors, workers, lay
representatives and unions – come together. The Eemshaven makes a suitable research
context because the Dutch unions are applying what is considered to be state of the art
immigrant organizing tactics. Workers in the Eemshaven construction sites mostly fall under
the jurisdiction of the FNV Bouw or FNV Bondgenoten (for metalworking trades). The Dutch
FNV unions recognize the issues at stake and have developed sophisticated organizing and
servicing strategies to address them.
In 2011 and 2012, interviews were conducted with over 100 workers of different nationalities
(Polish, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch, Italian, Slovakian and Irish) staying at temporary
housing near the construction sites, with 5 union officials and activists in the local Groningen
region and at the national office, with a representative of the construction employers
association from the regional office, with a works councillor from a subcontractor firm, with a
manager of a contractor firm and of an agency firm, and with management from the Nuon site
(RWE declined requests for interviews). Interviews with unionists, employers’
representatives, the works councillor and management were conducted as “expert” (or “elite
(Dexter 1970)) interviews, while interviews with workers were conducted as “ethnographic”
interviews. Expert interviews are interviews in which informants, who usually have formative
and interpretative power about their industries and topics, “teach” the interviewer about the
topic under discussion (Littig, 2009). Ethnographic interviews seek to find the meaning in the
everyday activities of the interviewee, by asking them to describe their situation. The
distinction between the two types of interviews is not absolute, as both types of information
can be gleaned from either type of interview, but in general the interviews are clearly different
in character, falling into one of the two categories. The interviews were conducted in various
languages, and interpreters were used when necessary (which was often the case for worker
interviews). Many interviews were recorded with the permission of the interviewees; others
were conducted with the interviewer taking notes. The various trade union activities that we
participated in and/or observed were captured in extensive field notes that were written
shortly after joining the activities. The interviews were stored and coded using MaxQDA
qualitative data analysis software. All interviews are anonymized in order to protect the
informants.
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The Eemshaven case study took place in the context of the larger project, Transnational Work
and the Evolution of Sovereignty (ERC Staring Grant #263782), which looks at posted work
in a variety of contexts around Europe.
Dutch union framework and bargaining context
The Netherlands is considered a corporatist model of industrial relations and in general,
employers and employees in the Dutch construction sector show a high organisational degree
with good social relations and constructive dialogue (EFBWW, 2009). The Netherlands has a
strong tradition of social partnership, with high degrees of consensus, cooperation and
coordination between state, capital and labour (Marino, 2012). Collective labour agreements
are generally concluded at the sectoral level and legally extended. Dutch trade unions play an
important role in the national socio-economic decision-making process, even though union
membership rates have never been high. In the 1950s membership rates reached their peak
with 40 per cent membership coverage, but this rate has been falling since to 23 per cent in
2003. Trade unions in the Netherlands have a strong institutional position. Union federations
often cooperate closely in consultative bodies, such as the Social Economic Council (SER) or
the Joint Industrial Labour Council (Stichting van de Arbeid, STAR). The SER is the official
advisory council of the government for the socio-economic domain, in which both trade union
and employers association representatives as experts appointed by government take seat. The
government is required by law to ask advice of the SER about socio-economic policy
measures. In the STAR employers organisations and trade unions develop agreements about
socio-economic policies that may advise the government as well (Roosblad, 2000). The strong
institutional position of Dutch trade unions is not dependent on their capacity to mobilise
workers. Since unions do not need a certain membership rate to become recognized as a
bargaining agent, incentives for organising are relatively weak in the Netherlands
(Kloosterboer, 2007; Marino and Roosblad, 2008).
In the construction sector, trade union density is relatively high with 37 per cent (in 2004, Van
Cruchten en Kuijpers, 2007) compared to average 23 per cent of overall trade union density in
the Netherlands (Grunell, 2008). This high rate is a consequence of a system that ended in
2000, where unions had a representative at the local level involved in the execution of social
security programs. This representative maintained intensive contact between union and
employees and thus allowed for more continuous membership recruitment (Van der Meer,
2003). The main union confederations in the Netherlands are the social democratic Dutch
Federation of Trade Unions (FNV, Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging) with almost 1.4
million members and the Christian Union Federation (CNV, Christelijk Nationaal
Vakverbond) with more than 335.000 members. CNV Vakmensen is the biggest union of the
CNV (135.000 members) and represents amongst others construction workers. FNV Bouw
(almost 124.000 members) represents construction workers and FNV Bondgenoten (476.000
members) amongst others metalworkers. Workers’ representation in the Netherlands is
traditionally the strongest at sectoral level (through collective labour agreements and other
forms of self-regulation) and relatively weak at the company level. This is related to the
Dutch trade union tradition that shows a stronger focus on collective labour agreements than
on representation on the shop floor (Sol, 2009; Sol and Houwerzijl, 2009). Representation and
employee participation at company levels is arranged through works councils. Firms with
more than 35 employees are required to have a works council. The main employers’
association in construction is Bouwend Nederland (5000 members).
6
Social partners in construction, FNV Bouw and CNV Hout and Bouw and Bouwend
Nederland, have established an independent compliance office Technic Bureau for the
Construction industry (Technisch Bureau Bouwnijverheid, TBB), responsible for checking
compliance with Dutch collective labour agreements. The agency branch has a similar selfregulatory body, the SNCU (Stichting Naleving CAO Uitzendkrachten, Foundation
compliance CLA for temporary agency workers).
The Dutch construction industry is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises. The
national market remained insular until the 1990s (Van der Meer, 2003; Houwerzijl, 2004).
This may have been because of the national minimum wage, and because of Dutch tendering
practises. Developers often only invited a limited number of firms to put in a bid for prequalification, and Dutch language of communication was often a requirement. This restricted
access of foreign companies to the Dutch construction market (Houwerzijl, 2004).
Nevertheless, with increased European integration, construction sites in the Netherlands have
opened up to foreign labour. In 2004 and 2005, construction experienced a ‘flexibility boom’,
where the number of self-employed, temporary and foreign workers, and foreign
subcontractors rose significantly (Bosse and Houwerzijl, 2006). The Netherlands opted for a
transition period of restrictions on labour mobility for citizens of new EU member states,
which ended in 2007 (2014 for Bulgaria and Rumania).
The inflow of foreign labour challenged Dutch trade union representation, which traditionally
has been characterized by a strong servicing model. Initiatives that were developed towards
migrant workers often had a top-down character as they were developed at the confederal
level (Connolly et al., 2011). In 2005, the FNV published a desk study that argued for a need
to redefine themselves, which was inspired by innovative trade union strategies from abroad.
Issues that were deemed important for the FNV were organising of new groups of people,
such as young workers, non-standard workers, but also ethnic minorities and immigrant
workers (Connolly et al., 2011). Especially the affiliate union FNV Bondgenoten became
prominently engaged with the organising approach adopted by the SEIU in the United States.
SEIU officials that had been involved in successful organising campaigns trained Dutch
unionists in organising tactics (Mundlak, 2007). Organising, however, is a change from the
traditional cooperative and non-confrontational strategies that have characterised the Dutch
union movement for a long time (Connolly et al., 2011).
Organizing in the Netherlands: the ‘Schoon Genoeg’ (‘Clean enough’) campaign
The ‘clean enough’ campaign was launched in 2007 and is considered a unique campaign for
the Netherlands, since it is a breach with the traditional social partnership union model.
Though the cleaners campaigned for an increase in pay, the campaign was phrased primarily
about respectful treatment of cleaning staff. The campaign combined grass roots organizing,
direct action and broad coalition forming to pressure employers and their contractors. It was
modelled after the SEIU’s successful ‘Justice for Janitors’ campaign and SEIU activists
helped to train FNV staff around organizing. The ‘Justice for Cleaners’ campaign in the UK
also provided the FNV with tactics and strategies such as workplace mapping, targeting and
‘shaming’ client companies of cleaning contractors (Connolly et al., 2011). Transnational
learning was thus an important aspect in the setting up of the cleaners campaign in the
Netherlands.
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Specially trained FNV organizers started mobilising employees in the cleaning sector from
2007 onwards. This was done by visits to the worksite and the homes of workers. At the
worksite organizers had to tread careful not to raise suspicion of supervisors. The union
encouraged self-organization and the formation of leaders at the workplace level. Leaders at
the workplace were also mobilised further by involving them in the campaign and training
them at the union offices. This mobilised a large movement. The high levels of resources that
were allocated to building up self-organization amongst cleaners combined with a strong
commitment of union organizers are considered key to the success of the cleaners campaign
(Connolly et al., 2011).
In 2008 the campaign reached its first success, when an agreement was concluded on higher
wages, vocational training, language courses and more transparent collective agreement
(Connolly et al., 2011). Still the cleaners campaign nowadays is primarily associated with two
successful prolonged strike actions, one of nine weeks in 2010 and the 2012 strike that lasted
fifteen weeks. This has been the longest strike action in the Netherlands since 1933. The
campaign addressed the competitive market mechanism in the sector and held client firms
responsible for the fierce tendering processes that were fought over the heads of the
employees. Instead of targeting the contracting companies, the campaign targeted client firms.
Client companies that were targeted were NS-Nedtrain (public railways), Schiphol airport and
banks.
From our perspective, the interesting aspect of the campaign is the way the FNV successfully
mobilized a large group of cleaners of different nationalities. These workers often did not
have strong Dutch skills, and did not always share a language with each other. Like the posted
workers, they were also working under temporary contracts. In the beginning, they did not
have a natural collective at the workspace. Nonetheless, they enthusiastically fought together
to improve their position at the bottom of the labour market (Heuts, 2011). Both of the
cleaners’ strike actions resulted in improved working conditions. The 2010 campaign received
an international “best union campaign” award from the services sector Global Union
Federation, UNI. Connolly et al. (2011) argue that the campaign was such a success because it
engaged with the workforce in novel ways. The cleaners campaign did increase FNV
Bondgenoten membership, but this turned out to be a onetime increase only. So far, it has
been the only successful organizing drive in the Netherlands.
Despite obvious parallels with the cleaners’ campaign, the application of the same tactics to
the posted worker situation has met with little success. We argue that this is a structural
problem related to the hypermobility of the workforce. The situation of the cleaners has some
similarities to that of the construction workers: they are also recent arrivals in the
Netherlands, on temporary contracts, and usually working for subcontractors rather than client
firms directly. However, unlike the posted workers, the cleaners expect to stay and therefore it
was possible for the FNV to help them build their own workplace union structure. For the
posted workers, the scale of their labour market (pan-EU) is too large to make investment in
building a Dutch-based union structure, it is not worth the effort and risk it would involve.
A hyper-mobile transnational workforce in the Eemshaven
The Eemshaven is an industrial harbour area in the north of the Netherlands. The former
Dutch energy firm Nuon, now owned by Swedish Vattenfall, is building a gas fuelled energy
plant. Construction began in 2008, but was delayed for over a year because of permit issues.
8
Construction resumed at the end of 2009 and the plan is that the energy central will be in
operation at the end of 2012. Next to the Nuon site, the German RWE is constructing a coal
and biomass fired energy plant. The RWE plans to finish construction in 2013. The area was
recently coined the energy port of the Netherlands, because of the large investments in energy
made here. RWE invested around 2.6 billion, the Nuon circa 1.8 billion.
Nuon has contracted the construction of their energy plant out on a turnkey basis to the
Japanese Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi has chosen four contractors for the construction of the actual
plant. Ballast Nedam, an internationally operating Dutch construction firm and one of the
main players on the Dutch construction market, is responsible for the civil works. For the
mechanical installation Mitsubishi chose the established consortium FIP, consisting of
Dutch/Belgian Fabricom, Italian Irem and French Ponticelli. This consortium recruits their
labour mainly via agency firms. The FIP consortium employs several nationalities, but the
main groups originate from Portugal, Poland, Italy and France. Two other contractors of
Mitsubishi are ABB who is responsible for electric and NEM for the kettle works. These
firms form the top of the contracting chain, but under them a variety of subcontractor and
agency firms are active. In February 2012 around 2400 men were working on the construction
site. The official language of communication on the Nuon site is English, meaning that for
foremen and managers, English language ability is required. Workers at the lowest level of
the job hierarchy do not need to know English, and usually don’t.
The RWE uses its own engineering team to construct its power plant. They have 70 direct
contractors and these contracting parties themselves hire subcontractors or agencies to
perform the works. The RWE energy plant will be run on two kettles that are 110 metres high,
higher than the Martinitower in Groningen. The main language of communication on the
RWE site is German. Main nationalities on the site seem to be German, Polish and
Portuguese. The estimated of number of workers at the peak of the building process is around
3000 workers.
The labour power that is used to construct both energy centrals is accommodated in the
Groninger province, the region that surrounds the Eemshaven. Groningen is one of the
smaller provinces of the Netherlands and one of the least densely populated. Groningen is the
only city in the province with around 180.000 inhabitants. The people that work on the
construction of the energy plants need to be accommodated in the region, because the
majority originate from abroad. Even Dutch workers that are working there usually live close
to the work site during the week, because it is located too far from their homes. There are
some larger accommodation facilities, where workers are housed in containers. The Nuon has
workers hired by consortium FIP housed in a container park that can accommodate up to 1200
workers. Other than that, hotels, holiday parks, group accommodations, or unused houses are
put to use to accommodate the workers of the Eemshaven. Labour turnover rates are high on
both construction sites, and the composition of the people living at particular accommodates
changes quickly. A former school building for example in one of the towns in the province
Groningen has been the home of Portuguese, Turkish and Polish workers for distinct periods
of time. This keeps changing in line with the construction process that requires certain kinds
of workers for particular parts of the construction.
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Changing union strategy
For the FNV, the Eemshaven represents a unique challenge. The workforce does not belong to
any Dutch unions,. Although there have been other sites in The Netherlands where posted
migrant construction workers have worked, none have been comparable to the Eemshaven, in
terms of the scale of the project, its relative isolation from the Dutch population centers, and
the fact that the major contractors were all foreign-owned operations. This means that
Eemshaven is a pilot project for the FNV, as there is no playbook available on how to
approach such sites. The strategies they have chosen are taken from their past experiences:
bottom up organizing similar to that attempted in the cleaners’ strike, and maintaining a
constant, visible union presence on the site, providing labour rights information, arbitration,
and legal representation in order to demonstrate to the workers their effectiveness in
protecting their rights.
Earlier FNV Bouw, FNV Bondgenoten and two FNV affiliated unions representing selfemployed workers established a project called FNVopdebouwplaats (FNV at the construction
site). This projects strategy was to establish a central contact point on the site for all workers
employed there. The FNVopdebouwplaats campaign’s intention was to re-establish a trade
union presence at the actual places where people work in construction. By doing this, they
could enhance the unions’ accessibility and visibility. It also provided a basis for union
coordination because in construction projects, workers increasingly fall under the jurisdiction
of unions other than the FNV Bouw. The Eemshaven, nevertheless, required an even more
specific approach because of the limited amount of Dutch workers there and the limited initial
access to the site and workers.
Recruitment: the problem of hypermobile workers
As has been observed in other countries around Europe, posted workers are usually only
inclined to join the local union when they have a serious problem with their employer,
ensuring that representing them will be expensive; workers who do not have such problems
do not join or pay dues (Lillie and Greer 2007; Lillie and Sippola 2011; Wagner and Lillie
2012; Greer, Ciupijus and Lillie 2013). This is also a dilemma which confronts the FNV at
Eemshaven; several unionists told us that the few posted workers that become members’
usually require (legal) assistance. Although formally, workers only have a right to receive
legal services after they have been paying members for one year, in fact the FNV has been
willing to overlook this requirement at Eemshaven, when it seemed strategically important to
do so. The decision to actively represent these workers is not uncontested however:
So basically most of … well 70% of my colleagues say ‘This guy is not a member
of us, so we won’t help him’. These Poles are not our business. All we have to do
is make sure that they don’t earn … they’re not supposed to be cheaper than the
Dutch guy that is a member because we don’t want them to push our people out of
the market. That is our interest, our main interest as a union. And there’s a few
people, like (…) they say you know, we have to do something for these people too
because they will be our new crowd. That’s the ones that we’re supposed to
represent. And you know, it’s a dilemma, we’re right in the middle of it.
FNV official 1
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So far the FNV has remained committed to servicing the posted workers in Eemshaven in
hope of attracting them as members, and in order to prevent undermining of local wage
standards. However, it is also clear this represents a drain on the union resources, as the
posted workers do not contribute resources.
The Effect of the EU Regulatory Framework
The European Union has, as a matter of policy, promoted free movement within Europe, on
the grounds that it increases economic efficiency. This promotion of free movement,
combined with large east-west wage differentials, and an industry structure in construction
which facilitates transnational subcontracting, has resulted in a pan-European labour market.
Construction sites around Europe have turned into international pot-pourris of different
nationalities, with work teams of coming from all over the EU and beyond. These workers
may work under contracts from their home country, from the country where they work, or
even a third country – a Flag of Convenience, chosen by the employer because of its
favourable regulatory environment. Most of these workers are there to work and earn; they
have little contact with the host society, prefer long overtime hours (as long as they are paid
for them, which is not always the case), and are in a position of dependence and vulnerability
vis-à-vis their employers.
This vulnerability is exacerbated by the fact that as part of the promotion of mobility, EU
legislation and jurisprudence constrain the right of member states and trade unions to regulate
mobility and labour conditions, because these can serve to constrain labour mobility by
removing the cost advantage of firms employing low wage workers. The EU politics of labour
mobility in construction have revolved around a series of cases before the European Court of
Justice (ECJ), the 1996 Posted Workers Directive, the 2004 accession of Eastern European
countries to the EU and the 2006 Services Directive. In 1996, the EU passed the Posted
Workers Directive, establishing that posted construction workers are entitled to the statutory
minimum conditions of their host state or sending state, whichever is better from the worker’s
perspective. The directive was seen at the time as establishing a ‘host country’ principle in
employment relations in construction, which has since been reinterpreted by the ECJ in
precisely the opposite direction. In four recent decisions, the court supported the practical
implementation of a ‘country of origin’ principle by asserting that union or government
regulation of labour conditions at foreign service providers constitutes a violation of the free
movement rights set out in the EU's founding document, the 1957 Treaty of Rome (Hyde and
Ressaissi, 2009).
The country of origin principle encourages firms to base themselves in or subcontract
activities to, countries with favourable regulatory regimes while providing services anywhere
they like. There is an assumption of extraterritoriality for capital behind the way ‘freedom of
movement’ is interpreted, enabling firms carry with them home country practices and
regulatory frameworks as they move across national boundaries, unregulated by local
authorities and trade unions. The rest is that, in legal terms at least, intra-EU migration of
individuals and migration as posted workers are regulated under EU law via separate
channels. Those who migrate as individuals are regulated under EU frameworks for labour
mobility, while those who are posted are regulated as dependent employees of service
providers, even though both kinds of workers compete in the same labour and product
markets (Dolvik and Eldring, 2008, p.51-52). Our research suggests that this situation creates
11
a great deal of confusion about workers’ legal rights under labour law, but it is this confusion
more than the actual differences in rights which undermine efforts at representation.
The majority of the foreign workers in the Eemshaven are employed there via agencies and/or
are posted by construction contractors. Finding out the legal employment conditions of these
foreign workers is often very complicated, as is finding out the conditions which should
apply. Of course, many of these workers of the foreign workers in the Eemshaven are not
familiar with Dutch labour regulations and are therefore unacquainted with this set of legal
rights. However, even labour lawyers who are experts in the subject sometimes disagree in
specific cases what law applies, making it very difficult to find out the set of rights to which a
given worker is actually legally entitled. The FNV has found that this confusion is a barrier to
organization and representation. One official told us:
So every time you have to figure out exactly what is the law that applies to this
person. You know, does he have a Dutch contract? Does he have a Polish contract
or a Romanian contract? Is he even under EU law? And that makes it almost
impossible for us to really organise these people.
FNV official 1
The experience of the unions has been that transnational agency workers are particularly
difficult to reach and help (interview FNV official 5). In general principle, if the firm is
established in the Netherlands, the relevant labour law is Dutch. If it is foreign, there will be a
combination of rights referring to the law of the Netherlands, the EU, and the home country
where the sending firm is established (not necessarily where the worker was sent from). Firms
are not always helpful in finding out the applicable rules for their workers, and don’t always
seem to be familiar with them themselves.
Finding a Way In
Among temporary migrant workers, host country unions lack the automatic legitimacy
enjoyed by unions which can tap into political, professional and workplace identity. Unlike
with native workers, with posted workers, the union has to earn their trust and demonstrate
that it is capable of representing them vis-à-vis their employers. Earlier, at other sites, the
FNV tried to recruit temporary foreign workers as members, and failed. FNV officials
attribute this to a lack of trust (interview FNV official 2).
The first tactic to get in touch with the foreign workers at the Eemshaven was leafleting at the
gate. The union printed flyers in various languages informing the workers about minimum
wages and working conditions in the Netherlands. Leafleting is considered a rather passive
organizing tactic, but it was considered necessary to ensure that the posted workers were
informed of their labour rights. Some of the flyers emphasized the systematic differences in
pay between the different nationalities at the sites; these seemed to be quit effective, as
several workers we interviewed mentioned that they had found out about the pay
discrimination via the union leaflet. Still, the leafleting did not get the union the information
and contacts it needed.
In Dutch firms, the union would try to spread information via their membership base on site.
This is something FNV also tried at Eemshaven. They contacted members working for Dutch
firms active in the Eemshaven. However, there were just a few, and these only stayed there
12
for short periods of time and could not help the union much with organising. Some
nevertheless did help gather information about employment contracts:
They [posted workers] obviously heard that I am active in the union (…, and) then
more and more people came to me crying. Also at the worksite. And of course
they [management] were watching me: am I talking with people or not? [As] they
should [continue] work[ing]. So I had to be really careful.
Dutch trade union member
To get more information a team of active union members and union officials went to the
housing and construction sites to conduct a small survey about working conditions. An
organizer followed the buses carrying the workers from between the construction sites and the
housing sites and mapped out their locations. The survey turned out to be an ineffective way
of gathering information. The workers who filled out the forms simply wrote that they earned
minimum wage and not much useful information was obtained this way.
The next step was organizing visits to the housing sites with groups of unionists and
volunteers (usually former kaderleden, or lay representatives). They usually took colleagues
proficient in the languages of the workers with them from other union offices as the
Groningen office at the beginning of their campaign was not staffed with personnel proficient
in the native languages of the major groups working in the Eemshaven. With housing visits
the union hoped to approach the workers in a more comfortable context so that the workers
would be open to talk. Still, they found at the housing sites that the workers were often afraid
to talk to them. There were cases where employers had forbidden workers to talk to the union,
and cases where an accomplice of an employer was living among the workers. Workers also
often showed distrust with their housemates, as these might tell on them. Moreover, it is
possible the workers distrusted unionists as well. Information gathered through these visits
was limited because the workers frequently told the unionists that everything was in order and
that there were no problems with their employment conditions. Trust turned out to be a major
issue in building relationships with these workers.
The need for a more constant presence on site motivated the union to move back to a strategy
more like that the of the FNVOpdebouwplaats campaign, scheduling regular office hours at
one of the larger accommodation sites for workers from the Nuon site and also on the RWE
construction site. With regular office hours, the union was able to better inform workers about
employment conditions and create awareness of their activities because more workers would
see their physical presence.
Well, what I have learned is that we [as union] have grown to be very distant from
the people at their workplace. This is both the case at [FNV] Bondgenoten with
installation technicians and at [FNV] Bouw with the construction workers. And
what we do in the Eemshaven is that we very intensively try to be [present] at the
construction site, by trial and error. Yes, I think that is fairly unique, at least for
us, at this moment.
FNV Official 3
Most of the workers at the bottom of the contracting chain do not speak any but their native
language. The FNV has to employ organizers with the language skills to communicate with
the foreign work force. To this end the union hired two networkers with language skills of the
largest groups of foreign workers in the Eemshaven, namely Polish and Portuguese. A lot
13
depends on these organizers, since they are the ones that need to convince workers to hand in
their pay slips for the union to inspect. Since the unions have so far not had much success in
improving employment conditions on the site (this depends either on the outcome of pending
court cases, or on the eventual success of their attempts at mobilizing workers), they do not
have direct evidence of what can be achieved, making it difficult to convince workers to
cooperate. Some workers see this lack of visible success so far as evidence that the unions are
ineffective:
“There were unions, quite active ones, but it seems that nothing came out of it. I
don’t know what the factors were. Perhaps too few people enrolled to the union.”
[research assistant:] “Aha.”
“They are here quite often, I think every Monday, once a week.”
[research assistant:] “We saw the announcement.”
“Exactly, there is often some info around and so on. They spread flyers, but in
general it doesn’t create any changes for us.”
39-year-old Polish electrician, employed via a Portuguese agency
Besides the language barrier, the other major difficulty in establishing trusting relations with
this workforce is high labour turnover rates. Most foreign workers are employed for short
periods of time, often no longer than three months. The temporary nature of their stay limits
their interest in taking action to change their working conditions.
I haven’t seen the union here. But I would be interested if only I would have a
longer-term contract.
57-year-old Portuguese electrician, employed via a Portuguese agency
Providing information and representation services to workers who only become members
when they have a serious problem, however, is not a sustainable model for trade unionism
(Greer, Ciupijus and Lillie 2013). The FNV has therefore sought to generate active
involvement by the posted workers in their own representation. The aim is also to find keyworkers that can take over much of the organizing effort, so that it will become more of a
bottom-up organized endeavour. The language and hyper-mobility barrier complicate group
organizing. Nevertheless, it is the most effective way to change employment conditions and it
is something the union is also trying.
In general, the workers seem interested in information about their legal rights. Often when
they start, there is a lot of interest, but this diminishes after a while. The importance of
informing the workers about their rights is that the union hopes the workers will take action
when they know that their conditions are not in order. However, most workers do not take this
next step because they are afraid they will lose their jobs. For the union, this is a problem
because they need the proof of non-compliance with Dutch collective labour agreements:
copies of contracts, pay slips and hour registrations. However, many workers express that
they will only do that if they are certain that the union can help them and they themselves will
not suffer repercussion of employers.
[go to] the union? But how would that help me? Only that they will fire me the
next day.
43-year-old Polish scaffolder, employed via a Dutch agency firm
14
In the beginning, it proved impossible to get even a minimal level of cooperation from the
workers, but apparently the unions’ persistence is paying off. The union seems to have made
headway in organizing a group of more than 600 Polish posted workers who are working in
the Eemshaven for more than six months, all for the same company. The fact it is a large
group makes it easier. Often when workers are employed via agency firms, they are only
small groups. They have little leverage and are easily replaced.
And small groups are very vulnerable. I also have the feeling, yes, if you do
something there… my own experience is that we haven’t been able to change a
lot, for the people themselves.
FNV official 5
It is also difficult to mobilise a small group of workers, because there less of a group effect,
where strongly motivated workers are able to convince their colleagues. The union has
therefore concentrated its efforts on informing and mobilise this larger group of workers.
After informing the workers through their on-site office at RWE, the FNV Eemshaven hosted
a meeting at the union offices in Groningen where they presented about Dutch labour rights to
around 100 employees of this firm. During this presentation the union emphasized the need to
take collective action. The workers were told that only through acting as a group, would they
have the power to ensure their employer would respect their rights. Nonetheless, although
many workers seemed on the verge of taking action, they also remained afraid they would
lose their jobs. Several workers asked the union how they could guarantee that they would not
lose their jobs. One worker expressed his concerns that everyone who signed their names on a
petition would get fired. The union had to stress several times that they would not reveal the
names to their employer. Another worker expressed his concerns that there might be snitches
at the meeting.
There are thus lots of hurdles a union has to cross to mobilise these hyper-mobile
transnational construction workers in taking action. With these workers they have seemed to
have crossed one of those hurdles, as they have been able to get them interested and coming
to meetings. However, whether they can continue to overcome their fear to build momentum
and pressure the employers is still an open question.
Relations with the contractors
The FNV Eemshaven has maintained relations with the main contractors on the Eemhaven
construction sites from the very beginning. Despite the use of rank-and-file focused
organizing tactics, the Dutch social partnership tradition is still reflected in their approach.
When issues arise, the union tries to resolve them via dialogue with employers, often
appealing to the social responsibility of the main contractor to insure good working conditions
in the contracting chain. The Eemshaven projects have received substantial bad press in the
Netherlands for their poor labour relations, and the union has used this as leverage. Pressure
tactics, such press coverage and court cases, are used when the dialogue fails to produce
concrete results. For example, FNV Eemshaven and RWE concluded and agreement at the
end of 2011 in which the union agreed that it would bring complaints to the RWE first, before
taking them to the media. They agreed RWE to facilitate negotiations between the union and
the firm being accused of labour violations. The union and the RWE contributed to a fund to
pay for legal fees, so that workers could take negligent employers to court.
15
Taking employers to court, however, does not produce quick results. Although individual
workers may receive money owed them in the end, quick results would be needed to
demonstrate the unions’ effectiveness to the Eemshaven workforce. FNV Eemshaven has
brought several cases to court, but before these cases bring results, the workers will have
moved on to work at other sites.
The largest problems with employment conditions are to be found among transnational
agency workers. These workers are managed by a contractor, but their employment
relationship is with a work agency from another country. Similar to the cleaners’ campaign,
the union focuses on pressuring the client firm, which the union hopes will force the agency
to make changes. However, in one case on the Nuon site, when FNV Eemshaven did this for
workers working for transnational labour suppliers working for a contractor of Mitsubishi, the
workers involved lost their jobs. In the media, the unions’ demonstrated that the work agency
was discriminating on pay according to nationality, and not paying wages in accordance with
Dutch collective labour agreements. A Dutch pipefitter earned 13,13, a Portuguese pipefitter
10,10, and a Polish pipefitter 9,54 euro per hour. After half a year of negotiations with the
union, the contractor decided to stop working with those particular labour suppliers, and to
only work with labour suppliers who abide by Dutch regulations. The union attributes this
success to media pressure, and an appeal to the firms desire to show themselves as socially
responsible. Masja Zwart, one of the union officials involved in the Eemshaven campaign, in
a FNV press release: “It is ridiculous that multinational firms, such as Nuon and main
contractor Mitsubishi, tolerate these abuses. Who pays, determines [the employment
conditions]. These developers accept that Dutch collective labour agreements are undermined.
Is this corporate social responsibility?” 2 The action was effective in terms of maintaining
standards, but it did not bring anything to the workers involved that had spoken up about their
situation. Instead, they only lost their jobs because their contractual employer was sent away.
(…) the [client firm] just to get rid of the problem and not to help us, (…)
pretended like nothing was wrong. They did not take responsibility. (…) They
just dumped us.
50-year-old Polish pipefitter, employed via an agency that got send away
The strategy of working directly with contractors close to the top of the contracting chain
seems to have brought some results. A Dutch agency has received requests to supply
labourers to the Eemshaven, because it is able to guarantee that their contracts are in
accordance with Dutch labour standards. A Polish firm contacted the union for advice on how
to set up legally sound posted employment contracts for Polish workers in advance of sending
them to the Eemshaven. Nevertheless, these kinds of successes may not help to build a strong
rank-and-file organization, because they do not involve mobilizing workers directly, nor do
they help to demonstrate the unions’ effectiveness at consolidating gains or protecting
workers who speak up.
Discussion and conclusion
The organizing goals from the Eemshaven campaign are twofold. Most minimally, the union
wants workers to provide information about their own wages and conditions, to be aware of
press release (24-02-2012) on the FNV website:
http://www.fnv.nl/pers/perskamer/persberichten/120224FNVsignaleertopenlijkediscriminatieopdebou
wplaatsEemshaven/
2
16
whether these are in compliance with Dutch minimum standards and with equal pay
principles. If non-compliant practices are found, the union uses social dialogue style
negotiations, media pressure and judicial proceedings to enforce abidance with Dutch labour
standards. On a more ambitious level, the union wants workers to join the appropriate FNV
union, thus showing their collective support for maintaining wage standards. The first goal
seems achievable, on at least some level – although posted workers are relatively tolerant of
sub-standard employment conditions, when there are serious violations they approach the
union. Motivating them to take a more proactive stance, to build the collective power to
improve pay and conditions above the bare minimum, however, seems unlikely. This is
because of the temporary and insecure nature of their employment.
If workers’ can organize, they collectively reap the rewards, but the costs and risks of
organizing fall mostly on the union activists, a classic collective action problem. The
organizing model deals with this problem by seeking out those workers most likely to be
willing to bear those costs and risks, and most able to inspire their colleagues to do so as well.
However, developing such leadership takes time, which posted workers do not have. Since
their stay is temporary, taking action and organizing themselves is often too risky from their
perspective. Most workers have a well-founded fear of victimization by their employers if
they complain about employment conditions. Without the union showing that they can
effectively change employment conditions (in a short period of time), and protect workers
who complain, collective action is unlikely to happen. The FNV in the Eemshaven therefore
has to maintain on-going servicing practices to gain workers’ trust and simultaneously try to
mobilise them to build pressure on the employers.
While the cleaning sector experience clearly provided the FNV with a valuable repertoire for
approaching the posted workers at the Eemshaven, the challenge of organizing posted
construction workers is of a greater order. Higher language barriers, extremely high labour
turnover rates, and a weaker labour rights regime are fundamental differences between
organizing migrant workers in the cleaning sector, and in construction. The importance of the
intention of workers in cleaning to settle in the Netherlands cannot be overstated, as this
intention was manifested in those workers investment in improving their work environment.
Dutch language training was even one of the demands in the cleaners campaign. Their interest
in learning Dutch meant there was a smaller language barrier, and although the cleaners’ work
contracts were also temporary, most cleaning workers expected to continue in the cleaning
sector more or less indefinitely. The Eemshaven workers, in contrast, will not stay there
beyond the length of the project, nor do they expect to have a lasting relation with the
Netherlands. One could argue that in such a situation union building is a Quixotic exercise –
although they might succeed in protecting their rights better at this one job site they will soon
be gone, and so will their union.
The case shows the clear limitations of the “organizing model”. However, organizing model
tactics provided the FNV unions with a useful repertoire for the Eemshaven – focused effort
to pressure employers via a combination of tactics can pay off in terms of improvements for
workers, although the resource investments needed to do this may not be sustainable over
time and on a larger scale. Reaching out to the workers, keeping organizing efforts secret
from management, mapping the power structure and applying pressure where the power is
most centralized, have all been crucial to what success the unions have had at Eemshaven.
Fundamentally, however, the case clarifies the fact that the FNV unions, like all construction
sector unions in Europe, are operating at the wrong scale. Workers come and go so quickly
that there is no time to overcome the very substantial challenges and organize them. Without
17
transnational union cooperation and coordination the benefits of organizing hyper-mobile
workers will evaporate once the workers have moved on to sites in other countries. One way
to avoid this could be mutual recognition of union membership, which is for example the case
for members of construction unions in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Otherwise, no
matter how well developed and aggressive the tactics, or well resourced the organizing drive,
any successes the unions have will be temporary and will disappear when the workers
involved leave, as they inevitably will.
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