Migrant Workers
and their Families in Northern Ireland
A Tr a d e U n i o n Re s p o n s e
Robbie McVeigh
A research report for ICTU
Migrant workers are an asset to every country where they bring their
labour. Let us give them the dignity they deserve as human beings and
the respect they deserve as workers.
Juan Somavia, Director General of the ILO
More must be done to ensure the respect of the human rights of Migrant
Workers and their families, be they regular or irregular, documented or
undocumented. The International Convention on the Protection of the
Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families established
for its ratifying countries the obligation to respect the core human rights
and fundamental freedoms of Migrant Workers and members in their
State of immigration. It is a vital part of efforts to combat exploitation of
Migrant Workers and their families.
Kofi Annan, Secretary General, United Nations,
18 December 2003, International Migrant’s Day
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
3
Glossary
4
A2
The A2 countries are Romania and Bulgaria the most recent
accession states to the EU.
A8
The A8 refers collectively to EU accession state countries Czech
Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and
Slovenia.
ANIMATE
Action Now to Integrate Minority Access to Equality
EEA
Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein plus all 17 full members of the EU
are full members of the European Economic Area and The Free
Movement Of Workers agreement. The A8 countries are not yet full
members of The Free Movement of Workers Agreement.
EFTA
Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein and the EU15 are
members of the European Free Trade Association and are all
members of the Free Movement of Workers Agreement.
ETUC
European Trade Union Confederation
EU
European Union. There are 17 full members: Spain, Portugal, France,
Ireland, The UK, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria,
Germany, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Finland and Denmark as well as the
accession states Cyprus and Malta. These countries are all full
members of the Free Movement Of Workers Agreement.
GFA
Good Friday Agreement
ICFTU
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
ICTU
Irish Congress of Trades Unions. Congress is the largest civil society
organisation on the island, representing and campaigning on behalf
of some 770,000 working people. There are currently 56 unions
affiliated to Congress, north and south of the border.
ITUC
International Trade Union Confederation
ILO
International Labour Organisation
NICEM
Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities
NICICTU
NICICTU is the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of
Trade Unions. It represents the combined interests of 33 individual
trade unions and over 215,000 workers.
OFMDFM
Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister
STEP
South Tyrone Empowerment Programme
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
Contents
Executive Summary
6
1. Background to the Research
8
Introduction
Background to the ICTU research
Literature on Migrant Workers
2. Context
14
Migrant Workers – the International Context
EU Context
British and Irish Policy Context
Northern Ireland – the Policy Context for Migrant Workers
NICICTU and Migrant Workers – Policy and Practice
Migrant workers in Northern Ireland – Existing Research and Demography
3. Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland – the ICTU research
39
Employment-related issues
Relationship with trade unions
Recruitment agencies
Other work-related issues
Issues for families of Migrant Workers
Racism and Sectarianism
4. Lessons and Models for the Trade Union Movement
53
What encourages Migrant Workers to join a trade union?
What is to be done? Economic Justice for Migrant Workers
5. Conclusions
66
6. Recommendations
68
7. Bibliography
69
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
5
Executive Summary
This research emerges from a partnership of ICTU, trade unions and communitybased organisations – all with specific interest and skills in defending and
extending the rights of Migrant Workers. It recognises the unique responsibility
and privilege that trade unions have in terms of organising and representing
Migrant Workers who can be among the most vulnerable and exploited workers
in Northern Ireland. It examines the research in terms of the widespread
academic and research literature on Migrant Workers. It then situates the
situation of Migrant Workers in its international context, with particular
reference to the ILO and the Migrant Workers Convention.
The report then looks at the EU and
British and Irish Policy context for Migrant
Workers. It examines the Northern
Ireland policy context in further depth
and then outlines the current policy and
practice of NICICTU with regard to
Migrant Workers. This policy analysis is
then situated in terms of existing
research and demography on Migrant
Workers in Northern Ireland. It suggests
that tracing migration to and from
Northern Ireland is not an exact science
but that general trends in terms of where
Migrant Workers live and work and where
they are from are fairly clear. It confirms
that the Migrant Worker population is
growing and is now an important, positive
and permanent feature of the social fabric
of Northern Ireland.
The report then turns to the new research
conducted for this report with NICICTU
and its partner organisations. This
research with Migrant Workers and
activists and workers on Migrant issues
identifies a number of issues and
challenges for both the trade union
movement and broader rights and justice
work. There are, as we would expect, a
series of employment-related issues,
particularly problems related to role of
recruitment agencies in Migrant Worker
employment. A series of issues for the
families of Migrant Workers is also
identified – particularly problems in
6
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
education, housing and access to benefits.
The report also identifies a very
widespread experience of racism and
sectarianism. This often occurs outside of
work but it is commonplace in the
workplace as well.
The report then turns to practical,
organising questions for the trade union
movement, asking what encourages
Migrant Workers to join a trade union and
what changes would make trade unions
more accessible and relevant to Migrant
Workers? More broadly it asks, what is to
be done in terms of delivering economic
justice for Migrant Workers? It
emphasises that this challenge must be
situated in an employment rights
approach to Migrant Worker issues. It
suggests the trade union movement has a
key role to play in terms of both policy
intervention and organising.
The research suggests a number of lessons
for the trade union movement. Most
importantly, however, it confirms two
simple but crucial truths. Trade unions in
Northern Ireland have both the duty and
the capacity to organise and represent
Migrant Workers. The research also
confirms that Migrant Workers face a
whole series of challenges in Northern
Ireland. It confirms the routine nature of
inequality and exploitation experienced by
many Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland.
The trade union movement has a key role
to play in supporting and organising these
workers. The movement needs to draw on
existing models of good practice within
trade unions to respond to this new
situation as well as consider radical and
innovative new forms of organising with
Migrant Workers. This project needs to be
prioritised within the movement and it
needs to be resourced properly.
There is also a series of challenges for the
trade union movement; not least the
opposition to trade union organisation at
some levels of government and in among
some employers. If trade unions are
finding it difficult to organise any workers
because of employer hostility, it is likely
that they will find it particularly difficult
to organise Migrant Workers. Migrant
workers are often both objectively and
subjectively disempowered with regard to
their relationship with employers – and
employer hostility to trade unionism in
general will be specifically felt by Migrant
Workers.
The research illustrates that the Migrant
Worker population is defined by its
heterogeneity. It confirms also, however,
that governments construct artificial
differences between workers – in terms of
citizens and non-citizens, workers who
require ‘registration’ and workers who do
not, workers with permits and those
without, ‘nationals’ and ‘non-nationals’.
While these differences are very real in
terms of the restrictions they place on
different workers, the report underlines the
fact that it is important that the trade
union movement defines its work in terms
of the need to organise workers - whatever
their background and whatever their
status. The report identifies a serious
problem with racism and racist violence for
Migrant Workers. It also suggests, however,
that it is primarily their status as non-
citizens that makes Migrant Workers
specifically vulnerable to exploitation in
the labour market. This may mean that
there is a value in creating Migrant Workerspecific structures within the existing antiracism and trade union structures.
The report concludes with a series of
recommendations designed to place the
issue of Migrant Workers at the centre of
the agenda of the trade union movement
in Northern Ireland and to ensure that
existing good policy and practice is
mainstreamed across the whole
movement. It suggests that there is a
unique opportunity to create a model of
good practice in terms of the restoration
of the NI Assembly. The Assembly has
autonomy on employment rights issues
so it can set itself the challenge of
becoming a model of best practice. The
trade union movement and its partners
should actively seek to create a regime
for Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland
based on employment rights and
modelled on the Migrant Workers
Convention.
Finally, the report emphasises that while
there are many areas of concern in terms
of the situation of Migrant Workers, there
are equally new opportunities and hopes.
The research suggests that with
appropriate planning and resourcing and
rigorous opposition to exploitation, there
is no inevitability to either exploitation or
anti-migrant worker racism. Provided
there is an appropriate response from
national and local government and
relevant NGOs – with the trade union
movement playing a pivotal role in
support of economic justice for Migrant
Workers - there is no reason why the
arrival of Migrant Workers should not be a
wholly positive economic, cultural and
political development for everyone in
Northern Ireland.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
7
1. BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH
Introduction
The situation of Migrant Workers in
Northern Ireland was forced brutally into
public consciousness at the start of 2005.
Local people – as well as politicians and
media - were shocked by the case of
Oksana Sukhanova. This young Ukrainian
migrant worker had both legs amputated
as a result of frostbite she developed
while sleeping rough in Coleraine after
losing her job at McKeown Fine Foods
(BBC News 2005a,b). The local
community responded to this tragedy by
collecting money for the young woman
and her situation was generally sensitively
reported by the media. But the case
served to explode the notion that there
were no Migrant Workers in Northern
Ireland and to highlight just how
vulnerable to exploitation and inequality
these Migrant Workers were.
In reality the number of Migrant Workers
in Northern Ireland has increased
markedly over recent years. This new
reality has thrown up considerable
challenges for Migrant Workers
themselves as well as for government
agencies and non-government
organisations alike. More particularly it
has thrown up considerable challenges in
terms of the trade union movement.
While media coverage of the arrival of
new migrants has been largely positive or
at least sympathetic to the situation in
which Migrant Workers and their families
find themselves, there have also been less
favourable reactions to the presence of
Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland. This
reality was brought sharply into focus by
one recent well-publicised event:
Dungannon Meats … recently announced
46 redundancies – not because they have
no work but because they said quite
clearly they wanted to replace the
8
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
workforce with employment agency
workers. Despite the work of the Union
to defend the jobs along with defending
the rights of persons not be exploited
whilst making it clear that subcontracting
and not the nationalities of the workers
involved was the issue, some people
reached the wrong conclusion. Some
thought ‘well it is the Migrant Workers
again coming in and taking our jobs’. It
may well be that the majority of
subcontracted workers who will replace
the full time employees might be migrant
because they’re most disadvantaged and
vulnerable. But this was a clear-cut case
even for slow learners – what was
forgotten was that the majority of the
permanent workforce to be sacked is also
migrant. (Tayra McKee in Holder et al
2006)
The trade union movement therefore
often has as a unique perspective – able
to challenge anti-migrant worker myths
while representing the rights of all
workers. This places the movement in a
specific and privileged position with
regard to addressing and defending the
rights of Migrant Workers. Two further
recent episodes illustrate this point
powerfully. The first is an example from a
well-known local engineering firm. This
firm had a workforce with a long tradition
of union organisation. This has however
been weakened by the decline of the
industry as more and more local workers
were made redundant; the remaining
workers became mostly self-employed
and left the union. In recent years,
Migrant Workers have also been employed
in this workplace. Recently the local, selfemployed workers went to the union and
offered to rejoin the union if the union
would negotiate with management to
withdraw work from these new Migrant
Workers. The second example comes
from a well-known local meat-processing
firm. In this firm, as a part of active
campaign to unionise Migrant Workers,
union membership for the whole firm has
increased by 50%. This area has probably
seen the highest concentration of Migrant
Workers outside of Belfast yet this had
led to the strengthening local trade
unions in the context of active local
organising.
These episodes illustrate some of the
challenges that local unions face. They
also undermine some of the simplistic
notions about ‘un-unionised’ Migrant
Workers undercutting or displacing
unionised ‘local’ labour. The arrival of
Migrant Workers in - and their
contribution to - any labour market is a
complex process. They present both
challenges and opportunities for trade
unions. This report is about the whole of
the trade union movement across
Northern Ireland responding to those
challenges and making the most of those
opportunities. It takes as its starting
point the reflection of Swiss writer Max
Frisch in 1965 on labour migration to
Europe: ‘We asked for labour power but
human beings came’. Thus while Migrant
Workers are workers who have been made
welcome in Northern Ireland because of
the labour power they bring, they are
primarily people not workers. This
reminds us that as people they have and
should have a range of rights and
expectations well beyond the recognition
of the major contribution they now make
to the economy of Northern Ireland.
All of this has to be placed in the context
of existing attitudes and policies towards
Migrant Workers. Here we find a
combination of relatively benign and
positive attitudes in Northern Ireland best illustrated by the recent Concordia
report on Migrant Workers – alongside
what has been described as a ‘woeful
policy vacuum’. The Concordia initiative
made it clear that both employers and
trades unions – along with other social
partners - are broadly favourable to
migration. Moreover, this report highlights
the absolute necessity of in-migration for
some sectors of the economy in Northern
Ireland. This relatively positive approach
to Migrant Workers has not, however, been
matched by Government policy. While
there have been some recent initiatives,
there is little to suggest that Government
has recognised the crucial contribution
made by Migrant Workers to the Northern
Ireland economy, let alone recognition
that this new population has specific
rights and needs that are not currently
being addressed. As we begin to make
sense of the situation of Migrant Workers
across Northern Ireland and recognise the
contribution that they make to the area, it
is important to situate these in terms of
this existing climate.
Background to the ICTU Research
The research is consequence of the
dovetailing of two separate discussions on
research on Migrant Workers in Northern
Ireland. In early 2006 Unison and NICEM
were exploring the need for research on
the role of Migrant Workers in the health
service while NICICTU was discussing
broader research into Migrant Workers
across Northern Ireland. These projects
were amalgamated and integrated into a
project which was to focus on the broad
question of the experience of Migrant
Workers and their families and the more
specific question of the response of the
trade union movement to this experience.
There has, of course, been a long tradition
of migration from the north of Ireland –
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
9
Migrant Workers from the north have
been a sizeable proportion of Irish
migrant worker populations in Britain and
the US and Europe. Migrant workers from
other countries have also been part of the
community in Northern Ireland since the
inception of the state. For example,
Jewish and Italian migrants made a
significant impact in the 20th century.
More recently, however, comparatively
large numbers of Migrant Workers have
been coming to Northern Ireland.
Migrant workers have been living in all
parts of Northern Ireland for a number of
years. Some of these Migrant Workers
have brought families with them and
others have developed new families since
they have come here. So there is no
question that this migrant worker
community is growing. Yet this group of
people often has limited interaction with
other people in the communities where
they live and they also have little
engagement with statutory, community
and voluntary agencies. Their status as
Migrant Workers also specifically limits
their rights in a range of different ways.
Some research has already been carried
out to identify the needs of Migrant
Workers and their families across
Northern Ireland. Our research sought to
draw on the expertise and contacts of the
trade union movement to indicate how
best organisations can address the needs
and protect the rights of Migrant Workers.
The workplace is perhaps the key
interface between Migrant Workers and
local people. Moreover, the trade union
movement is often the key organisation
to which Migrant Workers turn for
support if they encounter difficulties. The
research therefore sought to draw on the
unique access provided by the trade union
movement to Migrant Workers to
facilitate trade unions as well as statutory
10
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
and voluntary organisations to support
Migrant Workers and respond to their
needs. It sought to place Migrant Workers
and their families at the centre of the
human rights and equality agendas in
Northern Ireland. It recognised that the
trade union movement is uniquely placed
to move this work forward. Trades unions
have unique access to Migrant Workers
and a specific perspective on their needs
– they are better placed to support and
conduct research of this kind that any
other institution. The research was to be
situated in the context of the UN system
of human rights for Migrant Workers,
particularly the UN Convention on
Migrant Workers.
The research was also to be situated in
terms of a review of academic and policy
literature on the subject. The project
immediately acknowledged a growing
body of existing research on Migrant
Workers in Northern Ireland - including
ICR Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland
(Kathryn Bell, Neil Jarman and Thomas
Lefebvre June 2004); the work of
Concordia and a developing body of work
from STEP and ANIMATE, notably
Promoting Rights of Migrant Workers
(Holder et al 2006; McVeigh and Fisher
2006). It was also suggested that this
data has several gaps – particularly in
terms of the experiences of migrant
worker families - but it is a baseline and
benchmark for the present research.
It was also recognised that there are a
number of NGOs working with Migrant
Workers across Northern Ireland and the
research should make a positive
commitment towards cooperation with
them. This research is therefore the
outcome of a partnership between two
key sectors representing and organising
Migrant Workers – community-base
organisations that have been organising
and supporting Migrant Workers, and
NICICTU which, through its constituent
unions, increasingly represents Migrant
Workers in workplaces across Northern
Ireland.1 The aim of the project was:
To inform the strategies of regional
and local organisations in addressing
the needs and rights of Migrant
Workers and their families in
Northern Ireland.
The objectives of the project were:
1. A brief presentation of the national
and regional context of Migrant
Workers in Northern Ireland.
2. A mapping exercise to give a profile
of the Migrant Workers and their
families in Northern Ireland: age,
nationality, family status, where
they are living, industry they are
working in, length of time they
have been there and so on.
3. An identification of the main
social, economic, political and
cultural issues for Migrant Workers
and their families.
4. A specific assessment of the role of
trades unions in organising and
supporting Migrant Workers and
their families
Discussions in the research steering group
made it clear that the focus of the
research was to be the trade union
movement itself – drawing out lessons of
good practice and identifying challenges
that needed to be met.
1
2
The research methodology was heavily
dependent on the ability of NICICTU and
its partner organisations to encourage
Migrant Workers to participate in the
research. It is questionable whether any
other partnership could have generated
such widespread access to - and active
cooperation from - Migrant Workers. The
partner organisations were responsible for
generating a number of focus groups
across different sectors/unions. These
constituted ten sessions - with NICEM
supplying interpreting support where
appropriate. These focus groups were to
be supplemented by interviews with key
activists working in the area of migrant
worker rights and organising. The project
was formally started in June 2006 to be
completed and launched by UN Migrant
Worker’s Day - 18th December 2006.
General Literature on Migrant
Workers
There is a vast body of literature on
Migrant Workers internationally (see
McVeigh and Fisher 2006 for an
overview). Existing work makes it very
clear that the ‘impact’ of migration is
both complex and, at times at least,
contentious. Here Peter Stalker’s Stalkers
Guide to International Migration is a key
resource in this area. This web-based
publication demystifies some of the
processes and debates around migration
without oversimplifying the subject. It is
particularly useful for engaging with some
of the popular myths and misconceptions
around the impact of migrant labour.2
The research steering group included representatives from ANIMATE, NICEM and STEP as well as GMB, T&G,
UNISON, UCATT and ICTU.
This is web accessible at http://www.pstalker.com/migration/mg_immig_4.htm
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
11
Is immigration economically damaging?
History suggests otherwise. After all, the
world’s remaining superpower, the United
State is populated almost entirely by
immigrants and their descendants. It has
doubled its population over the past
century—and become richer and richer.
Other high immigration countries are also
among the world’s wealthiest. In fact, of
the major industrial economies only Japan
has not had a significant influx of migrant
workers. An analysis for 15 European
countries over the period 1991-95 found
that for every 1% increase in a country’s
population through immigration there
was an increase in Gross Domestic
Product of 1.25% to 1.5%.
In terms of the specific positive aspects of
migration, we can identify key areas of
economic benefit attached to the arrival
and presence of Migrant Workers (Stalker
2001). These include:
- industry that would otherwise have
been outsourced is retained in the
local economy.
- additional skills are brought in – this
deepens and widens the skills base of
the local economy.
- migrant workers often do work that
local people reject – often difficult,
dangerous or low-paid work.
- additional spending power is brought
in with the new population – migrant
workers tend to be net contributors to
local economies and this can have
broad regenerative effects.
- housing regeneration is often a
positive consequence - migrant
workers take up housing stock in areas
3
12
Speech to the TUC conference on 15th September 2004.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
of low demand and help to stabilise
those communities.
- craft services become affordable to
persons on low incomes as both the
stock of tradespeople and a more
competitive market enters the local
economy.
Despite this reality, however, popular
perceptions remain that migration is either
problematic or threatening in some way to
‘our’ economy and ‘our’ way of life. These
perceptions impact directly on Migrant
Workers but they are also a feature of the
workplace and are sometimes held by
workers and trade unionists. Clearly,
therefore, the trade union movement has a
specific responsibility to engage and
challenge some of these ideas.
First, there are alleged economic impacts
in popular discourse that are simply crude
racism based on ignorance and inaccurate
information. These are often used to
demonise Migrant Workers but they can
be challenged fairly simply. This includes
the ‘scapegoating’ of Migrant Workers for
any unwelcome economic transition
where Migrant Workers – as a symptom
of economic change – become identified
as the cause of that change. There is
extensive literature in this area and there
are many examples of trades unions
intervening in this area. For example, in
2004 Jack Dromey, Deputy General
Secretary of the T&G, drew on his own
Irish migrant worker background to insist:
‘Our task …is not to exclude but, instead
to organise.’3
This intervention provoked an immediate
response from the BNP (British National
Party) which argued:
Instead of defending native British
workers against the wage slave migrants
who arrive on our shores only to be
exploited by greedy gangmasters and
employers, the Union movement is
embarrassing and betraying the rank and
file membership by welcoming migrants
with open arms. Thus the migrants are in
direct competition with fully paid up
members of the unions. (BNP 2005)
Here we begin to see some of the politics
of opposition to migration and Migrant
Workers laid bare – the stark choice
between either exclusion or organisation;
between recognising the rights of all
workers or the rights of only ‘native
workers’ against ‘wage slave migrants’;
and between fascism and racism and antifascism and anti-racism.
This politics, however, sometimes disguises
the need for a deeper examination of both
positive and negative economic impacts of
inward migration and how the former can
be maximised and the latter mitigated.
While the call for exclusion of Migrant
Workers is sometimes simply motivated
by crude racism, the call for access to
Migrant Workers is sometimes motivated
by the desire to exploit their labour power
regardless of cost to them or anyone else.
In other words, the call for access to
migrant labour is not necessarily made in
the interests of Migrant Workers. For
example, employers who support the inmigration of Migrant Workers may be
motivated far more by the desire to
exploit cheap labour than the desire to
resist racism.
Behind all this is the reality that the
politics of migrant and reactions to
Migrant Workers are complex. Migration
affects different people in different ways.
This is as true in Northern Ireland as
anywhere else - clearly different parts of
the population are not affected in the
same way by migration. Employers
desperate for employees may look on
Migrant Workers differently from local
people looking for cheap rented
accommodation in areas of high demand;
householders looking for skilled
tradespeople may think differently from
teachers who are being asked to teach
migrant worker children with little support.
Trade unions and trade union members are
part of this mosaic of reactions. It bears
emphasis, however, that the negative
impacts of migration fall most heavily on the
shoulders of Migrant Workers – it is they
who are treated differently and unequally both formally and informally - because
they are Migrant Workers. But there are
also other impacts – the impact of the
arrival of skilled craftspeople in a market
economy in professions where there are
skills shortages will increase affordability
and availability of such services for
consumers yet will reduce the market
power of pre-existing craftspeople. Thus
‘positive’ impacts will include the plugging
of skills and labour scarcities and impact
on retention of local industries, increased
spending power and regeneration.
‘Negative’ impacts will include unlawful
exploitation and detrimental employment
practices and the knock on effect in terms
of local workers (McVeigh and Fisher
2006). Despite the sometimes politically
contentious nature of migration, however,
most of the literature on migration
suggests that the key issue is appropriate
planning and resourcing and challenging
exploitation. Provided this is done in an
integrated fashion and with cooperation
between national and local government
and between government and relevant
NGOs, there is no reason why the arrival
of Migrant Workers anywhere should not
be a wholly positive economic, political
and cultural process.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
13
2. CONTEXT
Migrant Workers – the
International Context
The research brief made it clear that the
research was to be situated in the context
of the UN system of protection of the
human rights of Migrant Workers.
Migrant workers have been central to the
key mechanisms of the United Nations
since its establishment. Their concerns
are represented within broad human
rights legislation as well as more specific
work.4 The International Labour
Organisation (ILO) has also had a specific
focus on Migrant Workers.5 The key
legislative mechanism at UN level is the
Migrant Worker’s Convention. The
International Convention on the
Protection of the Rights of All Migrant
Workers and Members of their Families
(New York, 18 December 1990) entered
into force on 1 July 2003.
The major objective of the Convention is
to foster respect of migrants’ human
rights (UNESCO 2006). The Convention
does not create new rights for migrants
but aims at guaranteeing equality of
treatment and the same working
conditions for migrants and nationals.
This implies:
preventing inhumane living and working
conditions, physical and sexual abuse and
degrading treatments (articles 10-11, 25,
54),
guaranteeing migrants’ rights to freedom
of thought, expression and religion
(articles 12-13),
4
5
14
guaranteeing migrants’ access to
information on their rights (articles 33,
37),
ensuring their right to legal equality,
which implies that migrant workers are
subject to correct procedures, have access
to interpreting services and are not
sentenced to disproportionate penalties
such as expulsion (articles 16-20, 22),
guaranteeing migrants’ equal access to
educational and social services (articles
27-28, 30, 43-45, 54),
ensuring that migrants have the right to
participate in trade unions (articles 26,
40).
The Convention also insists that migrants
should also have the right to remain
connected to their country of origin. This
implies:
ensuring that migrants can return to their
country of origin if they wish to and that
they are allowed to pay occasional visits
and are encouraged to maintain cultural
links (articles 8, 31, 38),
guaranteeing migrants’ political
participation in the country of origin
(articles 41-42),
ensuring migrants’ right to transfer their
earnings to their home country (articles
32, 46-48).
The Convention also makes it clear that,
‘regular’ or ‘irregular’, all migrants are
entitled to a minimal degree of
protection. The Convention relies on the
See for example: United Nations System and Migrant Rights; UN Special Rapporteur on the HR of Migrants ; 2003
UN Invitation and questionnaire to report on situation of domestic migrant workers (PDF); December 18.
See for example: ILO and Migrant Workers ; International Labour Conference, 1-17 June 2004; ILO ACTRAV (Bureau
for Workers activities) ; ILO Conventions.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
fundamental notion that all migrants
should have access to a minimal degree
of protection. The Convention recognises
that legal migrants have the legitimacy to
claim more rights than undocumented
migrants, but it stresses that
undocumented migrants must see their
fundamental human rights respected, like
all human beings. The Convention
proposes that actions be taken to
eradicate clandestine movements, notably
through the fight against misleading
information inciting people to migrate
irregularly and through sanctions against
smugglers and employers of
undocumented migrants.
In addition to the Convention, there are a
host of other relevant UN-related
documents and instruments, particularly
from the International Labour
Organisation (ILO).6 The two most
relevant ILO standards are Convention 97:
Migration for Employment (1947) and
Convention 143: Migrant Workers
(Supplementary Provisions 1975). These
two conventions provide a basic
framework for national legislation and
practice on labour migration. They
stipulate that States should actively
facilitate fair recruitment practices and
transparent consultation with their social
partners, reaffirm non-discrimination, and
establish a principle of equality of
treatment between nationals and ‘regular’
Migrant Workers in access to social
6
7
8
security, conditions of work, remuneration
and trade union membership.
The UN framework is not unproblematic
in terms of any attempt to recognise or
define the rights of Migrant Workers – not
least because neither the UK nor Irish
Government is signatory to the
Convention so it has no binding effect in
Northern Ireland. The Convention does
however establish an appropriate
framework to engage with the question of
support for Migrant Workers grounded in
human rights. There is an ongoing
campaign for ratification of the
Convention in Ireland and the UK so the
issue is also a ‘live’ part of broader
protection for migrants. The Convention
also contains a recognised definition of
who constitutes a ‘migrant worker’ that is
particularly helpful in situating this kind
of research work. The Convention is also
a focus for much international and
transnational work in support of migrant
worker’s rights through organisations like
December 18 and the International NGO
Platform on the Migrant Workers’
Convention (IPMWC) and European
Platform on Migrant Workers’ Rights
(EPMWR).7 These generate tools like the
Guide for Non-Government Organisations
on the Implementation of the UN Migrant
Worker’s Convention (2005) which are
particularly useful in national and local
work by trades unions and NGOs in
support of migrant’s rights.8
The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families
(New York, 18 December 1990) entered into force on 1st July 2003. There are 34 ratifications to date. Neither the
UK nor Irish governments have ratified the Convention.
December 18 is a ‘portal for the promotion and the protection of the rights of migrants’ and is a key resource for
international work on migrant workers rights. It includes the useful list serve Migrant News with periodic updates on
the Convention and other Migrant Worker Rights issues. The European Platform is currently carrying out a mapping
exercise on actions and positions taken on the UN Migrant Workers Convention across the EU Member States. See
december18.net
This guide is available online at december18.net
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
15
As the ILO’s Towards a fair deal for migrant
workers in the global economy (2004)
makes clear, migration and Migrant
Workers are a growing part of the world
economy. The real challenge is the
question of how to make this a positive
experience for everyone who is affected
by it:
Migration is an integral part of growth
and development processes – more
significant at some times and in some
countries than others. Nevertheless, as
with many aspects of development, there
are both positive and negative impacts for
the migrants themselves and for the
countries of origin and destination. There
is increasing recognition of the role that
migration plays in meeting the
demographic deficit and labour shortages
in the more advanced economies, in
global exchanges of technology and
know-how, and in stimulating
development through remittance flows
and investments, especially from diaspora
communities. The challenge is how to
manage migration in such a way that the
positive effects are maximised, making it
beneficial for all. (ILO 2004: 138)
Given the centrality of migration to issues
of relationships between states, there is a
plethora of useful organisations and
resources internationally. The ILO itself is
obviously a key organisation.9 The ILO is
the UN specialised agency which seeks
the promotion of social justice and
internationally recognised human and
labour rights. The ILO formulates
international labour standards in the form
of Conventions and Recommendations
setting minimum standards of basic
labour rights: freedom of association, the
right to organise, collective bargaining,
abolition of forced labour, equality of
opportunity and treatment, and other
standards regulating conditions across the
entire spectrum of work related issues. Its
International Migration Programme
maintains the online International Labour
Migration Database (ILM), which hosts
statistical time-series data from 86
countries on labour migration including
shared EUROSTAT data.10
The International Organisation for
Migration (IOM) is the ‘leading
international organisation for migration’.11
IOM acts with its partners in the
international community to: ‘assist in
meeting the growing operational
challenges of migration management,
advance understanding of migration
issues, encourage social and economic
development through migration, and
uphold the human dignity and well-being
of migrants’. It publishes its World
migration report, which presents
information on the latest trends in
international migration and includes
overviews of regional developments,
including specific regional overviews. Each
issue has a thematic focus addressing
both the costs and benefits of
international migration. The Migration
Policy Institute, a private non-profit
organisation in Washington, DC,
maintains the Migration Information
9 www.ilo.org
10 The ILO has also developed manuals and guidelines for migration data collection, and provides technical assistance
to countries for improved data collection. The ILO NATLEX database contains over 55,000 records of national labour,
social security and related human rights legislation.
11 www.iom.int
16
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
Source (MIS): This is a web portal
containing both qualitative and
quantitative information resources. It
contains analysis and perspectives on
ongoing migration debates and issues. It
is designed to provide information
accessible to various groups, such as
researchers, policy-makers, journalists and
others.12
The Geneva Migration Group (GMG)
compromises several international
agencies whose mandate covers issues
related to international migration – the
ILO, United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations
Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights (UNOHCHR), United
Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD), United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and
the IOM. These formed an informal group
named the Geneva Migration Group
recognising the need for ‘strengthening
strategic alliances between the agencies
to enhance coordination and
complementarity’.13 The aim of the GMG
is to promote good governance of
migration by working together for the
promotion of the wider application of all
relevant instruments and norms relating
to migration, and for the provision of
more coherent, coordinated and stronger
leadership to improve the overall
effectiveness of the international
community’s response to current and
future migration issues. Finally, the
12
13
14
15
Global Commission on International
Migration (GCIM) was established in
December 2003 with a view to providing
a framework for the formulation of a
coherent, comprehensive and global
response to migration issues.14 Its
mandate is to place international
migration on the global agenda, analyse
gaps in migration policy, and examine
linkages with other issues and present
recommendations to the United Nations
Secretary-General, governments and
other stakeholders. As part of its work, the
GCIM has conduced analysis and research,
consultations with stakeholders, regional
hearings in different regions of the world,
and information sharing.
As suggested earlier, the UN Convention
is the key international instrument to
which these agencies work. The
Convention defines the concept of
‘Migrant Workers’ broadly. Article 2 of the
Convention states:
1. The term “migrant worker” refers to a
person who is to be engaged, is engaged
or has been engaged in a remunerated
activity in a State of which he or she is
not a national.
Because of its international standing, this
is the most appropriate definition in the
Northern Irish context.15 This definition
is, however, not unproblematic –
particularly because of the specific
working rights of EU and EEA nationals
www.migrationinformation.org
www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/exrel/partners/gmg.htm
www.gcim.org
DEL has developed its own definition specific to Northern Ireland: ‘A migrant worker is someone from outside the UK
and Ireland who is here to seek or take up work’. While this is a useful enough regional shorthand, it remains
preferable to situate definitions of migrant workers in terms of international best practice through the Convention
and the ILO.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
17
within Ireland (and other EU countries).16
These rights correspond broadly to those
of a ‘national’ since all EEA nationals are
allowed to work in any European Union
country without requiring Work Permits.
Moreover, overseas students who work
are excluded from the UN definition of
Migrant Workers. Yet, in the British and
Irish and Northern Irish contexts, these
students are sometimes a core part of the
migrant worker population. Despite its
grounding in international law therefore,
the term ‘migrant worker’ is a complex
and sometimes contentious one. In terms
of its more subjective meaning and
reference, we can suggest that the term
migrant worker is at best a ‘neutral’ one.17
The other relevant and more negative
aspect of the Convention as a standard is
that neither the UK nor the Republic of
Ireland is currently a signatory. At present
the signatories are confined to countries
of out-migration –countries that want to
see their citizens protected as Migrant
Workers in the other countries in which
they work. Ireland is obviously a country
with a long history of out-migration of
Irish citizens as Migrant Workers. It also
has challenges in terms of the new inmigration of Migrant Workers that our
research addresses directly. There are
active campaigns in both jurisdictions in
support of ratification. It is clearly the
case that both governments could make a
key international contribution on
migrant’s rights by becoming the first
states from the developed world to ratify.
Whatever happens in terms of
ratification, it remains the case that the
Convention is the key reference in terms
of minimum international standards for
the protection of Migrant Workers in
Northern Ireland as well as elsewhere in
the world.
Alongside the Migrant Workers
Convention, the key recent document is
the ILO Multilateral Framework on Labour
Migration: Non-binding principles and
guidelines for a rights-based approach to
labour migration. This framework was
adopted by the ILO Tripartite Meeting of
Experts in 2005. The purpose of the nonbinding Framework is to give effect to the
Resolution and conclusions of the ILO
Conference on ‘a fair deal for Migrant
Workers in a global economy’, adopted by
the 92nd Session of the International
Labour Conference in 2004. The
Framework provides practical guidance to
governments, employers’ and workers’
organisations and other concerned parties
on the development, strengthening and
implementation of labour migration
policies. There are several distinctive
features of the ILO Multilateral
Framework on Labour Migration: it deals
only with labour migration; it is a
comprehensive collection of principles
and guidelines on migration policy and
management firmly grounded in
international instruments and best
practices; it takes a positive perspective
16 The European Economic Area (EEA) consists of the EU, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
17 In the course of the research, we asked migrant workers whether they were happy with the description ‘migrant
worker’. There was no negative reaction to the label and most people regard it as an appropriate description of their
identity and in consequence the term is used unproblematically in this report. It bears emphasis, however, that
migrant workers are also many other things – partners, parents, children - with a host of other identities in terms of
religious belief, national origin, ethnic identity and so on. The short hand ‘migrant worker’ should not be taken to
disregard all of these complex and multi-layered aspects of migrant worker identity.
18
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
on labour migration consistent with the
current global emphasis on migration and
development; and it recognises the crucial
role of social dialogue and value of social
partner participation in migration policy.
Four broad themes underlie the
framework: decent work for all;
management and governance of
migration; promotion and protection of
migrant rights; and, migration and
development (ILO 2006).
The recent formation of the International
Trade Union Confederation which aims to,
‘become the instrument of a new trade
union internationalism equal to the
challenges and circumstances of
globalisation’ may be an important
development. The largest organisation of
trade union members in the world is the
Brussels-based International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Other
global trade union organisations are the
‘Christian Humanist’ World Confederation
of Labour and the former communist
World Federation of Trade Unions.
National and regional trade unions
organising in specific industry sectors or
occupational groups also form
transnational federations, such as Union
Network International and the
International Federation of Journalists and
these are organised as Global Unions. All
of these organisations have positions on
the situation of Migrant Workers that are
broadly supportive of migrant worker
rights. For example,
In a Joint Statement issued today, the
International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions, the World Confederation of
Labour and the Global Union Federations
called on Heads of State and Ministers
participating in the General Assembly
High Level Dialogue on International
Migration and Development to adopt a
strong rights-based approach to global
migration policy. (ICFTU press release,
Brussels, 13 September 2006)
In other words, while there may be
marked organisational differences
between different international trade
union bodies, there is broad agreement
that the appropriate response to migrant
worker issues is a rights-based one.18
ICTU situates itself in terms of these
international dynamics. Witness Peter
Bunting on the international dimension of
the work of the ICTU:
We are members of the ETUC whatever
input they have in terms of legislation, we
would obviously support. We have the
Council of the Isles as well – the TUC, the
Welsh TUC, the Scottish TUC and
ourselves – where we address issues of
commonality and migrant labour has
been top of the agenda at that… And
then there’s the ILO as well. We would be
party to all those organisations and would
have representatives at all their
conferences and all their meetings
In short, therefore, international
mechanisms and trade union movement
are broadly supportive of a rights-bases
approach to Migrant Workers issues and
ICTU are already appropriately networked
in terms of making this relevant to issues
at local and regional level.19
18 ICTU is affiliated to the ETUC and the ILO.
19 For example, there is an ETUC project that ICTU will be involved in if the ETUC project bid is successful: Workplace
Europe. This will look at cross border trade union cooperation and have a specific migrant worker dimension.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
19
EU Context
There are a number of key mechanisms
within the European Union and the
Council of Europe which both regulate the
admission of - and offer protection and
support to - Migrant Workers.20 The
European Convention on the Legal Status
on Migrant Workers is the key Council of
Europe document relating to the
treatment of non-citizen Migrant Workers
on the territory of the member states of
the Council. In so far as it deals with
social and economic rights of workers, it
compliments some provisions of the
European Social Charter (ESC). The
Council of Europe counterpart on
residence rights is the Convention on
Establishment. The issue of social security
rights of Migrant Workers is more
specifically treated in the European
Convention on Social Security. The
Migrant Workers convention is based on
the principle of according rights to aliens
who are nationals of other contracting
parties. To this extent it differs from the
Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)
which sets out fundamental human rights
which must be protected irrespective of
the nationality of the person concerned
(Guild 1999). The ECHR itself contains a
number of provisions which are of
relevance to Migrant Workers - its Fourth
Protocol deals specifically with protection
of ‘aliens’ from expulsion.
The EU explicitly recognises the need for
migration as part of a ‘common EU
immigration and asylum policy’. It has
thus provided:
comprehensive guidelines on the policies
it wished to see developed in four clearly
identified elements of a common
20 See at December 18 under ‘Europe’.
20
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
European Union immigration and asylum
policy: partnership with countries of
origin; a common European asylum policy;
fair treatment of third country nationals;
and the management of migration flows.
(2003:2)
In this context the integration and fair
treatment of Migrant Workers is made
explicit as a key policy objective:
The EU’s ability to manage immigration
and to ensure the integration of
immigrants will greatly influence its
overall ability to master economic
transformation and to reinforce social
cohesion in the short and longer term.
Although the economic implications of
socio-demographic change will only
become fully visible as time goes by, a
forward-looking approach to immigration
is needed today to be prepared for the
challenges of tomorrow. The economic
and social benefits of immigration can
only be realised if a higher degree of
successful integration of migrants can be
achieved: the EU must address the
challenge of integration in a
comprehensive manner. The rapid
adoption by the Council of the draft
directives already put forward on the
conditions of admission and residence of
third country nationals is an essential
prerequisite for future actions since it
provides the necessary basic framework
of rights on which all further integration
policies must rest. In this context the
Commission will keep under review the
development of the concept of civic
citizenship as a new integration tool. In
line with the principle of mainstreaming
policies for the integration of immigrants,
support for many of the proposals made
must now be taken forward within the
framework of existing policies and
programmes at EU level, notably the
European Employment Strategy, the
Social Inclusion Process, as well as the
Community action programmes to
combat social exclusion and
discrimination. Meanwhile the European
Refugee Fund and the new pilot projects
to promote integration will ensure there
is a focus on specific issues concerning
third country nationals which need to be
addressed as such and to provide support
for national integration policies. (2003:
35-6)
Thus the principle of free movement of
people and workers within member states
creates new but not unlimited rights to
work across the EU:21
All EU15 nationals can enter other
member states without a visa for a period
of up to six months on production of
valid identification. EU15 nationals can
reside in another member state for more
than six months if they meet one of the
following criteria: • are employed or selfemployed • have sufficient resources and
health insurance to ensure that they do
not seek state or social benefits • are a
student • are a family member (including
non-EU citizen spouses) of an EU citizen
who falls into one of the above
categories. EU15 nationals can apply for
permanent residence in another member
state after a four year period of legal
residence…. Since the 2004 round of EU
enlargement, accession nationals have the
same rights of free movement between
countries as EU15 nationals. However,
during the transitional period of seven
years, EU15 states have been applying
limitations to A8 nationals on access to
their labour markets, ranging from no
restrictions (UK, Ireland and Sweden), to
quota systems (for example, Italy and
Portugal), to traditional work permit
systems (Germany and Austria). Although
no accession state placed labour market
restrictions on other accession nationals,
Poland, Slovenia and Hungary applied
reciprocal arrangements with the EU15.
After two years, states can choose to
maintain restrictions for a further three
years (or a further five years in
exceptional circumstances). (IPPR 2006: 6)
In general, therefore, the arrival of
increased numbers of Migrant Workers in
Northern Ireland is a reflection of broader
EU-wide policy. Since Northern Ireland
appears inextricably bound to an
expanding and strengthening EU, there is
an inevitability that this will reflect in
migration to and from Northern Ireland in
the context of an increasingly integrated
EU-wide capital and labour market.
The ETUC aims to represent the common
interests of workers, at European level. Its
prime objective is to promote the
European Social Model and to work for
the ‘development of a united Europe of
peace and stability where working people
and their families can enjoy full human
and civil rights and high living standards’.
21 The principles of free movement of workers are laid down in Article 28 of the EEA Agreement. They have been
extensively interpreted and developed by the European Court of Justice and the EFTA Court. Freedom of movement
for workers entails the abolition of any discrimination based on nationality between workers of the EEA States as
regards employment, remuneration and other conditions of work and employment. This includes the right to accept
offers of employment actually made, to move freely within the territory of an EEA State for the purpose of
employment in accordance with the provisions governing the employment of nationals of that State, and to remain
on the territory of an EEA State after having been employed there.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
21
The ETUC believes that ‘workers’
consultation, collective bargaining, social
dialogue and good working conditions are
key to promoting innovation, productivity,
competitiveness and growth in Europe’.22
ETUC has developed migrant specific
policy and practice in a whole range of
publications (ETUC 2003, 2004, 2005,
2006). At the core of this policy is the
principle that Migrant Workers are treated
fairly and equally as workers:
The view of the European Trade Union
Confederation is that the legislative
framework options presented in the
[European Commission] Green Paper do
not include a clear framework of rights
for all workers concerned, particularly
migrant workers from third countries. It
has proposed the inclusion of provisions
regarding equal treatment in working
conditions and benefits between thirdcountry nationals in regular status and EU
citizens, as well as protection for those in
irregular status, in order to protect the
rights and further the working conditions
of both migrant workers and national
workers. (ILO 2006: 24)
Again, the ETUC gives a clear lead in
terms of situating migrant worker issues
in the context of worker’s rights.
British and Irish Policy Context
Current British and Irish Government
policy on migration echoes the EU
insistence on the positive need for
immigration and Migrant Workers. The
British and Irish governments continue to
emphasise both the necessity and the
positive benefits of what is termed
22 http://www.etuc.org
22
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
‘managed migration’. This acceptance of
‘managed migration’ therefore sets the
broad policy context for Migrant Workers
in Northern Ireland. While there is broad
agreement on this approach across
government and social partners, it is far
from being uncontested. The more
permissive approach to migration is
represented by an ‘open borders’ policy
which in essence supports no controls on
migration. The opposite end of the
spectrum is represented by antiimmigration and anti-migrant worker
rhetoric and organisations. This has long
been a feature of British politics but the
demand for ‘immigration control’ has also
entered the Irish political lexicon over
recent years. Some politicians, as well as
lobby groups like Migration Watch UK
(2006), contest the notion that Britain is
a ‘global traffic station for Migrant
Workers. For example, UKIP supports
‘zero net immigration’ and the BNP
argues for ‘voluntary repatriation’ (BBC
News 2006). Nevertheless, both British
and Irish governments continue to
acknowledge the need for migration and
for migration controls and this position is
echoed by mainstream British, Irish and
Northern Irish political parties. With
regard to the broad economic impact of
Migrant Workers, the IPPR’s 2005 study
Paying Their Way: The Fiscal Contribution of
Immigrants in the UK provides useful
detail. The IPPR concludes:
Most importantly, [the research confirms]
that, far from being a drain on the public
purse, immigrants actually contribute
more than their share fiscally. It may also
suggest many recent immigrants
(especially those arriving on the various
labour migration programmes and from
the new members of the EU) are making
relatively large contributions to the public
purse. (Sriskandarajah et al. 2005)
In other words, whatever other arguments
are made against migration, it is
impossible to sustain the argument that
migrants are a ‘drain on the public purse’.
Migrant workers in Northern Ireland find
themselves within the migration regime
of the UK state. Their rights – to both
reside and to work – are part of a
complicated system. Citizens of EEA and
EFTA countries are able to live and work
in the UK without a visa or work permit.
A8 nationals are able to live and work in
the UK on the same basis as nationals of
existing EU States, however they must
register where and for whom they are
working. Their right to work in the UK
depends on their being issued with a
registration certificate.23 A2 nationals –
Migrant Workers from new accession
states Bulgaria and Romania – find
themselves with even more restricted
residence and work rights. The British
Home Office announced a package of
‘transitional control orders’ for A2 Migrant
Workers in October 2006 which will be
reviewed in 12 months. The toughest
new restrictions on Bulgarians and
Romanians focus on lower-skilled workers,
who will initially be able to work only in
the food processing and agricultural
sectors. Finally, citizens of countries that
are not members of the EEA and EFTA
must normally obtain a work visa or
permit to work in the UK. These Migrant
Workers find themselves within a new
‘points-based’ system.
These new measures were accompanied
by a repressive system designed to
‘ensure compliance’ and ‘respond flexibly
to changes in the labour market’. They
also aimed at ‘ending of employment
routes to the UK for low-skilled workers
from outside the EU except in cases of
short-term shortages’. The Irish
Government has implemented a similar
policy. One implication of this policy is
that the make-up of the migrant worker
population has shifted significantly over
time. Whatever the intention, this policy
often has the consequence of replacing
workers of colour from outside the EU
(often from former British colonies) with
white workers from inside. Again, this
policy has direct consequences in terms
of where Migrant Workers will tend to
come from in Northern Ireland. We have
already seen migration from A8 countries
- which had little historic connection to
Northern Ireland - becoming more
significant than from outside the EU.
As we suggested, this latest British
Government intervention was a move
away from a policy of essentially zero
primary migration towards one of
‘managed migration’. It is characterised
by two aspects. First, the policy
emphasised that migration is very much
in the interests of the UK. Second, it
underlined that this migration was to be
understood in the context of these
benefits for the UK. There was little
consideration of the effect that it might
have on sending countries or on Migrant
Workers themselves – the only metre for
migration was whether the UK needs
their skills or not. In other words, it was
23 Ireland, Sweden and the UK are the only EU countries that did not impose labour market restrictions on citizens of
the A8; they are therefore able to take up employment, as would full member country citizens, in the UK and Ireland.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
23
placed very firmly in the context of
‘tightening’ immigration control while
meeting demands for labour.
Migrant Workers can be discriminated
against perfectly legally on this basis
(Ryan 2005).
Arguably this approach leaves the system
for the protection of the employment
rights of Migrant Workers in serious
disrepair. The key publication Labour
Migration and Employment Rights argues
convincingly that existing employment
and race discrimination law actually
frustrates the enforcement of
employment rights by Migrant Workers
(Ryan 2005). The so-called doctrine of
illegality of contract bars any
unauthorised worker from enforcing any
employment or discrimination rights since
the ‘illegal’ status of the worker negates
any real or implied contract with the
employer. Moreover, the distinction
between ‘workers’ and ‘employees’ in
employment law creates a new class of
agency and temporary workers who
cannot claim for unfair dismissal and are
therefore subjected to insecure
employment, low pay and unsociable
hours. Discrimination law can also fail
Migrant Workers. For example, employers
are deemed not to have unlawfully
discriminated on the basis of ‘immigration
status’ and ‘authorised’ or ‘documented’
Migrant Workers also face some
restrictions in terms of other benefits
that may impact directly or indirectly on
their employment. Members of all the EU
states are all subject to the same
requirements when it comes to accessing
entitlements from the UK Government,
although the level of provision does vary
between visitor and migrant worker. Any
EU25 member national who has been in
the UK for some time (usually as a
worker) and wishes to claim benefits from
the UK Government is subject to the
‘habitual residence’ test.24 In addition,
workers from A8 states must pass a ‘right
to reside’ test. Until they have been in
continuous employment (with breaks of
fewer than 30 days), A8 workers are only
legally entitled to reside in the UK if they
are in employment and registered with
the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS),
they are self-employed and/or have
sufficient funds not to seek state
benefits.25 Therefore A8 migrants can
claim income-related benefits after
having been in continuous employment
for one year, although they do have
24 The Habitual Residence Test (HRT) is used similarly in Britain and Ireland and interrogates how long someone has
been resident in the country and their intentions to stay. Anyone applying for Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance,
Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit or Pension Credit who has lived in the country for less than two years is subject
to this test. This includes UK nationals who have lived abroad for a while, EU nationals and all other nationals.
Anyone who fails the HRT is treated as a person from abroad and is excluded from receiving these benefits. If an A8
national loses their job within 12 months of arriving in the UK they also lose their right to reside. As such they are
also denied access to means tested benefits such as Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance (income based), Housing
Benefit, Council Tax Benefit and Pension Credit.
25 The British Government introduced a Home Office Worker Registration Scheme from 1/5/04 and all people from A8
countries have to register when they start work. They are issued with a worker registration card authorising them to
work for a particular employer. If they change employment they have to apply for a new registration card.
24
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
immediate access to child benefits and
tax credits when registered and working.
(IPPR 2006: 6)
In summary, while the system remains
complex, there are essentially five distinct
categories of Migrant Workers in the UK
and ipso facto across Northern Ireland:
1. EEA citizens.
2. A8 nationals with right to reside and
work restricted by the Worker
Registration Scheme.
3. A2 nationals – Migrant Workers from
new accession states Bulgaria and
Romania with right to reside and work
restricted by a package of ‘transitional
control orders’.
4. Non-EEA citizens on work permits or
work visas with right to reside and
work restricted accordingly.
5. Undocumented workers – sometimes
identified as ‘unauthorised’ or
‘unregulated workers’ - without either
or both a right to reside and a right to
work in the UK.
These categories cover a very broad
spectrum of migrant worker experiences.
At one end we find people in very wellpaid and secure employment without any
status or residence issues, at the other we
find undocumented or unauthorised
Migrant Workers living in a status limbo
and extremely vulnerable to exploitation.
It bears emphasis, however, that right
across this spectrum, these people are in
Northern Ireland as workers and
consumers and contribute positively and
specifically to the local economy in both
regards.
The situation in the Republic of Ireland
has a direct influence on the situation in
the north for three reasons. First, in the
context of GFA there is a gradual
integration of policy across areas
including policy towards Migrant Workers.
We have already seen this in terms of
discussions. Second, the land border
between the two jurisdictions means that
there is some movement across border of
Migrant Workers. It is extremely difficult
to measure this movement and to analyse
its impact. Nevertheless it clearly has a
bearing on the situation in Northern
Ireland. Thirdly, given the all-island nature
of ICTU, the trade union movement
develops policy with specific reference to
the situation in the Republic of Ireland
and this too has a direct bearing on its
own policy and practice in Northern
Ireland.
There have been a number of policy
developments in the Republic of Ireland
which therefore have immediate
implications in terms of the situation of
Migrant Workers in the north. ICTU has
an influence on many of these either
directly or indirectly through its role as a
‘social partner’. These include a new
national agreement – Towards 2016 which
makes a number of significant
commitments towards Migrant Workers
(Department of the Taoiseach 2006).
There are also commitments regarding
the legislation of employment agencies.
The National Action Plan against Racism
(NPAR) also has sections on campaigns
for workers rights aimed at migrants.26
More generally, the national Economic
and Social Council has recently published
two reports on migration (NESC 2006a,
b). The Equality Authority’s Migrant
26 See www.diversityireland.ie
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
25
Workers and their Experiences (Conroy and
Brennan 2003) provides a useful overview
of Migrant Workers experiences. More
recently the Equality Authority produced
An Introduction to the Situation and
Experiences of Women Migrant Workers in
Ireland (Pillinger 2006) which is especially
important given the absence of any
comparable work in the north. Other
statutory and voluntary organisations
have made important contributions in
terms of issues and policy (Irish Human
Rights Commission and NCCRI 2004;
McVeigh 2005; NCCRI 2002; Immigrant
Council of Ireland 2003, 2004; Migrant
Rights Centre Ireland 2004). In this
context, an all-Ireland body like ICTU has
a specific role to play in terms of
integrating response to the needs of
Migrant Workers across the island.
Northern Ireland – the Policy
Context for Migrant Workers
Since the GFA the policy context for
Migrant Workers has changed significantly
particularly given the race equality and
good relations obligations associated with
Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act
1998. There has, however, been less
activity in terms of economic policy and
planning by Government. This dearth of
activity on the economic aspects of
migration was characterised as a ‘woeful
policy vacuum’ in a recent analysis on
Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland. This
analysis is particularly important since it
was produced by a partnership of CBI,
NICICTU, NICVA and UFU. This
partnership, which of course contains very
different and potentially contradictory
interests, made it clear that robust action
is need from Government:
26
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
Employers, trade unions and the voluntary
organisations which try to support
migrant workers are all agreed that there
is a woeful policy vacuum on the part of
government in addressing the relevant
issues. The government in Northern
Ireland must make an immediate start on
taking a strategic lead in this area. That
strategy must be followed through with
action on the ground and adequate
resources to ensure proper provision.
(2006: 1)
Government, particularly the OFMDFM,
has begun to acknowledge specific
responsibility in terms of Migrant Workers
(OFMDFM 2006a). DEL has also played a
role as the lead agency in the Migrant
Worker Thematic Group within the
OFMDFM structures. This group has
recently produced a strategy and an
action plan on Migrant Workers
(OFMDFM 2006b,c). The OFMDFM has
commissioned research on Migrant
Workers as well as integrating their
situation into aspects of the Race Equality
Strategy and the Shared Future ‘good
relations’ policy (OFMDFM 2005). This
response has, however, often been
contextualised in terms of Migrant
Workers’ membership of minority ethnic
groups rather than their economic role
(Jarman 2006: 12). Moreover, while
Migrant Workers often have problems in
terms of ethnicity and racism, it seems
likely that the issues that confront them
are as just as likely to emerge from their
status as Migrant Workers as their
minority ethnic identity. For example, the
Labour Relations Agency provides
anecdotal evidence of the increase in
cases involving Migrant Workers:
We receive a high volume of general
employment enquiries (52,000 p.a.) from
employers and employees but we do not
keep records categorised by the type of
caller only by the type of jurisdictional
complaint which the call relates to (for
example, unfair dismissal, redundancy,
discrimination etc.) This means we cannot
indicate a reliable statistical trend in
migrant worker callers or to analyse the
nature of the calls. The best I can indicate
is that our enquiry point staff would
anecdotally suggest that they have
noticed a marked increase in contacts
from callers who are migrant workers in
the last year with the type of concerns
that would be expected including
minimum wage, working hours and the
like. (Research communication
8/11/2006)
We might suggest, therefore, that
economic justice should be as much a
concern for government in terms of
Migrant Workers as racial justice. This
does not, however, feature greatly in
recent research and policy developments.
Jarman identifies a similar policy vacuum:
The current focus of attention has been
on issues of discrimination, service
provision, information and advice for
migrants. There has been little overall
policy development to address the
prominence of migration as a factor in
the current and future economic
development of Northern Ireland, while
most current responses and initiatives
appear to be being developed in isolation
and with no sense of a coherent or joined
up approach. This is an issue that will
need to be addressed if migration is to
continue to be an opportunity for
Northern Ireland rather than a problem.
(2006: 16)
The Concordia analysis also contains a
number of useful recommendations
which should structure migrant worker
interventions across Northern Ireland.
Among our recommendations, we are
calling on the government to do the
following:
• give specific inter-departmental
responsibility for migrant workers in
Northern Ireland to one government
minister, and set up an interdepartmental task force to ensure
public sector provision for migrant
workers is effectively planned,
resourced and delivered;
• produce annual forecasts which
contain realistic predictions for the
size of the immigrant population in
Northern Ireland, its geographical
distribution and demographic makeup;
• set up a public enquiry office for the
Immigration and Nationality
Directorate in Northern Ireland, and
facilitate the development of advice
and support centres for migrant
workers throughout Northern Ireland;
• establish a Northern Ireland Skills
Advisory Body to advise on skills
shortages and on the need for migrant
workers in different occupations;
• ensure that there is tougher, more proactive enforcement of regulations
governing Houses in Multiple
Occupation throughout Northern
Ireland, with a particular focus on
areas where there are concentrations
of migrant workers;
• set up a Migrant Worker Emergency
Rehousing Fund in Northern Ireland.
The paper also contains some alarming
individual case studies illustrating
some of the problems which some
migrant workers have faced since
coming to Northern Ireland. (2006: 1)
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
27
It also made a strong recommendation in
terms of the enforcement of minimum
wage and other employment rights (2006:
6). The Concordia approach represented a
broad, strategic partnership across sectors
in terms of attitudes towards Migrant
Workers. In particular, it established a
broad and positive framework for policy
towards Migrant Workers across Northern
Ireland:
Migrant workers are making a very
valuable contribution to Northern
Ireland’s economy and society. It is vital
that they are not treated as second-class
citizens, but as respected members of our
community. It is also important that
employers do not face undue hurdles in
seeking to recruit migrant workers when
they have a genuine need for migrant
labour, and that they do not face
unnecessary obstacles in being able to
provide the fullest possible support to
those individuals. At present, the needs of
both migrant workers and their employers
are not being fully met within Northern
Ireland. The government must take a
strategic lead in providing a really
supportive and welcoming environment
for migrant workers. Concordia shares the
government’s aspiration to make
Northern Ireland as competitive as
possible within the global marketplace.
The use of migrant labour is helping to
meet that goal. It is imperative that the
government now takes the necessary
steps to ensure that it offers the fullest
possible support to migrant workers and
their employers. (2006: 14)
So, this suggests two key issues. First,
Government must be much more
proactive in terms of providing an
appropriate policy framework for
migration across Northern Ireland.
Second, there is a broad, pro-migrant
worker consensus across Northern
28
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
Ireland. As we suggested earlier, this
position is not without embedded
contradictions. Despite exhortations to
the contrary, it may be difficult not to
treat Migrant Workers as second class
citizens since so many of them are not
citizens at all and have profoundly
reduced rights in consequence.
Nevertheless, the fact that there is such a
positive approach to migration across the
social partners, makes it relatively easy to
emphasise the positive economic benefits
associated with the presence of Migrant
Workers – as both workers and residents in Northern Ireland. This notion of a
positive framework for Migrant Workers is
given a definitive regional context
analysis in the recent publication
Promoting Rights of Migrant Workers
(Holder et al 2006). Most NGOs appear
to have found this engagement as an
important advance in policy formation.
Witness Daniel Holder of ANIMATE:
The Thematic Group on Migrant Workers
has been the most successful thing to
emerge out of the Racial Equality Forum.
Obviously the long term impact will have
be judged in due course but it has done a
substantial amount of preparatory work
in a number of key areas. One of the
crucial area is effectively state recognition
of the need for an employment rights
approach to labour migration. There are
weakness and loopholes in the law but
also one of the strands that is emerging
from that is a need to look more
coherently and strategically at the way in
which employment rights are enforced because in Northern Ireland at the
moment there is a broad range of
agencies with different roles. So you have
the Revenue who are responsible for
taxation and National Minimum Wage,
you have DEL who are responsible for
employment rights in general but also
responsible for the regulations of
employment agencies and businesses– for
which an inspectorate is being appointed.
Also you have the Gangmasters Licensing
Agency that has other responsibilities
that falls under the Department of
Agriculture and Rural Development not
under DEL. Then you have the Housing
Executive that has a statutory
responsibility in terms of HMO
accommodation and inspection and then
you have the likes of the Equality
Commission which has strong powers of
formal investigation – it can formally
investigate employers. But they are
powers there that are yet to be used. So
there’s a whole range of different powers
that are around…. But if we – or whoever
is doing client work - come across
somebody that is being abused because
they are not being paid minimum wage,
maybe they’re being abused because the
employment agency is breaching the
regulations, they’re being abused because
they’re being put into death-trap tied
accommodation, they’re being abused
because they’re being paid lower rates
than local workers which is
discrimination. And the worker has to go
in that case to four different state
agencies - that is where it is very
problematic.
Equality Forum but other big policy
objectives and programmes…. For
example, in terms of housing planning
they have as yet to factor in-migration in
housing planning, in terms of education,
we are still waiting for strategic policy
there, and we still have a situation where
small minority ethnic organisations and
small NGOs are asked to subsidise the
education system and provide free
interpreters because there’s yet to be a
strategic infrastructure for translation and
interpreting….
Broadly we find therefore a ‘woeful policy
vacuum’ which is being gradually if
belatedly filled by government action,
most obviously represented by the
Thematic Group on Migrant Workers.
There clearly remains, however, a need for
migrant worker-specific policy
development across other key sectors.
The trade union movement has a
responsibility to place itself in the
forefront of this process and use its
influence as a key social partner to
advance the rights of Migrant Workers in
this context. The approach to external
policy development should be rooted in
strong and effective internal policy on
Migrant Workers within the labour
movement and it is to this area that we
turn next.
Generally, therefore, there is sense that
the ‘woeful policy vacuum’ is beginning to
be filled:
The policy framework has been moving
forward [through the Thematic Group] –
in the areas of employment rights,
information provision, general good
practice and data collection. What we
now need to look at are polices that don’t
fall under the auspices of the Racial
NICICTU and Migrant Workers –
Policy and Practice
NICICTU policy and practice on Migrant
Workers is developed in the context of
overall ICTU policy.27 There has been
specific development of migrant worker
policy over recent years:
27 This is detailed on the ICTU website at www.ictu.ie. See also ‘Address to the Institute of European Affairs: Migration’ 9th
November 2006.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
29
In recent years with the increased amount
of non-nationals working in the economy
unions have been attempting to ensure
that these workers are aware of the
benefits of union membership and how
they can become members. Some of the
general unions like SIPTU and the ATGWU
now have in membership workers who are
new to the Irish economy in industries
such as fruit picking and meat processing.
SIPTU along with other unions in the
healthcare sector such as the Irish Nurses
Organisation, Irish Medical Organisation
and IMPACT have been actively seeking to
recruit nurses, doctors and care workers
who have been recruited from abroad or
who have found work in these professions
having arrived in Ireland. In the transport
sector SIPTU has been organising nonnationals working in the bus companies.
The principle of organising Migrant
Workers is obviously at the heart of what
is recommended:
Membership of a union is the best way to
protect against exploitation and to ensure
that your rights are protected. If you
know or suspect that you are been
treated unfairly by an employer or been
denied basic rights membership of a
union can help. Joining is easy, simply
contact the union that in the sector or if
you are unsure about which union is
appropriate contact Congress. Congress is
currently involved in leading an EUfunded project aimed at addressing the
workplace needs of migrant workers
But ICTU also makes significant policy
interventions in relation to Migrant Workers
through its policy work. For example, it
plays a key role as a social partner in
relations and negotiations with government
in the south of Ireland – most obviously
represented by the Towards 2016 document
which includes specific elements on
30
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
Migrant Workers including the commitment
that, ‘[t]here is also a distinct and separate
response … to tackle exploitation of
migrant and other vulnerable workers’
(Department of the Taoiseach 2006: 57). It
also makes interventions with political
parties and with bodies like the National
Economic and Social Council which has a
direct bearing on the politics of migration
and the situation of Migrant Workers. This
pattern of policy intervention is repeated at
NICICTU level – albeit inside very different
state structures. Thus NICICTU is a
member of the thematic subgroup on
Migrant Workers within the OFMDFM and a
member of the Concordia group of social
partners which has made significant
intervention in terms of Migrant Workers in
Northern Ireland. NICICTU has also
recently developed campaigns in support of
minimum wage and against racism with a
specific migrant worker dimension
(2006b,c). This included leaflets on the
minimum wage in Polish for example
(2006a). Thus we see two key strands of
the work of the trade union movement
directly impacting on Migrant Workers –
first trade union organising and second
trade union policing intervention. Both of
these strands are developed in the context
of ICTU policy.
ICTU policy on Migrant Workers has three
specific strands: ‘Developing an
Immigration Policy’; ‘Protecting Migrant
Workers Rights’; and ‘Tackling Racism’.
These are developed with specific
reference to the Republic of Ireland but
can be taken to have general reference to
Northern Ireland as well. ‘Developing an
Immigration Policy’ places migration
policy in the context of demographic
changes and employment rights:
Because of the demographic changes
taking place, net-migration will continue
to be a feature of the Irish labour market
for the foreseeable future e.g. the number
of eighteen year olds in Ireland will have
dropped from 74,000 in 2000 to only
47,000 by 2012. Long term planning from
a public policy perspective will be
essential. Irish immigration policy should
have the following characteristics:
• Be transparent; conditions for
admittance to Ireland should be based
on clear and public selection criteria;
• Be non-discriminatory; in terms of race
and ethnic origin and the other
grounds covered under the
Employment Equality Act, 1998;
• Be based on proper reception,
administration and integration
mechanisms;
• Be backed by effective monitoring,
inspection and enforcement systems.
‘Protecting Migrant Workers Rights’
develops this rights-based approach with
specific reference to Migrant Workers:
There has also been growing concern
among affiliated unions about attempts
by some employers to substitute existing
workers with migrant workers on lower
wages. It is essential when granting
permission to employ personnel from
outside the EEA that full regard is had to
the availability of suitable personnel in
the local labour market. It was also
agreed, in this context, as part of
Sustaining Progress, to put in place
“…consultative mechanisms where local
labour and business interests can
contribute their perspective to the FAS
assessment of local conditions and
changing labour market realities.”
ICTU policy raises specific concerns about
the operation of the Work Permit scheme
– as well as work visas and work
authorisations - in the Republic of Ireland.
Again, this is jurisdiction-specific but the
general point holds in terms of the
operation of work permits and other
migrant worker permits in Northern
Ireland. ICTU policy also encourages the
monitoring of Recruitment Agencies:
The lack of regulation of recruitment
agencies in non EU/EEA countries
compounds this already complex
problem. Congress has received reports of
workers being required to pay large fees
?2,000 is not uncommon and there are
recent reports of percentage annual
reductions of up to 30% of the
employees’ gross wages as payment to
recruitment agencies. Irish law demands
that the recruitment costs be borne by
the employer and it is clear that
deductions by employers from wages to
recruitment agencies or other bodies is an
illegal practice under the Payment of
Wages Act 1991…. Congress is concerned
to ensure that effective regulation of
recruitment agencies be established.
ICTU policy also recognises the position
of vulnerable Migrant Workers:
The situation of women migrant workers
is also of concern to Congress, as they
may be victims of violence and sexual
exploitation. Congress has called on
Government to recognise the
vulnerability to violence and other forms
of abuse of women migrants, including
women migrant workers, whose legal
status in the here depends on employers
who may exploit their situation. We have
also urged Government to:
act affirmatively to regulate private
recruitment agencies for women migrant
workers;
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
31
establish outreach programmes for
migrant women, providing legal, social
and educational assistance;
ensure that Garda stations have trained
female officers charged with helping
migrant women to report cases of abuse;
ensure that migrant women working in
domestic are not excluded from the
protection of minimum labour standards,
and actively to prosecute employers for
violation of those standards.
ensure protections for migrant women
working in the “sex industry,”
ICTU’s third policy strand ‘Tackling
Racism’ is also jurisdiction specific
although it too has general application to
Northern Ireland:
Tackling racism was given a high priority
among Congress activities during 20012003. A high level Steering Group, which
included a representative of Congress, was
established in 2001 to implement the
National Anti-Racism Awareness
Programme (Know Racism), in partnership
with the Department of Justice, Equality
and Law Reform…. Congress continues to
build on the Code of Practice agreed with
IBEC by participating in the November
Anti Racist Workplace Week with the
Equality Authority, IBEC and the KNOW
Racism…. As part of a contribution to
Anti Racist Workplace Week in 2002,
Congress launched a campaign to urge
the Government to ratify the above UN
Convention. This Convention considerably
extends the legal framework for
migration, treatment of migrants, and
prevention of exploitation and irregular
migration…. The importance of an
international standard which provides a
basic framework for national legislation
and practice on managing labour
migration cannot be overstated. An email
campaign to urge government to ratify
the UN Convention was devised and
promoted. Many unions also signed
letters in support of this campaign which
also had the support of the Human Rights
Commission. In Northern Ireland,
proposals for a joint anti-racist workplace
week were accepted at The Trade Union
Council of The Isles meeting in November
2002.28
ICTU also established an ‘Anti Racism Task
Force’:
Congress is playing its part in combating
Racism in the workplace and in wider
society. As part of our activities Congress
established in 2001 the Trade Union AntiRacism Taskforce. The Task Force was one
of the key recommendations in the AntiRacism Indicative Plan adopted at the
2001 Biennial Conference. The aims of
the Taskforce are (i) to raise awareness
that racism in the workplace is not
acceptable and does not have to be
suffered in silence (ii) to provide an
framework for Unions to address racism
in wider society. The Taskforce meets
monthly and is made up of
representatives on a North/South basis
and includes affiliated unions and
representatives from a wide range of
affected groups including the Traveller
Community, Refugee and Ethnic Groups.
This Task Force recognises specifically the
experience of Migrant Workers as part of
its wider anti-racist work:
28 ICTU was also part of the Interact EQUAL Project ‘Valuing Diversity in the Workplace’. This was a project approved
for funding under the European Social Fund’s Equal Initiative. The project was run by a consortium consisting of
Congress, IBEC, Integrate Ireland and Fás.
32
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
The Task Force has identified that there is
a need to recognise the different forms of
racism in Ireland including:
• Racism experienced by Travellers on
the basis of their distinct identity and
nomadic tradition;
• Racism experienced by recent
migrants, which includes migrant
workers, refugees, asylum seekers and
students studying in Ireland ;
• Racism experienced by people on the
basis of their skin colour and ethnic or
national identity.
Congress recognised the impact of the
experience of racism in both the
workplace and wider society:
The effects of Racism can make victims
fearful of going to work, cause them to
leave their employment, cause physical or
psychological illness. It is clear then that
change is needed and that this will
require a positive commitment from the
whole organisation managers, unions, and
staff.
Finally, ICTU recognises the importance of
international involvement against racism:
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions was an
active participant in both the
International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions (ICFTU) and Irish Delegation to
the World Conference against Racism
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related
Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa
2001. Congress supported the outcomes
of the World Conference, importantly the
commitment “to establish and implement
without delay national policies and action
plans to combat racism racial
discrimination xenophobia and related
intolerance”.
Once again ICTU places all this work
‘tackling racism’ in a rights context:
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions stands
against racism and xenophobia as a
matter of fundamental principle. The
promotion of human rights, equality and
diversity is an integral part of the trade
unions’ daily struggle for freedom,
equality and justice for all. There are a
number of basic principles underpinning
our fight against racism, racial
discrimination, xenophobia, and related
intolerance including:
• Trade unions recognise the need to
combat racism and build ethnic
diversity based on equality and the
development of Rights.
• Trade unions take an explicitly antiracist approach in the development
and implementation of their policies,
programmes and action.
• Trade unions recognise the crucial
importance of integrating a gender
perspective when developing and
implementing policies, programmes
and activities in the fight against
racism and xenophobia, in order to
address more effectively the issue of
multiple discrimination against
women.
• Trade unions recognise the central role
to be played by those affected by
racism, xenophobia and ethnic
discrimination in developing,
implementing and monitoring relevant
policies, programmes and activities,
paying special attention to the most
vulnerable groups: women, youth and
persons with disabilities.
Generally, therefore, ICTU has a fairly
well-developed policy in support of
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
33
Migrant Workers. This has, however, been
developed with specific reference to the
situation in the Republic of Ireland. The
specificity of the situation in the north is
recognised. As Peter Bunting explains:
The infrastructure in Northern Ireland is
very poor in relation to the protection of
migrant workers rights. DEL has a
committee working on that and we are
represented on that…. But the number of
inspectors is very low – there are a huge
number of breaches of the minimum
wage legislation. That’s a big weakness –
a basic flaw in how migrant workers
should be protected…. And if migrant
workers are not being protected, there’s a
lack of morale and a lack of trust and a
lack of connection.
This means some work needs to be done
making sure that the structures work
effectively in terms of any interventions
in support of Migrant Workers. Pauline
Buchanan explains:
There is an anomaly there between what
happens in the north and in the south
because in the north you have the Black
and Ethnic minorities committee, you
have the Lesbian and Gay committee, the
Equality and Human Rights committee
while in the south they have a strategic
implementation of equality committee to
oversee all these issues….
While the three policy strands have
general application in the north and
provide a useful platform for developing
policy, there are significant differences in
all three areas given the different
jurisdiction in the north and the different
– and more complex – structure of
governance. (For example, the Migrant
Convention campaign in the south is a
fairly simple call for the Irish Government
to ratify the convention; in the north a
34
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
similar campaign might be stand alone or
might situation itself in terms of similar
campaigns by the TUC and the STUC. The
Northern Ireland Assembly has no
capacity to ratify the convention and
clearly the British Government is unlikely
to change its policy on the convention
because of campaigning by NICICTU
alone, no matter how innovative or
effective.) While the ICTU policy on
Migrant Workers provides a useful starting
point to work in this area by NICICTU
developing the three policy strands:
‘developing an Immigration Policy’;
‘protecting Migrant Workers Rights’; and
‘Tackling Racism’, these clearly need to be
customised and nuanced in terms of trade
union work in Northern Ireland. We
return to this issue in the
recommendations but it is useful to
signpost here that the alliance of unions
and NGOs brought together in the
steering group for this research could
have a key function as an ad hoc group
working on mainstreaming migrant
worker issues at NICICTU level.
Migrant workers in Northern
Ireland – Existing Research and
Demography
As we have seen, there is a growing
literature on Migrant Workers in Northern
Ireland. Animate, STEP and the ICR have
all done important work in this area
(Animate 2004,2005a,b,c; Bell et al. 2004;
Jarman 2004, 2006; Holder, McAliskey and
Lenaghan 2006; Holder and Lanao 2006).
The Migrant Worker Support Network
(MWSN) is an important recent
development which allows organisations
and groups working on Migrant Workers
issues to share information, ideas and
resources through a cross-border
network.29 The basic demography of
Migrant Workers remains difficult to
establish, however, for two key reasons:
first, the data is not always available –
although data collection and analysis
from statutory sources has improved over
recent months (see Beatty et al. 2006);
second, the situation has changed rapidly
and markedly over recent years:
Migration patterns to Northern Ireland
have changed considerably over recent
years and this is leading to significant
changes both to the size and the
ethnic/national background of the overall
minority population. The currently
available evidence suggests that the
patterns of migration are distinctive in
relation to the UK as a whole, with larger
numbers of Eastern European migrants
moving to Northern Ireland and a larger
than expected numbers of migrants in the
manufacturing, food processing and
construction sectors. (Jarman 2006: 15-6)
Broadly, however, we can identify certain
characteristics of the Northern Ireland
migrant work community. Firstly, as
elsewhere, the community is far from
homogeneous. There are marked
differences in terms of national origins,
ethnicity and gender across different
sectors. Second, there are marked
differences in terms of both residency and
work status across different sectors.
Certainly, as elsewhere, in Northern
Ireland it is clear that the most vulnerable
Migrant Workers are ‘undocumented’ or
‘unauthorised’ workers who may have no
right to reside, let alone work, in Northern
Ireland. The next most vulnerable group
are ‘non-EEA nationals’ who may have a
right to reside in Northern Ireland but
whose status is characterised by the
absence of full rights to work. The next
most vulnerable group is Migrant Workers
from Romania and Bulgaria. Nationals
from A8 states – namely Poland,
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic,
Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia – also remain
vulnerable. While A8 nationals no longer
required work permits to work in Ireland,
they are required to register and they do
not qualify for certain benefits and
services available to citizens. Nationals
from Bulgaria and Romania are subject to
further restrictions.
We need, therefore, to be careful with the
notion of ‘Migrant Workers’ with which
we work. Even within those groups of
people recognised as Migrant Workers by
the British Government (which, we
remember, has not ratified the Migrant
Workers Convention), we have very
different categories - those on work
permits and the worker’s registration
scheme as well as other mechanisms like
the ‘Highly Skilled Migrant Programme’.
There are also many students from
outside the EU who can work part time.
In terms of the broader notion of Migrant
Workers, it is clear that some Migrant
Workers have many more rights than
others – the status of Migrant Workers
can range from those of an Irish citizen
working in Northern Ireland - with
effectively the same rights as a British
citizen - to those of an ‘undocumented
worker’ – with very few rights at all.
In real terms, most Migrant Workers in
Northern Ireland probably currently come
from Accession State countries. While
there is no exact census figure for
numbers of Migrant Workers in Northern
Ireland, there are a number of proxy
indicators. These are discussed in some
29 The network can be joined at [email protected]
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
35
detail in Long-term International
Migration Estimates for Northern Ireland
(2004-5) –Sources and Methodology
(Beatty, Fegan and Marshall 2006). Key
indicators include the statistics for the
Workers Registration Scheme (which
provide an estimate for Migrant Workers
from A8 countries) and Home Office
Work Permits. These indicators generate
the following statistics for workers
registered on the worker’s registration
scheme:
Between 1 May 2004 and 31 March 2006
[of] people registered with the WRS …
just under 15,000 people (3.8%) were
living or working in Northern Ireland – in
contrast the NI population makes up
2.9% of the UK population…. The
regional breakdown within Northern
Ireland shows, in absolute number terms,
most workers are employed in the Belfast
LGD area. However, Local Government
Districts within the Southern Health
Board (Armagh, Dungannon, Craigavon
and Newry and Mourne) and Cookstown
and Ballymena LGDs have higher
registrations than would be expected
based on population size…. Worker
Registration Scheme statistics also show
the level of registrations by nationality. As
would be expected based on population
size relative to other accession countries,
most people registered here are from
Poland (c7,000 registered in NI). However
based on UK population share, NI has
received markedly more registrations
from Lithuania than the UK as a whole.
(Beatty, Fegan and Marshall 2006: 7-9)
In other words this indicator suggests
around 15,000 Migrant Workers from
Eastern Europe concentrated in Belfast
and Armagh and South Tyrone. The
pattern for work permit holders is slightly
different:
Between 1 April 2004 and 31 March 2006,
[of] work permits … approved … there
were just over 6,700 (2.1%) to people
working in Northern Ireland…. The
regional breakdown within Northern
Ireland shows that most workers with
work permits are employed in the Belfast
LGD area. Local Government Districts
Antrim, Ballymena, North Down and
Omagh also have a higher number of
approved work permits than would be
expected based on the population size of
these areas…. It is also clear from the
nationality statistics that a significant
volume of NI based permits are for Indian
and Filipino nationals … Data at a UK
level shows that almost one quarter of
work permits are for the health and
medical services industry, followed by the
computer services industry at just under
20% of permits issued. (Beatty, Fegan and
Marshall 2006: 17-18)
In other words, this indicator suggests
7000 Migrant Workers from outside the
EU (mostly India and the Philippines)
concentrated in Belfast and Antrim, North
Down and Omagh. These statistics have
to be treated with caution. They
obviously do not pick up ‘undocumented’
or ‘unauthorised’ Migrant Workers at all.
Nor do they pick up the sizeable numbers
of Migrant Workers from full EU member
countries, notably Portugal and Italy.30
Nor do they recognise that effectively all
the present minority ethnic population in
Northern Ireland has its origins as a
migrant worker population. With the
exception of small numbers of minority
ethnic business people, nearly all people
of colour communities in Northern
30 See Holder and Lanao (2006) for a detailed analysis of the Portuguese experience in Northern Ireland.
36
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
Ireland arrived as Migrant Workers.
Moreover, there is some anecdotal
evidence to suggest that they represent a
major underestimate of even
‘documented’ or ‘authorised’ Migrant
Workers. Nevertheless while the numbers
remain debatable, the indicators are
probably broadly accurate in terms of
what they suggest about where these
Migrant Workers are from and where they
work and live.
There is broad acceptance that these
workers make a significant positive
contribution both economically and
culturally:
It is generally accepted that host
countries benefit from inward migration
of labour both in terms of the skills
people bring with them and the increased
labour capacity for jobs for which there is
often a limited local labour interest. The
evidence from this research suggests that
migrant labour is filling significant gaps in
the labour force in NI, both in terms of
providing skilled workers, for example in
the health system, and unskilled factory
labour, for example in the food processing
industry and in certain sectors of
agriculture. The UK National Statistics for
example, indicates that there has been a
net outflow of population from NI since
1992. Over this time emigration has
exceeded immigration by 1,300 persons.
Furthermore, the [arrival] of migrants can
have positive impact on the society more
generally. This includes the positive
impact of migrants on a local economy in
terms of consumption, housing and
entertainment, and the increasing cultural
diversity such immigration can bring to
the wider society. Our research revealed
that migrant workers are being widely
utilised in a small number of areas of
employment: as nurses within the health
service; as workers within food processing
factories, particularly meat processing
work; within the agricultural sector
particularly working in areas that are not
suitable for mechanisation, such as
mushroom picking, and within the service
and catering sector both in ethnic
restaurants and take-aways, but also
increasingly in the wider hotel sector.
Migrant workers are also employed
prominently in the further education
sector, in construction trades and they are
increasingly being seen as a useful source
of labour by a wide range of businesses.
(Jarman 2004: 54-55)
In general, therefore, the literature is
characterised by a number of elements
that hold fairly constant at different
levels of analysis and across different
jurisdictions. First, a ‘managed migration’
policy is seen as a necessary and a
positive thing. Second, this holds true
across social partners so – in principle at
least, trades unions and employer’s
organisations, governments and the
community and voluntary sector all
support the presence of Migrant Workers
with economies and recognise the specific
and necessary contribution that they
make. Third, there is a general – if less
focused – anti-migrant worker tendency
across jurisdictions which becomes
manifest in particular ways. Thus states
which have recognised the need for
Migrant Workers may still introduce antiMigrant Workers measures. Much of the
politics of reaction to Migrant Workers
develops in terms of these two
contradictory tendencies – a capital logic
which insists on the need for Migrant
Workers and an anti-migrant logic which
insists that Migrant Workers contribute
negatively in some way to the host
community – without producing much
evidence in support. Previous research on
the Cookstown, Dungannon, Craigavon
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
37
tri-council area provides useful context
here (McVeigh and Fisher 2006). The aim
of this research was to address three key
questions: first, the economic benefits of
Migrant Workers in the area; second, the
potential of maximising such benefits;
and, third, to identify potential research
methodologies that could demonstrate
this. These questions can usefully be
asked more generally across Northern
Ireland. Moreover trade unions clearly
have a key role in providing some of the
answers.
38
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
3. MIGRANT WORKERS IN NORTHERN IRELAND
– THE ICTU RESEARCH
As we suggested earlier, the research
methodology was heavily dependent on
the ability of NICICTU and its partner
organisations to encourage Migrant
Workers to participate in the research. At
this point we were dependent on the key
support of three key unions – T&G,
UCATT and UNISON – to draw on their
experience and networks of organising
Migrant Workers. We also drew on the
support of STEP and NICEM – two
community based organisations with
migrant worker specific programmes. It is
questionable whether any other
partnership could have generated such
widespread access to - and active
cooperation from - Migrant Workers and
support organisations. The partner
organisations were responsible for
generating a number of focus groups
across different sectors/unions. These
constituted some six focus groups. The
focus groups were conducted in Belfast
and Dungannon and make up was decided
by the host unions and organisations.
However, all involved a mix of Migrant
Workers and other people with some
specific interest and experience of
working with Migrant Workers. Many of
the Migrant Workers were, of course,
themselves ‘activists’ – community
leaders, shop stewards and organisers.
These focus groups were supplemented
by interviews with a number of key
activists – again people with specific
experience of working as or with Migrant
Workers in Northern Ireland.31
Participants in the focus groups are not
identified by name (although where
appropriate they are identified in terms of
gender and national origin or area of
work) but key activists are.
The first point that emerges from the
research is confirmation of the diversity
of the migrant worker population across
Northern Ireland. Whatever the
stereotype of a migrant worker, the
reality is that Migrant Workers are women
and men, Black and white, from a range of
minority ethnic backgrounds, and from
Europe, Asia, Africa and other parts of the
world. There are Migrant Workers who are
very well paid and Migrant Workers who
experience profoundly exploitative wages
and working conditions. Migrant workers
also have different residence statuses –
from an absolute right to remain in the
country to the marginal and ambiguous
position of undocumented or
unauthorised workers. In this context it
becomes necessary to be cautious about
the use of the term migrant worker
because it covers such a multiplicity of
identities. When we addressed the issue
of the term ‘migrant worker’, no Migrant
Workers rejected the term or found
offensive but neither is it a particularly
embraced by people. They are more likely
to identify in terms of their national
origins (‘Polish’ or ‘Filipino’ for example)
or their profession than as ‘Migrant
Workers’. The term ‘migrant worker’
therefore tends to be a neutral one rather
than a positive, organising identity.
Obviously local society has certain
expectations - and often stereotypes - of
Migrant Workers. But this is a two way
process – Migrant Workers have similar
31 These individuals were: Eileen Chan-Hu, Ethnic Minorities Project Co-ordinator, Ballymena Community Forum; John
McLaughlin, STEP; John O’Farrell, ICTU; Patrick Yu, NICEM; Michael Kiddle, UCATT; Billy McCreight, GMB; Daniel
Holder, ANIMATE; Pauline Buchanan, ICTU; Peter Bunting, ICTU; Tayra McKee, T&G; Pamela Dooley, UNISON; Maciek
Bator, NICEM.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
39
expectations and misconceptions about
Northern Ireland and people who live
here. Experiences often confound
commonsense notions of the process of
migration. This is confirmed by Filipino
nurses for whom the defining aspect of
their new work situation is often neither
racism nor income but rather the poor
quality of the equipment they are asked
to work with:
I was working in China for six years.
Financially it is better here but in terms
of quality in nursing homes, it is better in
China because the nursing home that I
have been working in [in China] is three
hundred bed capacity and all the things
that we need are already there but here it
is difficult to cope. There is a lack of
carers. We really want to help the
residents but there is too much work.
There is too much overloading to help the
residents. There is a lack of equipment in
nursing homes here – even [equipment
named] they don’t have. We tell them
that they should order these things but I
think they are just trying to save money.
In China the weighing scale is automatic
but here it is so old that we don’t know
how to use it. It is very difficult for the
confused patients…. At feeding time you
are too busy to help people, there is too
much time pressure. People end up with
cold dinners, or with not dinners or with
you not knowing whether people have
eaten their dinners.32
This reminds us that there are very
different experiences of migration and
that migration eschews simplistic
generalisations about Migrant Workers.
Every migrant worker has a biography.
Some people have ‘emigrated’ in the
sense that they feel they have made a
new home in Northern Ireland. Others
are clear that they will return home to
their country of origin after a definite
period of time. And others fall
somewhere between these positions:
I will stay longer than one year. But I will
save some money and then I will go back
to Poland. We will try ten years and then
go back. Because I will get a different job
because I have English. But maybe I will
say after ten year or fifteen years, I will
decide I won’t go back to Poland. Most
people with higher education decide to go
back to Poland but other people will stay
here because there is a better life here.
And, perhaps most poignant of all, there
are those people who would like to stay
but who are denied the right to make
that decision because they are on work
permits. As one Filipino nurse working in
essential services put it:
We would like to stay [in Northern
Ireland] but you don’t like us to stay.
Talking to Migrant Workers in Northern
Ireland helps to challenge a number of
myths. The first myth is that Migrant
Workers come as some kind of ‘flood’ or
‘influx’ – turning up in Northern Ireland
arbitrarily or unthinkingly. People come
in the first instance largely because they
are actively recruited by companies based
in Northern Ireland or by recruitment
agencies representing those companies.
Most others come because of ‘chain
migration’ – they connect with already
established migrant worker networks in
32 Migrant worker participants in the research were guaranteed anonymity and in consequence they are not identified
in the text in any way. Of course issues like gender and nationality and workplace and profession are often
mentioned in the quotations from See www.picum.org
40
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland which provide a basic
level of information and support:
My very best friend is living in Dublin. I
was living in Belgium and then I had to go
back to Poland and I found a job for £100
per month working 7am to 6pm. It was
all right because I was living with my
parents but it’s not enough to live. My
friend said, ‘Talk to Grafton. They got me
a job, maybe they can get you a job’. So I
didn’t choose Northern Ireland, Grafton
did!
We moved to Northern Ireland for a two
year contract. We worked for [a leading
transport company] – they still bring
Polish people- drivers, welders – and work
for a few months and then fire them, take
other people – the same experience I had.
Because they brought Polish drivers then
didn’t speak English at all, they also
needed Polish managers. My friends and
me – 7 people – moved from Poland, we
left a good job in Poland, different
conditions but a good job. I had a good
job, I worked as a traffic operator for
about 7 years and I met the [company
director] in Poland. We asked about
money. He said £1000. The problem was
we didn’t ask gross or net – but he said
£1000. My husband was self-employed in
Poland. He closed his business and we
moved to Ireland with two children.
Everything was different from what he
had said in Poland. We worked ten hours
a day – one hour for lunch, so nine hours
everyday. He asked about two Saturdays.
I explained I had two children. We I
checked my gross salary it was under the
minimum wage….
I moved [to Northern Ireland] because of
the contract. That was the only offer I
got. I had a job. I had a house. The
company sorted all those things out. So
that was the only way I could come with
my family. I couldn’t come and look for a
house with my children…. I like the south
of Ireland – not so many problems. But I
asked my son and he doesn’t want to
move again.
The description by one trade unionist of
the increasing use of Migrant Workers by
one employer becomes a useful example
of the real process whereby Migrant
Workers are recruited to workplaces in
Northern Ireland:
[Our factory] put a massive extension on
and were looking for hundreds of new
workers and couldn’t get them locally – it
wasn’t for want of trying - because the
trade union movement were actually
involved in trying to recruit people as well
with the company and we couldn’t get
anyone. They then decided they wanted
to start agency labour. At the start it was
agency labour from the north … that
didn’t work out for various reasons. Then
they started to bring in agency labour
from Portugal. At the start it was done at
busy times and on back shifts that
historically you wouldn’t have got local
people to do…. So you had Portuguese
workers coming in, some from Africa and
East Timor…. Now there are not that
many local people joining the factory – in
fact I would say nil. There are different
factors. The people aren’t there in this
area. The other thing is that factory work
in general has gone down with people.
Young people don’t want to work in
factories. They’ll go to a call centre first.
They want a shirt and tie. They don’t
want to get into the shit – literally.
So most people only come to Northern
Ireland because there is a comprehensive
package offered to attract them as
workers. Moreover, they come because
there is a specific and manifest need for
their labour.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
41
It bears emphasis that for some Migrant
Workers, migration has been an almost
wholly positive experience:
We have been treated very well since we
have arrived.
I’m working in an engineering firm. They
give me all the good treatment and they
see that I have the experience and I’m a
good worker. But they have all been very
good to me - totally different to [the
experience of] some migrant workers.
I’ve never had a problem with local
people. I’ve met with people from
different backgrounds – people from
Catholic areas and Protestant areas –
people who look like real killers. Even
with paramilitary representatives, they
are all right…. Sometimes you can meet
with people who are mad because you are
from a different country or you are
Catholic but I haven’t had a problem.
There was a really funny situation where
an Italian guy was attacked because they
thought that he was from Poland because
of his accent. He had a lot of problems
after that because they thought he was
Polish. But I’ve never had a problem.
So it would be wrong to suggest that
being a migrant worker in Northern
Ireland is necessarily a negative
experience. But most Migrant Workers
have at least had some negative
experiences as Migrant Workers and there
are broad areas of concern.
Employment-related issues
Migrant workers are obviously defined by
their status as workers. Not surprisingly
therefore much of their experience of
Northern Ireland is defined by their
42
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
experience of work. Here we find that
negative experiences are both systemic
and routine. Part of this is simply the
reality that to be a migrant worker to
have fewer rights than workers with
citizenship. Just being a migrant worker
makes people unequal in different ways.
This reality is then experienced in a whole
range of mundane ways:
I felt very downgraded because the local
people are getting a different rate for the
same work. And yet I’m qualified as a
midwife. I have more qualifications than
the local care assistants.
The problem is in the mentality. When
you are here – you are living in Northern
Ireland and you are from Poland – your
brain is still in Poland. When you are in
Poland, you can’t get advice from places
like the Equality Commission or the Law
Centre. If you have a problem in Poland,
and you have difficulties with your
employer, he will say, “Thank you very
much, you’re sacked and I have ten people
waiting to take your place”. So if you
want to work, you must sit quiet. .
This experience of powerlessness is
particularly acute for people on work
permits since their status as residents and
workers is so markedly different from
other workers:
A lot of us come on a work visa or a work
permit. We are in a very vulnerable
position, so we are afraid to speak up.
Because everything is in the control of
the employer. They can just say she’s not
a good nurse. It is really hard for us….
They told us three to six months for the
adaptation process. But it actually takes
a year or a year and a half. If I am an
assessor – if I don’t like her, I can fail her
at the end of her adaptation even if she is
doing everything right. She has two times
and after that she is sent home. We have
a dual role – care assistants and nurses –
and a lot of the nursing homes are using
the adaptation process to keep us
working as care assistants. Our rate is
just as a care assistant and yet at home
they told us that we would be paid as
nurses after three months….
Alongside the structural inequality of
being a migrant worker, however, the
experience is also characterised by unfair
treatment and exploitation:
I was supposed to have a contract. There
was no contract. Before we moved to
Ireland we were supposed to have a
contract. But I never saw a contract and I
never signed anything. When we
complained they closed the Foundation
[recruitment agency] in Poland but they
still supply people for the company.
The company brings people without any
English. This is the problem…. He fires
people but they just go back to Poland….
He fired me without any notice – me and
my husband on the same day…. Because I
had been complaining to people in Poland
about the way we were treated and
because I tried to explain to the [Polish]
drivers that they could not drive as longer
than normal because there was a strict
law. They should drive safe hours – to
avoid an accident. When I asked why,
they said “Wrong person for this
position”. When they fired my husband,
his supervisor said, “How can you fire a
person who has such a good reference?”
(When this migrant worker complained
about the absence of a contract, the
agency in Poland closed down. But the
same people were employed by the
company again to recruit workers for
Northern Ireland.)
We are working in private nursing homes
and they are able to control us because we
are afraid. Afraid because they are able to
stop us renewing our visas and our
permits. You just say ‘okay, okay’ because
you are afraid. Our working visa and work
permit was only for three years. We
continued working illegally [for the same
firm] because they told us that they were
going to get the visa and the permit
renewed. And then we contacted UNISON
to ask them to help us to get it sorted out
and they told us to go home. How could
we go home? Then UNISON and the Law
Centre helped us to get a six month visa.
So I have a work permit now but I’m still
having problems with my visa. I’m still
hoping that I will get it but it’s very easy
for the Home Office to say that there is no
shortage. And then we don’t get the visa –
but there is a shortage because local
people don’t want to do this work - that’s
why we are here in the first place.
There are many examples of serious
exploitation and abuse:
Some of the private healthcare workers
we have helped are working under
horrendous conditions – the car they
were driving wasn’t even MOTed. This was
a private health agency that was
employed by the Trust. Trusts should be
held responsible for who their agencies
are. They were working 80 hours a week
with no overtime and no nothing. People
were being bullied and harassed – they
had so many places to hit in a certain
time in a ten to twelve mile radius. These
women were fully fledged nurses –
theatre nurses who had been promised in
Poland £1000 a week or whatever. They
came over and got nowhere near it and
were doing a job that there were not
trained to do when they were more
specialised and the health service could
have been doing with them.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
43
Probably the most vulnerable of all
Migrant Workers are people identified as
‘undocumented workers’. We need to be
careful with labels here because the paths
to becoming ‘undocumented’ or
‘unauthorised’ are multifarious and do not
conform to popular stereotypes. As
Daniel Holder explains:
The trade union movement needs to see
unauthorised / undocumented workers as
workers and work with them on that
basis. I think that this is well-established
now at policy level but it needs to happen
on the ground as well. I think there is
quite often a misunderstanding of what
an undocumented worker is or what an
unauthorised worker is. Quite often the
image is of someone who has been
forcibly clandestinely trafficked across
borders and obviously these cases are
often the people who are most vulnerable
and who need most support, but at the
same time constitute a very small
percentage of unauthorised workers.
What pushes people into unauthorised
status is a multiple range of factors.
Sometimes it is deliberately done by
exploitative employers who will try to not
push workers into undocumented status
through not renewing or manipulating
Work Permits or through discouraging
people signing up to the Worker’s
Registration Scheme knowing that it is
therefore more difficult at a later stage to
enforce employment rights. In addition
arbitrary, and unreasonable decisions by
the Home Office also push workers into
unauthorised status– for example, the
Law Centre has indicated to us that it
wins between 33%-40% of appeals on
refusals for extensions meaning that
33%-40% of the original decisions are
wrong. This pushes persons into
unauthorised status - there are now
proposals of restricting or removing some
44
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
appeal rights, which will make the
situation much worse. There are other
issues re awareness and complexity of the
system so it’s quite a complex area….
research in the south indicated victims of
exploitation on work permits tend to
arrive with documented status and end
up in undocumented status as a result of
their exploitation. The issue is that the
state here will treat persons as
immigration offenders and not as victims
of workplace exploitation. The reality is
the more and more immigration rules are
tightened, the more and more people will
be pushed into undocumented status.
The whole area is also often used as a
way of demonising all migrant workers –
using words like “illegal” and the
presentation of being undocumented as
some sort a deviant act. This feeds into
populist racism.
Domestic workers often form a specific
category of workers within this sector.
Again great care is needed not to conflate
categories since many domestic workers
are ‘authorised’. However, it is clear that
some Migrant Workers are pushed into
domestic work because of issues with
their status. Moreover, it is clear that this
sector is open to specific forms of
exploitation. As Daniel Holder suggests:
The more we look into it, the more
evidence there is that there are increasing
numbers of migrant workers working in
the private home. This is a serious
concern because none of that work will
be unionised. It generally tends to be
women workers involved and the
experiences of migrant women are often
quite overlooked. You are very vulnerable
if you are in the private home and some
of the cases that have been brought up
have been quite harrowing. It’s often an
area that isn’t particularly well unionised.
There needs to be innovative approaches
– there have been quite useful organising
models in other parts of the world and
they need to be looked at.
The ‘doctrine of illegality’ can have a
particularly pernicious effect:
If you work ‘illegally’ then you are therefore
not entitled to enforce employment rights.
That hands an exploiter a very powerful
trump card to play – all they have to do is
push you into that status.
While ‘undocumented’ or ‘unauthorised’
workers may be particularly vulnerable to
abuse by so-called ‘gangmasters, this kind
of abuse is not restricted to these Migrant
Workers. As one trade unionist puts it:
Agricultural labourers goes from pulling
the turnip in the field, Mushroom pickers
and so on to the like of food processing
plants who are covered under it as well.
…. There’s gangmasters who I know
working in this area who have European
workers – Lithuanian workers, Hungarian
workers and are using exploitative
practices.
While recognising that issues connected
to status may make Migrant Workers
specifically vulnerable to exploitation, we
need to be careful not to reinforce popular
stereotypes about ‘undocumented
workers’. While some Migrant Workers are
more vulnerable to exploitation than
others, most Migrant Workers experience
unequal treatment of some description. It
is generally the case, therefore, that being
a migrant worker places someone in a
position where they are very likely to
experience exploitation and abuse as
workers. As we have seen this is not the
case for every migrant worker but it is
endemic in the sector and this places a
specific responsibility on the trade union
movement to address the issue.
Relationship with trade unions
Obviously where there are employment
related issues and abuses, the role of
trade unions in defending workers. There
is some evidence of Migrant Workers
being targeted because they are members
of trades unions:
I think that is what happened to us.
Because when they asked us to go home,
they said you have to go home because
the union is involved in your case.
There is also some evidence of employers
encouraging Migrant Workers to join
particular associations or unions because
they are perceived to be more
‘acceptable’ to them. Some employers
are very hostile to unions and these are
least likely to make people aware of their
rights, including their right to join a trade
union.
Clear patterns emerge in terms of where
conditions are most likely to be bad. The
private sector tends to be worse than the
public sector. There are also widespread
and well-publicised issues with major
employers in the food processing and
transport industries. John McLaughlin of
STEP describes another sector which has
received less attention:
The other side of the coin is the small to
medium sized plants, places that are not
organised, the like of engineering plants.
These have sprung up because of migrant
workers. The pay there is better. The
workers would be getting a rate - £8-£12
an hour. Those places wouldn’t exist
without migrant workers – they couldn’t
get welders for diamonds a couple of
years ago and they are completely
dependent on migrant workers. [We meet
them because] They can come in and talk
to someone who’ll do that with them in
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
45
their first language through appointment
– they might be well paid but they want
to talk about holidays or maternity pay or
paternity pay or the workers registration
scheme. These workplaces would be very
anti-union. Again it takes a long time to
build up a relationship [with these
migrant workers] but if they see our work
as rights-based and union-based and
whether they join in their current place,
they might join somewhere else and at
least they have a good experience of
trade union organisation.
In combination then Migrant Workers
experience a profound inequality that is
both objective and subjective. One trade
unionist describes how Migrant Workers
who do have fairly good residence and
employment rights may remain unaware
of these rights and vulnerable to
exploitation:
This is where the trade union movement
needs to have more of a role – a lot of
people come here and they think that
they’re not supposed to be here, that they
don’t have a right to be here or that they
are here by the skin of their teeth –
there’s a blind eye turned or whatever
and they can’t access anything else.... The
trade union movement needs to get away
from that who’s an undocumented
worker or not – they are workers – we’re
breaking the law if we are helping this
person. That shouldn’t come into the
trade unions equation. But even the
people who do have basic rights, they
aren’t aware of them… So I think the
trade union movement here needs to
have a European and even a world
intervention – through those trade union
channels talking to different groups in
Poland or Lithuanian or whatever. Telling
people you are allowed to go to Northern
Ireland and these are your rights.
46
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
There is a complex dynamic, where on the
one hand people who have well-defined
rights need to be made more aware of
them while workers who have few rights
need to be organised and protected as
well.
Recruitment agencies
Routinely people are promised one thing
in their country of origin and then given
something very different when they get
to Northern Ireland:
In the Philippines we were told we were
going to get a certain rate - double time
for holidays and other times – but when
we got here they only gave us time and a
half. I raised the issue with my manager
but she said nobody is getting that rate
here. . We went on like that for a year
because we were afraid until I decided
that I was going to speak up – that this
was not right. They said that they were
going to talk to Head Office but still
nothing was done. Then there was an
inspection. I spoke to the Inspector. I
was really afraid because I didn’t know
what would happen. But there was a
good result. And after two weeks I got a
letter from the employer saying they
were going to give me the correct rate.
But I didn’t get the back pay….
Before we came here we got a contract
from the company but then they changed
the contract.
A common theme is the expectations and
promises made by the recruitment
agencies are not met:
My experience was that the person in
Poland said you are going to [named Food
Processing Factory]. It’s a quite good job.
It’s warm – it’s around 15 degrees. You
don’t have to deal with meat. So, don’t
worry, it’s a good job. When I came here
it was minus 2, it was really cold, I had to
pack chickens from all these trays and my
job description was quite different.
This is confirmed by the experience of
Maciek Bator in NICEM:
I have a really big problem with
recruitment agencies because if you are
working for an agency they can fire you,
they can sack you anytime because you
don’t have a contract with the company
you are working for, you have a simple
contract with the recruitment agency. So
the agency can say the company doesn’t
need you so we don’t need you.
There is also some evidence of
inappropriate charging by recruitment
agencies. In theory all the costs of the
recruitment agency process are met by
the employer but some agencies still find
mechanisms to charge Migrant Workers
for various services:
The recruitment agency tried to charge
me for x-rays. They said if you are
working in the factory you have to have
the x-rays. I said I won’t pay because I
can go and get those done for nothing.
They sent me a letter threatening all the
things they would do – I would lose my
job. My friends went and paid because
they didn’t want to lose their jobs.
In [named agency] we had to pay £15
every year for P60 and they had to pay
£15 for doing pay slips. They said they
had to send them to some office to do
the payslips.
Of course, exploitation by agencies is not
a given and some workplaces have
organised to improve or transform the
role of the agency. As Tayra McKee
explains:
Was used to happen was that the
factories had contracts with different
agencies – it was up to the agencies to do
the recruitment and then they could put
people wherever they wanted. But now
[some companies] have just one agency
that they deal with…. Because there were
different agencies and no union the
agencies did whatever they wanted, once
we started organising, the agencies and
the company changed the system to just
one main supplier of labour and some of
these abuses stopped.
So there are already models of improving
practice through organising. Clearly
though, however good or bad a particular
agency is, the use of agency labour places
workers in a more vulnerable situation
than when they are directly employed by
a particular employer. This will remain a
key issue for the trade union movement
in any work in support of migrant worker
rights. There is certainly enough evidence
of unlawful practice to justify an ECNI
investigation of agencies employing
Migrant Workers.
Other work-related issues
Migrant workers also encounter issues
and problems connected with their
employment. They obviously require
accommodation; they usually need access
to some form of transport between home
and work.
We were living in his house. He gave us
six days to move out with two children.
He took £400 pounds per month from me
and my husband….
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
47
My big problem was that the
accommodation they gave us was three
and half miles from the factory and we
were working on the nightshift. We were
working from 5.30 to 1.30. So we had to
walk. There was no transport, no taxis, no
buses, no nothings. I had to do that every
night after eight hours of work.
The contract promised transport but
when the recruitment agency changed we
have to pay £1 to and from the factory….
They provided accommodation. They
took money out of my pay for
accommodation but our house was
unfurnished. When I asked, can we not
even have a washing machine? They said,
‘we gave you a house – now it’s your
problem’.
There is some evidence, however, that the
worst excesses have be mitigated more
recently, at least in areas with established
migrant worker populations. As one trade
unionist records:
An agency might have maybe twenty
landlords working hand in had with them.
Some of the stuff was horrendous but
that has all changed now because there is
no link between the housing and the
agency, migrant workers are dealing
directly with the landlord. I think that a
lot of it is myth in that we have been
working with the Housing Executive and
trying to get poor housing stock back into
circulation…. All in all, things have
changed dramatically – the agencies no
longer control your whole life and this
has given more freedom to people. They
can ask ‘is this a good area? Or is this a
good house?’
Generally, there is a need to monitor the
wider impact of packages that encourage
Migrant Workers to come to Northern
48
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
Ireland yet often carry profoundly
unequal or exploitative conditions
attached to them.
Issues for families of Migrant
Workers
Alongside work-related issues for Migrant
Workers, there are broader issues and
difficulties. These can be especially acute
where migrant worker families are
involved:
My son is ten. His English is brilliant. It
was complicated because I though I
would get more time when I arrived
because it was only me. I though I would
get extra time to stay with my son in
school for one hour. No chance. We
arrived in Northern Ireland on a Saturday
and we started the job on the next
Monday. The company chose the school.
The first day I took my son to school and
signed everything. After that, I couldn’t
help him. He just got from me a paper
with a ticket to the school. I worked from
6.30 to 4.30 – I couldn’t take him to
school, I couldn’t pick him up…. He got an
extra one hour a week for English and
that’s it.
You can ask for a free interpreting service
– that works sometimes. But how can
you ask for an interpreting service, if you
don’t speak any English?
Generally, there are few problems with
accessing benefits providing Migrant
Workers are able to secure interpreting
and translation support:
First of all, you must apply for a National
Insurance Number. Then you must
register to the Home Office. If you are
registered with the Home Office you can
apply for benefits, but not all benefits.
After one year you can apply for all
benefits, before that you can apply for a
few…. But some people don’t know that
they have to register and it’s sometimes
really complicated….
As a generalisation, the numbers of
migrant worker families coming to
Northern Ireland appears to be on the
increase. Eileen Chan-Hu traces this
development in one local area:
I would say the proportion of individuals
to families is probably about 80/20 or
70/30 but the number of families is
definitely on the increase…. The
Portuguese were the first to come in
2003 – at one stage we had hundreds [of
Portuguese] but out of that we only had
three families. They were working mainly
in the meat factories through the
recruitment agencies but the contract
finished and they moved on. The number
of families tends to be very low when
people are testing the waters…. And then,
if everything is fine, the family comes
over. That we have seen a lot of.
The increase in the numbers of migrant
worker families places very direct
responsibility on different state agencies
to plan for this development. As Daniel
Holder of ANIMATE argues:
Some of the issues are caused by the
unequal civil rights that migrant workers
have in terms of the Worker’s Registration
Scheme and in terms of Work Permits.
The only way to mitigate that is for the
non-state sector to provide a support
infrastructure – perhaps developing a
funding relationship with the state or
with others. But there are issues in terms
of accessible childcare for Migrant
Workers – there’s a number of
exacerbating factors for Migrant Workers
in terms of the inaccessibility of childcare
– not just due to cost if you are low paid
but also through the exclusion of some
people from tax credits, also due to shift
work, also due to not having extended
family, also due to the fact that health
trusts won’t have anyone on their
registers that can speak a language other
than English….
More broadly therefore there needs to be
a shift in attitude:
You can’t say come over here and save
our local economy and pay our taxes and
bring your own child minder or bring your
own teacher or bring your own doctor.
That is not only unlawful, it’s blatantly
unreasonable…
At basis, this involves a move away from a
notion of Migrant Workers as ‘guests’
tolerated because of their labour power
and towards recognition of them as
people with a right to family life with all
that this entails. Migrant worker families
often need specific support and this is
rarely being provided in an appropriate
manner.
Racism and Sectarianism
While many Migrant Workers report
positive experiences of living and working
here, racism is also a serious issue for
many people. Recent research by NICEM
identified how widespread and routine
racist violence has become across
Northern Ireland (McVeigh 2006) and this
was confirmed in the ICTU research.
Much of this violence is migrant workerspecific – directed at Migrant Workers
specifically because they are Migrant
Workers. Migrant workers by definition
have some experience of ethnic
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
49
encounters in different situations. In
consequence, many have a very
sophisticated analysis of the dynamics of
race at a global level:
I think from talking to people from
different backgrounds, I think it’s more
than fear of somebody you don’t know.
In the world we are living in, there is a
hierarchy of race and if you are a
particular race, this is your place within
the hierarchy. If you are white, you are
rich, and they are the lords, and we are
supposed to worship them. And they
thing they are better than us and us,
non-white, we still treat them better than
us – just for being born with this skin
colour. We need to understand that we
are equal…. I get it all the time – they
call me ‘Bin Laden’ – for me it’s racism, for
them it’s a joke – they refuse to see that
it is racism. That’s the problem – the
definition of racism is very weak. They
think that racism is beating somebody up
for their race or using a very few names –
‘Paki bastard’ – anything else is not
recognised as racism.
For other Migrant Workers, however, the
racism they experience in Northern
Ireland is a fairly new phenomenon. This
affects people generally but it may also
have a specific workplace dynamic:
With our management…. they think that
we are ignorant, that we are stupid, they
never realise that we are thinking. We
don’t want to go against them because
we don’t know what protection we would
have if we go against them. So we are
just, bow, bow, bow – but inside we are
raging….
Generally it is the children, throwing
stones at your window, calling you names,
calling you monkey, things like that ….
50
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
This problem is particularly intense for
Migrant Workers of colour. As Eileen
Chan-Hu explains of Ballymena:
I think the experience of Filipino and India
and African people is more harrowing
than that of Eastern Europeans. In terms
of the kinds of things that are being
marked in the town for example, NF
stickers on their doors, subject to
constant stone-throwing and verbal
abuse. White Europeans do suffer but not
to that extent.
Thus while racism is worst for people of
colour this does not mean, of course, that
white Migrant Workers do not encounter
problems. For some Eastern Europeans in
particular this kind of hostility is a new
phenomenon and some people are unsure
about how to ‘name’ their experience:
I started to develop stomach problems
because we were getting ‘No more
fucking Polish language in this office’, ‘you
can’t speak English’, ‘Fucking Polish
drivers’, ‘Stupid people’, ‘Who brings
women into transport?’, ‘Mad people’words like that.... We had to speak
English, only English…. He brought 7
people to the office – all of us had been
at university – we were well educated. I
don’t know if it was racism – maybe more
like jealousy because they had only basic
education. They said, ‘you think you are
so good, you’re not’. For me racism is
mostly about different colour….
In a new twist to traditional dynamics, for
some of these Eastern European Migrant
Workers sectarianism can be as
problematic as racism:
People in our estate are confused –
Catholics from Poland and a Protestant
school. What? Someone smashed a
window in our house but things are better
now. There are more police patrols….
Polish equals Catholic. At the start –
three or four years ago - they didn’t know
what it meant but now they begin to
know Polish equals Catholic.
Migrant workers in this situation have
also begun to develop an analysis of why
there is anti-migrant worker racism and
sectarianism:
Children are like a mirror. What they hear
at home, they bring it outside. They hear
something like, “Stupid Polish, they take
our jobs”, next time they smash your
windows. When I spoke to the children
they said, “What did you come here for?”
four years old and five years old – how do
they have questions like that – “Didn’t
you have a job in Poland?”.
As we have already seen, some of this
anti-migrant racism and sectarianism is
manifested by other workers and in the
workplace. There is some evidence of
racism and more general opposition to
Migrant Workers from local workers. As
one activist describes:
There was a lot of resistance from local
workers to Migrant Workers being
involved and being equal. What we had
to do was make the argument that from
Dungannon being a ‘blackspot’ in the 80s
and also the amount of people who left
here in the 80s left a void of people – the
population had gone down. Factories like
[my own] couldn’t be here if they didn’t
have the people to work in them…. I
think we got that argument but the other
argument was housing – Migrant Workers
were seen to eat up all the houses and
young local people couldn’t get their foot
on the ladder…. It wasn’t that these
workers were taking houses but
exploitative landlords were buying up
everything that they could get to rent out
to Migrant Workers or to rent to an
[employment] agency.
These kinds of ideas and attitudes can
still be very prevalent among workers and
trade unionists. Another shop steward
explains how this is reflected in the
attitudes of workers in a factory:
A lot of people mightn’t like what I have
to say but I have to say it because it is
the mood in the factory. We are losing an
awful lot of people who have been born
and reared here… We’re finishing with
maybe 80% Migrant Workers and the
whole reason is that these lads come
over, they put three or four into a house
together, they charge them £100 or £120
a week but that’s divided between four
for accommodation. Our own workers
are going home to a wife and family and
they are paying at least £70 more than
that for their home. They have nobody to
help them out. It finishes up that these
lads [Migrant Workers] have more money
than our own – plus the fact that they are
getting them to work overtime as single
time which is cutting out our own people
from getting overtime…. And they are
very, very angry in the factory at the
moment. We need to get everybody on
the same wages. It’s not fair the migrant
worker standing beside me earning less
than me but he’s getting overtime so he’s
going home with more money than me.
He’s doing as single time and we’ll not do
it on single time.
But even this kind of situation – which
sounds like a simple example of
‘displacement’ of local workers by Migrant
Workers - is more complicated. Many of
the workers on contracts who are being
replaced by Migrant Workers employed by
agencies are themselves Migrant Workers.
And because some factories have stopped
taking on directly employed workers at
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
51
all, some local workers are now being
employed as agency workers. So what
appears as a simple local worker/migrant
work split is actually a directly employed
worker/agency worker split with Migrant
Workers and agency workers on both
sides of the split. But this complex
picture will often be both perceived and
represented as an example of
replacement of ‘locals’ by ‘foreigners’.
It is recognised that trade unions have a
key role to play in addressing this kind of
racism, not just through workplace work
or work with their own members:
Another key intervention that unions can
make is really high level engagement with
the media given that they have much
more access to it than small NGOs. Antimigrant worker economic racism has yet
to become part of mainstream media
discourse here – there is yet to be major
public figures running anti-migrant
campaigns. It’s probably only a matter of
time before that does happen and
someone needs to be in a position to
respond to it. Trades unions as
representatives of workers and Migrant
Workers in particular need to take a lead
role in that.
It is also clear that local, white workers
and trade unionists often make sense of
racism and discrimination against Migrant
Workers in terms of their own experience.
This sometimes involves very positive
accounts of trade union intervention on
behalf of Irish workers, particularly in
Britain:
What’s happening here – isn’t just
happening now. I went over to England
when I was seventeen, I know all about it.
We joined the union immediately we
went over,. The rep. as soon as we arrived
– the union came to us. And for about
52
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
four months we were underpaid – we
didn’t realise and we went to the rep. and
he fought and got it for us. Exactly the
same thing that is happening now was
happening forty years ago. And you were
a Paddy when you went over, treated as a
lower class citizen….
So, while there are no simple solutions to
this, there are plenty of opportunities for
alliances to built by trades unions against
racism and exploitation based in the
common interests and experiences of all
workers. Broadly, however, our research
confirms widespread exploitation and
abuse of Migrant Workers across Northern
Ireland with the distinct possibility that
the situation may get even worse. It also
confirms that the trade union movement
has a key strategic role in challenging this
exploitation and abuse.
4. LESSONS AND MODELS FOR THE
TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
The research presents a challenge to
ICTU, NICICTU and trade union
movement in Northern Ireland. It
suggests that there are a range of ways in
which practice needs to be improved and
a range of ways in which the trade union
movement can play a leading role in
delivering economic justice to Migrant
Workers. Most importantly, it, it is clear
that trade unions have a key role in
organising Migrant Workers. It bears
emphasis that there is already plenty of
community organising going on within
different migrant worker communities.
First, as we have already noted, the
established minority ethnic communities
in Northern Ireland have their origins as
migrant worker populations. These have a
grounded experience which is invaluable
to newer communities. Second, the new
migrant communities are also beginning
to develop whole networks of support.
There are, for example, widespread Polish
and Spanish language church services
which provide a key focus for community
activity. Different migrant worker
communities are also organising soccer
and basketball leagues that bring people
together socially.
Organisations like NICEM and STEP are
also providing key community-based
services and support to Migrant Workers.
Any trade union activity therefore, takes
place in the context of this existing work.
Maciek Bator explains how this works in
NICEM:
I am dealing with Migrant Workers –
helping them to find a job, helping them
dealing with life in Northern Ireland - but
I am also dealing with the racist problem.
I am working with Migrant Workers from
central and Eastern Europe. I am also
working with local communities trying to
stop racist attacks. People come for
advice, how to apply for benefit - any
kind of benefit or how to apply for a place
for a child in a school. I had thirty cases
over the summer and I still [in October
2006] have to find a place for three
children….
There is also plenty of good practice
evident in organising Migrant Workers
already in some unions. This provides a
whole series of lessons for organising in
other workplaces and other unions.
Sometimes the migrant worker shop
steward needs far more basic information
– just because they don’t know how the
systems work here. The first thing is that
the worker has to make the complaint
themselves – they have to go to the
supervisor or the manager or whoever
before they come to the shop steward to
put in a grievance and so on. They don’t
know that they can be represented, you
have to start at the beginning….I think
that Congress should be helping the
migrant shop stewards because I feel that
they get so overloaded because they
don’t know what the mechanisms are.
In our membership [in the food
processing factory] there’s a lot of
teachers, a lot of people with a lot of
qualifications, people who have studied
law, but their skills aren’t being used. If
you look at our building I’m the only
black person. There is a need for a
specific strategy to get people involved in
the union, as tutors, as officers.
Something that is very specifically
targeted at developing the skills that
people are missing – whether it’s English
or whatever. There needs to be specific
resources for this. And is has to be
appropriate to the trade union
movement.
One of them is to characterise the whole
approach that the trade union movement
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
53
is taking … as employment rights. A lot
of the issues that are being discussed and
dealt with, far from being new, really are
part of the broader rights work of unions.
The issues of migrant worker rights are
issues of broader worker rights and those
working on migrant rights should really
separate them from workers’ rights and at
the same time those working on workers’
rights need to see Migrant Workers’ rights
as an integral part of that. It shouldn’t be
seen as an add-on within the union
movement. The importance of taking a
human rights approach to labour
migration as a whole – seeing Migrant
Workers as another group of vulnerable
workers issue. The whole employment
rights perspective is crucial in terms of a
union’s general approach. Most of the
work of representing a migrant worker
constituency has been done by NGOs
rather than from unions….
Most trade unionists working in this area
are clear that there must be innovative
and flexible approaches towards work
with Migrant Workers. As John
McLaughlin of STEP explains:
I run an employment rights clinic and
when people come with issues I try and
get them sorted out. Again, I would ask
people to join a trade union to safeguard
themselves, some do and some don’t. But
as those people get more and more
involved with STEP, we build up some sort
of a relationship and people find out that
we are genuine and that trade unions
aren’t a state run thing and that the faces
are genuine faces of help and support.
That feeds into factories. If they work for
an agency – you are talking about
hundreds and hundreds of people – I give
them the name of a shop steward and
suggest that they have a chat with them.
You see people unsure – maybe waiting
six or eight months before they join a
54
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
trade union. This is something that the
trade union movement needs to
recognise, it isn’t just a quick fix. If you
don’t know the systems and you don’t
know the language, it’s a while before you
are ready to join a trade union…. The
trade union movement should be backing
the like of STEP more - This is new, this is
different, it is not totally about
employment, it’s about housing, it’s about
benefits, it’s about a whole plethora of
different information and advice. I think
the trade union movement need to get on
board on that one and need to be seen to
be backing that and I think most of the
trade union movement haven’t done that.
Tayra McKee, an organiser with the T&G
suggests:
I have two things to say to that – first is
the issue of resources. We need resources
to do this kind of thing – [the organisers]
are a resource but we’re limited by hours
and certain activities that we are
employed to do. But the spaces for the
union used to be union buildings and that
doesn’t happen any more. Transport
House closes at five o’clock and if you
want to work late, it’s a major deal. But
there’s a hall upstairs which could be used
for activities in evenings….There should
be a community development role that’s
needed within the union…. May Day is a
bit of that. That’s the only thing I see the
union movement doing where there is
that sense of community and bringing
families together. It doesn’t have to be
on that big scale, it can be on a much
smaller scale…. I know that people’s fear
is that when to start to do that you move
away from workplace issues defending
worker’s rights which his what the
movement is about and too much into
community issues - but at May Day is so
clear that it is about workplace issues and
it’s brilliantly done…. Unions should be
proactively linking with community based
organisations, rather than just using their
resources. That’s the only way in my
opinion to organise in an inclusive
manner, going back to the roots of the
trade union movement -and that costs
and involves a lot of work that people
need to be prepared to do.
One Polish member reflects on this:
I think we can collect more members and
I like that word activist – activists – when
we meet outside the factory because
people – not just me – more Migrant
Workers will feel safer outside the factory.
When you say tonight we’ll have a
meeting of the union, it’s no good…. But
when you say come on and play football
or some festival or let’s do karaoke, then
people will come. Then you can take half
an hour to talk about what the union is
and what it can do for them.
One activist describes how he got
involved in this type of work:
When the agency workers first arrived, I
asked a few questions – where were
people staying, what rate of pay were
they on – and nobody was very
forthcoming. Then at that stage we were
getting nowhere with the company so we
had a relationship here with STEP around
union learning and between the two of us
we set up a centre in which we had
Portuguese-speaking people. I
volunteered my services for doing a clinic
on employment rights. I was a senior
shop steward in the company so I was
hated for that but basically the company
wouldn’t do it on a formal basis. It got so
big – at this stage you are talking about
hundreds of Migrant Workers coming in –
they used to be queued up the street. So
then we went to the unions to back it
with money and for the company to
second me – STEP and the T&G. It was
good PR for the company at a time when
they were under the spotlight, under
pressure from TV programmes and so on.
Ostensibly they were the host employers
- we were saying ‘you are host employer,
you have to have some regulation on
your agencies’. Again that was always the
bit – were they were not directly
employing and they stuck hard to that –
At the minute they have a ‘master vendor
who are a massive worldwide agency who
are the overall bosses of the agency and
the smaller agencies feed into to that –
so that leaves the employers two stages
away [from direct employment].
As we have seen, the analysis of this kind
of restructuring is often racialised – even
when it is much more complex than
simplistic notions of agency migrant
workers replacing ‘indigenous’ direct
labour’ allow. As one migrant worker
shop steward explains:
Some companies here in Dungannon are
taking advantage of foreign people and
they are using foreign people to work for
them and then they are giving foreign
people a bad name. Everyday full-time
workers are leaving and they are replacing
them with agency workers…. This is a
policy – they don’t say it – but it is a
policy.
From the trade union perspective the
solution to this is comparatively simple
and completely disconnected from the
ethnicity of the workers involved:
We were trying to get so many agency
workers permanent jobs because there’s
no way that there’s that many temporary
jobs – they are permanent jobs. Fair
enough in some factories it may go up
and down a bit.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
55
As Tayra McKee explains:
What we are trying to do is a minimum
standards agreement. Bring everybody
together. Get agency stewards and get
agency workers organised and get
everybody organised round the same
issues and start putting pressure on for
everybody to get direct jobs so people
realise that it is really [the company] that
is doing the damage. The difficulty I find
is that everything takes so long to
happen…. The big problem with
organising the agency workers is that
people are very afraid, and they are afraid
for good reason because they are going to
be sacked. It’s very easy to get rid of
them.
Even when people are getting work, their
conditions are sometimes shocking. One
Latvian migrant worker explains:
We start at 7.00am and finish at 6.00pm
or 7.00pm. On Friday you start at
1.30am and finish at 11.00am and
evening shift come at 7.00pm and finish
is flexible – sometimes 5am, sometimes
6am, sometimes 7am. At Christmas you
have to go home because there is no
order and no shift….
There are many examples of how
vulnerable and exploited agency workers
are. One Polish worker explains:
The agency calls you in the morning ‘I
need you today, come to work’. People
come and after half an hour, the manager
says ‘Why are you here? I don’t need you,
go home’. So people spend money for
taxi – six or eight pounds – if the wife or
husband is working in the same
conditions – how can these people live?...
We have people killing themselves who
were working for agencies. They can’t
deal with these things – they lost their
56
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
jobs and then they start to think in a bad
way….
My friend said ‘I need free time, Saturday
and Sunday because I would like to stay
with my family’ so they sacked him. This
is an example of the way that agencies
are working with immigrant people.
Tayra McKee point out that the trade
union has to approach this issue in a
strategic way:
As a union we didn’t have a strategy until
about a year ago. It was the shop
stewards very much left on their own –
fighting things here or there. And there
was no strategy of let’s organise the
agency workers. The 50% of Migrant
Workers [who are union members] we’ve
got in the last year.
There is some anecdotal evidence of firms
or recruitment agencies targeting
different countries as sources of migrant
labour. This is, of course, a complex
process and may reflect changes in the
economy of the sending country or
changes in networks which begin to
discourage rather than encourage family
and friends to come to a particular
workforce. It may also however reflect a
conscious employment strategy to resist
organisation – as workers from one
sending country begin to organise,
agencies deliberately turn to other
countries as new sources of nonorganised labour. Shop stewards are
certainly clear that patterns can be
established:
It started off with the company 5 or 6
years ago employing mostly Portuguese
and East Timorese workers. Then that
died off and it started again after two
years recruiting Lithuanian workers and
now they have moved on to Polish
workers. As far as I can see, when the
union gets a grip or gets in with a group
of workers, they move onto another
group, with another language to frustrate
the organising. That’s what happening. I
have no doubt in the next six months
we’ll have a whole stream of Bulgarians
and then it will be Romanians…As soon as
people get organised the company aren’t
making as much money as possible, so
they have to move onto the next group of
people who aren’t aware of their rights
and will put up with things….
As a broad generalisation, the research
suggests that relations between trade
unions and employers will tend to be
better with larger firms and less good
with smaller firms. By implication
relations will tend to be better with the
CBI and less good with Federation of
Small Businesses firms. Trade union
support for migrant worker rights is
developed within this wider context.
None of this means that organisation is
ever impossible but it does have to be
customised to specific workplaces.
Union interventions also have to be
sensitive to the specific vulnerability of
Migrant Workers. Sometimes what is
right in principle may turn out to be very
negative in practice. Witness Pamela
Dooley of UNISON:
I asked the employer to sort out the visa
situation of [three named workers]. And
their response was here is a air ticket, go
home, tomorrow. I can’t do that to
people. So you have to be careful how
you raise your head above the parapet. If
I do that to people, everyone is on a
plane. But you can do it, if the whole of
the Filipino community, the whole of the
trade union movement, the whole of the
Indian community, the whole of the
organisations all getting together with a
campaign that raises awareness. And
then the company has a bad name across
the whole country – not that they don’t
have a bad name already….
And Tayra McKee:
We distributed leaflets outside the
workplace informing workers of what was
happening with Migrant Workers –
challenging some of the myths. The
management wouldn’t let us distribute it
inside the workplace. But the other side
of that is – whenever it becomes too
much – when the manager came out and
moved us and said, ‘Who are you to be
doing this?’, it actually has a very
negative effect in terms of the Migrant
Workers we are trying to organise
because they get even more afraid…. On
the other hand, the local workers love it!
As John McLaughlin of STEP suggests:
On the trade union side there is some
wonderful work being done. It’s all about
membership at the minute but it should
be more than that and bigger than that.
Organising should be done holistically to
try and get people to know what their
rights are, how they can access services,
that kind of thing….In the south there is
some very good work being done with the
likes of mushroom pickers – the Migrant
Centre in Dublin played a key role along
with the likes of SIPTU. What they are
doing is organising as in giving people
information, where they can access
services, looking at housing, and union
membership is part of that, but not the
whole be all and end all…. What you have
to have is some one or some people who
are community based but at the same
time have the ethos of trade unionism
but unions tend to be in the background
rather than in the fore. The churches too
have played a role in terms of organising
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
57
a mass and then organising a social for
people after the mass.
There is also a need to guard against the
‘ethnicisation’ of the union movement. As
Pamela Dooley of Unison says:
I have seen it happening in [named
Hospital] and I get quite angry about it. In
the hospital we have a very good group of
Filipino workers but the shop steward is
seen as the ‘Filipino steward’ and that
annoys me because he shouldn’t be seen
as the ‘Filipino steward’, he should be the
same sort of a steward as any other
steward is. He’s a nurse and he should be
a steward for the nursing area he works in.
One migrant worker shop steward
explains why this can happen:
Part of the problem is that even giving
membership forms to white people, you
hear some words – ‘Who do you think
you are?’ – that kind of thing. They
wouldn’t say this to a white shop
steward. I don’t have the same
experience when I give it to an Indian
nurse or a Filipino nurse.
In other workplaces, this kind of process
of migrant worker stewards representing
Migrant Workers has moved on as
relationships developed. This is crucial in
terms of relationships between different
workers:
It has changed from migrant worker’s
needs to worker’s needs. We are all
workers together. That’s crucial – that the
area that the union must get involved in.
At one level therefore the organising
principle that emerges from these
discussions is very simple, as confirmed
by one migrant worker shop steward:
58
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
The key to the whole thing is to bring
everybody together – the Migrant Workers
and the agency workers and the local
workers and the stewards – working
together because we are in the same
factory doing the same jobs. And not split
the education, educate everyone together.
In other words, people should organise in
trade unions to defend and extend the
rights of all workers – whatever their
status and whatever their background.
What encourages Migrant
Workers to join a trade union?
The research also offers analysis in terms
of what specifically encourages Migrant
Workers to join trade unions. It suggests
that most Migrant Workers have no
experience of union membership in the
sending country so they do not come
with a background of organisation. As
one Filipino trade unionist put it:
There is no tradition of independent
unions in the Philippines.
Others have had negative experience of
corrupt or state-run unions. Quite often
there is a sense of a defeated and
demoralised trade union movement in the
country of origin:
It’s like this – we have trade unions but
people don’t believe in trade unions.
Years ago when we had Solidarity, we had
strong trades unions but after that we
had problems with trade unions because
they are trying to get money from you
and they can’t help you.
Some Migrant Workers were, however, are
critical of the weakness of the union
movement in Northern Ireland:
Where I come from unions are actually
much more militant that they are here.
As a generalisation, however, most
Migrant Workers have not been unionised
before they come to Northern Ireland and
most have either negative or no
knowledge of trades unions. This means
that organising can be especially
challenging in this context. The research
suggests that word of mouth is very
important:
When we came here, we didn’t know the
laws and we didn’t know where to go if we
had a problem – until we learned from
friends – they said go and ask them – join
the union. When I came here I just worked.
We’re learning. We are learning to fight.
My cousin is a member of the union and
she told me that I should join the union
because they had helped her when she
had a problem before.
Migrant workers tend to organise when
they learn of the benefits from other
Migrant Workers. Sometimes private
sectors worker gain confidence from
observing colleagues who are unionised in
the public sector as Eileen Chan-Hu
explains:
Members of minority ethnic
communities are more united and
stronger if they come together to resolve
employment issues in a group setting –
for example, when we brought focus
groups together for a community safety
survey for ethnic minorities, Filipino
nurses from the private sector wished to
avail of the knowledge of trade unions
when they heard of those who
recommended unions from those
working in the public sector such as
nurses in [named Trusts].
Underlining all this is the reality that
delivery is key – Migrant Workers will join
trade unions when trade unions are seen
to help and support them:
We lost our jobs for a couple of months
and the union helped us, they really
helped us.
So it is particularly important that the
functionality of the union is presented to
people:
How can we expect anyone to join the
union when all they see is four or five shop
stewards and they don’t see what is behind
them? All they see is half a dozen people
saying we should stick together and they
see the size of the firm. They don’t see
how strong the union is, the size of the
movement, how much influence it has.
One Polish woman migrant worker
explains this perspective:
You know what I think personally –
[joining a union] is more people and is big
power. So it’s good. But I don’t know if I
can join a union in my company?
Because there is no union there. Local
people are not in the union. You need a
person that will start something like this.
Don’t expect that I will do this! I’m a
foreigner!
Beyond this, Migrant Workers and
activists have plenty of ideas in terms of
organising Migrant Workers and making
trade unions effective and useful to them:
Trade unions should provide fliers in
migrant worker languages, they should
have meetings, they should tell people
how they can help. People need to
understand that it’s only something like
£20 for the year and then they can get
very good advice and support.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
59
The key lessons are first that this process
takes time and second that unions have
to think creatively in terms of how they
engage with and support Migrant
Workers. In particular they need to find
ways of supporting recreational and
community development aspects of
organisation. Finally it is crucially
important that the trade unions ‘deliver’
both before and after Migrant Workers
join. Migrant workers are most likely to
join if they see the union effectively
representing them as workers.
Alongside, its core organising function,
the trade union movement should have a
key role in policy intervention. This
remains the case whatever system of
government is in place but a restored
Assembly would give crucial new
opportunities. As Daniel Holder argues:
If the Assembly is re-established there is a
key opportunity to influence legislation
within it. Obviously migration legislation
can’t be influenced because the Assembly
has no competency over it. What ICTU
should do in terms of the migration
legislation is work with the TUC and ICTU
in the rest of Ireland lobbying the British
and Irish governments on that…. In terms
of the Assembly, the one striking thing, of
course, is the competency that the
Assembly will have over employment
rights which is not the case in either
Scotland or Wales in terms of devolution.
They really need to be going to the
Assembly, outlining the problems in terms
of exploitation that are now well
documented and outlining the solutions
in terms of an employment rights
approach. Another thing would be to
follow the Scottish example and remove
some of the problems associated with the
Worker’s Registration Scheme particularly
in terms of access to social housing…. My
assessment in terms of working with all
60
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
parties locally is that there wouldn’t be
much political opposition in terms of
getting these things passed.
Clearly therefore Migrant Workers are no
longer a ‘new’ or ‘temporary’ phenomenon
– they are an embedded part of the social
fabric of Northern Ireland. This has
significant implications for the local, nonmigrant worker population. As Pamela
Dooley of UNISION suggests:
We desperately need Migrant Workers to
come here. We have had no experience
with working with anybody from any
other country. We have had no diversity.
We desperately need here in Northern
Ireland people from different worlds
bringing their different ways of working,
their ways of doing things, their ways of
dealing with computers, their cooking,
their models of better healthcare. We
have an awful lot to learn from them.
And it’s a two way process…. And in
terms of the trade union movement,
when you join a union, a trade union is a
collective, it is about what we can do for
each other – we desperately need them
but we would like to think that they need
us.
This is underlined by Patrick Yu of NICEM:
One of the problems about NI before you
come here is that everything about here
is negative image, about bombs, about
terrorism and so on. It has been very
insular. We don’t have much diversity.
We need to go beyond Orange and Green.
Chinese, Filipinos, Asians and now Eastern
Europeans. This is very important to the
politics of Northern Ireland – how we
turn racism and sectarianism into
something much more positive. The local
economy and local services are
increasingly dependent on Migrant
Workers. This has benefit for the whole
society. Globally we are influenced by
each other. That kind of interdependence
is really important – an important
positive impact for everyone in Northern
Ireland. We need to see the third sector –
the wide diversity of ethnic groups –
refugees and Migrant Workers as well as
established minority ethnic groups - and
that is very positive for everyone here,
particularly the next generation. This is
an important message going out to the
outside world. But we need Government
to give that positive message to Migrant
Workers themselves – to say how
important their contribution has been.
we have seen already, trade union activity
can be characterised in terms of the
combination of organising and policy
work. It is important, of course, that
these strands of work are integrated and
complement each other. Towards this end
we can identify a series of interventions
and actions developing existing NICICTU
policy and practice. These dichotomise
broadly in terms of ICTU’s external
relationships - with other organisations
from the ILO to local NGOs - and its
internal relationships – within ICTU itself
as well as with trade unions, trades
councils and ICTU affiliates.
Thus the migrant worker presence is
actually transforming Northern Ireland in
a profound way. But this has serious
implications for how government and
NGOs think about what they do. We
might suggest that Migrant Workers as a
bloc should be thought of as new social
partners- first, as a key element in society
in Northern Ireland and, second, as a
distinctive population with particular
issues and needs. The trade union
movement specifically has to respond to
this new reality. With this in mind,
therefore, we see a creative tension
between the two core roles of the trade
union movement in organising and policy
intervention. We turn now to the issue of
what is to be done.
ICTU and External Relationships
What is to be done? Economic
Justice for Migrant Workers
As we begin to examine the experience of
Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland in
the context of existing ICTU Policy and
the issues raised by this research, we can
see several ICTU and trade union specific
opportunities for further intervention. As
It is important to continue to
internationalise the work that NICICTU
does in support of Migrant Workers. Thus
NICICTU should root its interventions in
the Migrant Workers Convention and the
work of the international trades unions
movement, particularly the ETUC. It
should also draw on ILO models of good
practice. The ILO has identified a number
of models of best practice identified in
Britain and Ireland which clearly support
positive work at a local level. In
particular, the development of formal
relationships with trades unions in
‘sending countries’ could have an
immediate relevance in Northern Ireland
(ILO 2006: 23). More broadly, the ILO
models of good practice in Britain and
Ireland which need to be learned from
and operationalised locally if this is not
happening already. In Ireland it highlights:
The triennial social partner agreement,
2003-05 – A Policy Framework for
Sustaining Progress – recommends the
formulation of national policy on Migrant
Workers. Parties to the negotiations
included the Government, employers,
trade unions, farming bodies and the
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
61
community and voluntary sector. One of
the ten special initiatives in the
agreement is on migration and
interculturalism. The Government and
social partners agreed on the desirability
of developing a comprehensive policy
framework on migration, including “issues
on which the Government will consult
with social partners – specifically,
economic migration and the labour
market, integration issues, racism and
interculturalism and issues affecting
migrants”. Partners commit to more
systematic consultations at the national
level regarding economic immigration, to
consultations by the Government with
labour and business interests and to
consider the work permits system. They
also commit to build on the code of
practice against racism in the workplace.
(ILO 2006:31-2)
and
In consultation with immigrant and
minority groups, the Irish Business and
Employers’ Confederation, the Irish
Congress of Trade Unions, the
Construction Industry Federation, the
National Consultative Committee on
Racism and Interculturalism and the
Equality Authority of the Irish
Government host an annual Anti-Racist
Workplace Week, which is a nationwide
campaign to prevent racism in the
workplace. The campaign encompasses
worker discussions and training and
discussions among workers and members
of minority ethnic groups on diversity
issues. Seminars, conferences and events
celebrating different cultures are also
held. Resource packs, posters and
newsletters are circulated. (ILO 2006: 42)
Of course these represent a very broad
range of interventions. But they are held
up as models of good practice
62
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
internationally and it is important that
they are used effectively to move things
forward in Northern Ireland. During antiracism in the workplace week, it is
imperative that all local employers and
unions are involved in the activity where
this is not happening already. In this
context, employers and unions can draw
on existing good practice models – like
those developed already by STEP. More
generally, local interventions should draw
on the host of examples of good practice
from other countries detailed in the ILO
report (ILO 2006: 21-47).
ICTU can also use a ‘bottom-up’ approach
to transnational engagement with other
union-based mechanisms and
organisations like ILO itself and PICUM –
the Platform for Cooperation on
Undocumented Migrants and The
International Centre for Trade Union
Rights. For example, the work of PICUM
has specific reference for some Migrant
Workers in Northern Ireland:
The Platform for International
Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants
(PICUM) is a network of organisations
providing assistance to migrants in
irregular status in Europe, which promotes
respect for human rights for
undocumented migrants within Europe.
The PICUM gathers information on law
and practice regarding social rights for
undocumented migrants, develops
expertise in the field, strengthens
networking between organisations dealing
with undocumented migrants in Europe
and formulates recommendations for
improving the legal and social position of
migrants in irregular status. The PICUM’s
report, Ten ways to protect
undocumented Migrant Workers, presents
detailed information obtained from
NGOs, trade unions and others working
with and advocating for undocumented
workers in Europe and the United States.
Grouped in ten actions, methods are
presented that contribute to respecting
the dignity of undocumented migrants as
human beings and as workers. (ILO
2006:34)33
In short, the trade union movement needs
to be thinking and acting both locally and
globally as it develops its work with
Migrant Workers.
ICTU and NICICTU also have key
relationships with government, north and
south of the border. In terms of
overarching ICTU work, it is clear that
migrant rights work with the Irish state
often has a direct bearing on the politics
of migration in the north and it is
important that the social partnership
model is used in relation to the Irish state
to maximise the equality and human
rights protections for Migrant Workers
implied by the GFA and other legislation
and policies. The social partnership model
provides some leverage with government
at Northern Ireland level and this will
presumably involve much greater leverage
in a devolved Assembly context. In other
words NICICTU should continue to lobby
government and encourage an approach
to Migrant Workers rooted in
employment rights approach. When the
Assembly is restored, NICICTU should see
itself as having a core project to help it
construct a good practice model of a
migrant worker regime rooted in the
Migrant Worker’s Convention. ICTU can
use the offices of the Black and minority
ethnic interest group to make this work.
But it is also important that it continues
to use its general discussions and
negotiations with different political
parties to priorities migrant worker issues
33
in the context of broader employment
rights issues.
NICICTU also needs to build and develop
its relations with social partners in
Northern Ireland. There is important
development work being conducted in
community-based organisations like STEP,
NICEM and Ballymena Community
Forum’s Ethnic Minorities Project. A host
of other new and often ad hoc local
groups are emerging in support of
Migrant Workers and NICICTU needs to
develop a relationship with them too. As
Eileen Chan-Hu explains:
I think they need to focus on how they
are going to work with existing Black and
minority ethnic organisations and support
groups in the different areas as a way
forward. Nobody realises that there are
about forty or fifty different groups
across Northern Ireland. There is a need
for trade unions to be involved at an
inter-agency level as recommended in
OFMDFM’s report for Scotland, Ireland
and NI, ‘Improving Government Service
Delivery to Ethnic Minorities,’ as this has
worked well in Ballymena and our project
in developing links between a trade union,
an employer, St. Vincent De Paul’s, PSNI
and CAB with all partners working under
the theme of community safety which
encompasses issues from homelessness
due to unemployability, losing jobs
through not understanding one’s rights,
having no access to public funds, health
and safety issues at the workplace, racist
bullying and harassment etc. We have
worked at these underlying issues through
running information seminars with the
Polish and Slovakian communities with
these agencies and alongside our
Community Safety Bilingual Advocates for
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
63
the Polish and Slovakian communities
who continue to support individuals and
groups in addressing their work related
issues. We are pleased to be involved
with the Baker’s Union and their shop
stewards and have been in close contact
with a local and Romanian shop steward.
The Bilingual Advocates have supported
building capacity in bringing BME and
migrant group issues to trade unions
which part of community development
processes and much needed in working
with unions. Members of minority ethnic
communities are more united and
stronger if they come together to resolve
employment issues in a group setting e.g.
when we brought focus groups together
for a community safety survey for ethnic
minorities, Filipino nurses from the
private sector wished to avail of the
knowledge of trade unions when they
heard of those who recommended unions
from those working in the public sector.
Any NICICTU intervention needs to
situate itself in terms of this work at local
and regional level. Similarly NICICTU
should pursue the same agenda in its
partnership work with Concordia and
other social partners. The Concordia
document was a particularly useful
intervention by ICTU alongside other
social partners and it is important to
build on this model.
NICICTU Internal relations
First of all, it bears emphasis that there is
a core of excellent organising work
already being done across Northern
Ireland – particularly by UNISON and the
T&G. This needs to be recognised and
codified. Some of the best most
innovative work around organising
Migrant Workers is already taking place
inside ICTU member unions and this work
needs to be publicised and supported.
64
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
Both NICICTU and individual trade unions
have a responsibility to record and reflect
on this good practice.
NICICTU and individual trades unions also
need to continue to critically reflect on
their own migrant worker specific policy
and practice. As Tayra McKee points out:
The Trade Unions need to look at
themselves in terms of how the
structures are not yet representative of
the workforce. Even the Unions that have
Migrant Workers members still don’t have
equal percentage of shop stewards, never
mind in employment with the Union as
officers and staff.
Some trades unions have hardly
addressed these kind of issues at all.
Again it is important that models of good
practice are mainstreamed across the
trade union movement.
As part of this mainstreaming, NICICTU
should address the mechanisms whereby
migrant worker issues are currently being
integrated with broader anti-racist and
equality agendas and structures. It should
consider the establishment of a specific
Migrant Worker’s Group. The key issue
here is not so much establishing new
structures as ensuring that migrant
worker issues are mainstreamed within
existing structures. One key part of this
work should be a review of ICTU migrant
worker policy (which is broadly sound) to
make sure that it addresses the specificity
of the situation of Migrant Workers within
Northern Ireland. It could be useful to
reconstitute the steering group for this
research as an ad hoc migrant worker
rights subgroup within NICICTU in order
to drive this process forward.
The trade union movement can also draw
on its anti-sectarian work and the
experience of organisations like
Counteract:
One of the things that the trade union
movement has been good at has been
doing anti-sectarian all workers together
work – historically from Larkin onwards….
The laws were also of enormous help. I
know sometimes people say that the law
changes nothing.
Since Government policy seems set on
integrating approaches to antisectarianism and anti-racism, it is
important that the trade union
movement draws what is best from this
approach in terms of its own lessons and
models of good practice.
ratification by both British and Irish
governments and use its influence to
support the highest common
denominator to rights promised by the
GFA. In other words, any advance by
British or Irish government should be met
by the other in support of the agreement.
NICICTU and member unions should
develop a relationship with the
International NGO Platform on the Migrant
Workers’ Convention (IPMWC) and
European Platform on Migrant Workers’
Rights (EPMWR) and use these
mechanisms specifically to build support
for use and ratification of the Convention.
There also should be specific work around
the Migrant Worker’s Convention. This can
draw on the existing work of ICTU which
was mostly focused on the south of
Ireland. NICICTU should develop an
active campaign for ratification of the
Migrant Worker’s Convention. ICTU
Equality Officer David Joyce suggests:
There was no Northern angle to the UN
Convention campaign at the time [of the
southern campaign] but NICICTU was
interested in getting involved. The
campaign is somewhat stalled at present
as there is no lead organisation on it. The
Human Rights Commission down here
along with various migrant groups have
done some work on it.
The alliance in support of ratification
should be built and rejuvenated across
Northern Ireland and Ireland and with
links to the parallel campaign in Britain.
It can be assumed that human rights and
equality and minority ethnic
organisations will be supportive. The
specific location of NICICTU is also an
advantage – it can sensibly argue for
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
65
5. CONCLUSIONS
The research suggests a number of lessons for the trade union movement. Most
importantly, however, it confirms two simple but crucial truths. Trade unions in
Northern Ireland have both the duty and the capacity to organise and represent
Migrant Workers. The research also confirms that Migrant Workers face a whole
series of challenges in Northern Ireland. It confirms the routine nature of
inequality and exploitation experienced by many Migrant Workers in Northern
Ireland. The trade union movement has a key role to play in supporting and
organising these workers. The movement needs to draw on existing models of
good practice within trade unions to respond to this new situation as well as
consider radical and innovative new forms of organising with Migrant Workers.
This project needs to be prioritised within the movement and it needs to be
resourced properly.
There is also a series of challenges for the
trade union movement; not least the
opposition to trade union organisation at
some levels of government and in among
some employers. If trade unions are
finding it difficult to organise any workers
because of employer hostility, it is likely
that they will find it particularly difficult
to organise Migrant Workers. Migrant
workers are often both objectively and
subjectively disempowered with regard to
their relationship with employers – and
employer hostility to trade unionism in
general will be specifically felt by Migrant
Workers.
The trade union movement also has to
organise against a background of external
dynamics over which it has little control.
First, positively, Migrant Workers come
from a wide range of backgrounds – they
are a key part in the emergence of a
culturally diverse Northern Ireland. The
research illustrates that the migrant
worker population is defined by its
heterogeneity. Second, governments
construct artificial differences between
workers – in terms of citizens and noncitizens, workers with permits and those
without, ‘nationals’ and ‘non-nationals’.
While these differences are very real in
terms of the restrictions they place on
66
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
different workers, it is important that the
trade union movement defines its work in
terms of the need to organise workers whatever their background and whatever
their status.
There is also a need to recognise a
difference between ‘Black and minority
ethnic’ issues and ‘migrant worker’ issues’.
These clearly overlap in many ways – not
least because the vast majority of
established minority ethnic communities
in Northern Ireland arrived as ‘Migrant
Workers’ - but they are not identical. For
example, many existing Black and
minority ethnic workers are not Migrant
Workers; they are Black and minority
ethnic citizens – perhaps separated from
migration by two or three generations.
Moreover, it seems likely that a majority
of Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland
are now white Europeans. These new
workers do still, of course, experience
racism and constitute new minority
ethnic groups but there is anecdotal
evidence at least to suggest that some of
them do not necessarily situate
themselves immediately in terms of ‘Black
and minority ethnic’ politics. For Migrant
Workers it is primarily their status as noncitizens and so-called ‘non-nationals’ that
makes them specifically vulnerable to
exploitation in the labour market. This
may mean that there is a value in
creating migrant worker-specific
structures within the existing anti-racism
and trade union structures.
More positively, there is a unique
opportunity to create a model of good
practice in terms of the restoration of the
NI Assembly. The Assembly has
autonomy on employment rights issues
so it can set itself the challenge of
becoming a model of best practice. The
trade union movement and its partners
should actively seek to see a regime for
Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland
based on employment rights and
modelled on the Migrant Workers
Convention.
Finally, it bears emphasis that while there
are many areas of concern in terms of the
situation of Migrant Workers, there are
equally new opportunities and hopes.
Despite the sometimes politically
contentious nature of migration, all of our
research suggests that with appropriate
planning and resourcing and rigorous
opposition to exploitation, there is no
inevitability to either exploitation or antimigrant worker racism. Provided there is
an appropriate response from national
and local government and relevant NGOs
– with the trade union movement playing
a pivotal role in support of economic
justice for Migrant Workers - there is no
reason why the arrival of Migrant Workers
should not be a wholly positive economic,
cultural and political development for
everyone in Northern Ireland.
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
67
6. RECOMMENDATIONS
1. In the context of our finding that trade
unions in Northern Ireland have both
the duty and the capacity to organise
and represent Migrant Workers, it is
imperative that organising Migrant
Workers across different sectors and
statuses is seen as a major priority for
the trade union movement.
2. ICTU should give consideration to the
establishment of a Unit for Migrant
Workers Rights with a particular focus
on policy development and
intervention. A crucial part of this
work is the recognition that organising
Migrant Workers may involve as much
activity outside the workplace as
inside it. Existing models of good
practice from T&G, UNISON and
SIPTU are vitally important here.
3. There needs to be a properly resourced
welfare/employment rights team based
within the labour movement. There
should be recognition of the need to
resource this from within the trade
union movement. Again any
developments need to be made in the
context of recognition of the work
that is already being done by
organisations like STEP, the Law Centre
and NICEM.
4. There is ample evidence of unlawful
discriminatory practice by some
companies in the recruitment agency
sector and it is imperative that this be
addressed. ICTU should lobby and
campaign for an ECNI formal
investigation into the activities of
recruitment agencies recruiting
Migrant Workers to Northern Ireland.
5. The continued under-representation of
Migrant Workers in trade union
structures in Northern Ireland should
be addressed. There should be specific
68
Migrant Workers and their Families in Northern Ireland
courses for migrant worker members
interested in becoming active in their
unions – with appropriate interpreting
and translation support where it is
needed. This needs to complement
rather than replace work on migrant
worker rights issues for union officers
and all union members. There also
needs to be a specific skills strategy
for all Union activists addressing areas
such as anti-racism, language skills and
specific support issues.
6. ICTU, and its constituent trade unions,
affiliates and trades councils, needs to
develop a strategic role as the key
social partner in the project to
institute a model of good practice of
economic justice for Migrant Workers
in the restored Assembly.
7. ICTU should take a lead in policy
development grounded in a rights
based approach. ICTU needs to review
and customise its own policy and
structure with specific reference to
Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland.
8. ICTU needs to make sure that trade
union spokespersons are ‘on message’
with its policy and analysis on Migrant
Workers. This should be grounded in
an employment rights based approach
and resolutely opposed to any
expression of anti-migrant worker
racism.
10.ICTU has engaged a broad strategic
partnership in the steering group
formed to support this research. This
group drew on the expertise of the
ICTU and different unions alongside
key social partners. This group should
be reconstituted as an ad hoc
committee to drive forward ICTU
policy and practice on Migrant
Workers.
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