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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to characterise the position of highly educated African migrants in the Finnish labour market and to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on that position.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on the biographical work stories of 17 highly educated African migrant workers in four occupation areas in Finland: healthcare, cleaning, restaurant and transport. The sample was partly purposively and partly theoretically determined. The authors used content driven thematic analysis technique, combined with by the biographical narrative concept of turning points.FindingsUsing the case of highly educated African migrants in the Finnish labour market, the authors show how student migration policies reinforce a pattern of division of labour and occupations that allocate migrant workers to typical low skilled low status occupations in the secondary sector regardless of level of education, qualification and work experience. They also show how the unique labour and skill demands of the COVID-19 pandemic incidentally made these typical migrant occupations essential, resulting in increased employment and work security for this group of migrant workers.Research limitations/implicationsThis research and the authors’ findings are limited in scope owing to sample size and methodology. To improve applicability of findings, future studies could expand the scope of enquiry using e.g. quantitative surveys and include other stakeholders in the study group.Originality/valueThe paper adds to the knowledge on how migration policies contribute to labour market dualisation and occupational segmentation in Finland, illustrated by the case of highly educated African migrant workers.

This chapter discusses migrant labour market integration policies and services in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Finland, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and thus we present a wide variety of different national contexts. In addition, it also details EU-specific policies and programmes. The empirical work underpinning this chapter emanates from two main research tasks: policy discourse analysis; and assessment of existing policies and their outcomes. A policy discourse analysis was conducted across the selected countries to identify and analyse how issues of labour market integration are discussed by policymakers and policy actors. By analysing the findings of the discourse analysis together with the assessment of policies, which forms the second part of chapter, the consistency between policy rhetoric and policy goals is evaluated. The second part of the chapter consists of a policy assessment in which the barriers to labour market integration and existing policies to remedy them are identified, categorised and evaluated. This was performed using a meta-analysis of the existing national literatures, and interviews with policy experts, implementers and beneficiaries of labour market integration policies. peerReviewed

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In Finland, integration is discussed in terms of labour market success. Finding work tends to occur in the ‘secondary’ labour market as migrants have difficulty accessing the more secure jobs of the ‘primary’ labour market. This chapter draws on 11 qualitative biographical narratives of migrants and refugees, looking for turning points and epiphanies about their job-seeking experiences. We classify these as agentic acts of resilience, reworking, and resistance, borrowing from Cindi Katz’s framework. Interviewees exhibited resilience in revising downward their expectations of what sort of job they would accept and how their career would develop. ‘Reworking’ was also often attempted, usually at a later stage and with limited success, through reskilling, or repackaging of existing skills to appear more desirable to employers. Resistance was rare and limited to exit from the Finnish labour market, rather than voice within it. We found that despite significant investment in their own human capital, macro structures such as segmented labour markets and unequal power relations limited the scope for their individual acts of resilience and reworking. Thus, while agency is useful for understanding migrant actions, overemphasising it obscures the role of labour market structures and employer recruitment practices – important bottlenecks to migrants moving from the secondary to primary labour market.

This article analyses a project by Finnish and Estonian unions to adopt ‘organizing model’ strategies through establishing the transnational ‘Baltic Organising Academy’. Initially aimed at Estonian workplaces, successful campaigns inspired Finnish unions to copy the model in Finland. This cooperation was originally motivated by labour market interdependence between the two countries, and the failure of past social-partnership oriented union strategies in Estonia. The willingness of Finnish and Estonian unions to commit resources to transnational cooperation around an ‘organizing model’ marks a dramatic departure from the unions’ previous strategies. This change was accomplished by transnational activists who have developed and raised support for the adoption of an ‘organizing model’ in the face of structural challenges and ideological opposition by some union officials. The project’s transnational organizing exemplifies one possible solution to union weakness in Eastern Europe, and underlines the importance of ‘identity work’ in building transnational trade union coalitions around organizing.

The growing role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in welfare service provision is sometimes portrayed as a threat to welfare state universalism in Nordic societies. In Finland, CSOs co-produce integration services alongside comprehensive official integration programmes, compensating for gaps and shortcomings in those services. We identify three “gaps”, which are (1) limited availability of services in terms of time and target group, (2) lack of direct labour market contacts and (3) limited flexibility to serve individual needs. We assess how CSOs target these gaps with their service offerings through qualitative interviews with policy implementers, CSO workers and migrants. However, CSOs’ role in labour market integration is inherently limited by their services being small scale, short term and project based. We find that due to their independence and limited role, CSOs operate synergistically with official services, extending rather than undermining universalism.

Finland has only relatively recently become a country of immigration, and as a result most immigration and integration policy legislation is also relatively recent. Since the 1990s, the number of migrants to Finland has increased steadily, motivating the adoption of various policy measures to regulate migration and support integration. From the perspective of migrant labour market integration, the two most important legislative acts are the Aliens Act (FINLEX 301/2004) and the Act on the Promotion of Immigrant Integration (FINLEX 1386/2010), which lay out basic labour market integration supports for migrants, and determine who can work in Finland and on which grounds. Finland’s comprehensive residence-based welfare state policies and collective bargaining based labour regulation also shape labour market outcomes for migrants. Immigrants working in Finland are subject to the same labour regulations as native Finnish citizens. There are different justifications for labour market access for different groups of immigrants, depending on from which country they come, and what kind of work they are doing. The chapter will go over the principle legislation regulating migration and migrants working in Finland. Also, the legislative basis for applying for asylum is discussed.

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This chapter examines the relationship between migrant workers and trade unions in different host countries. Based on a series of biographic interviews with Estonian migrant workers in Finland and Albanian workers in Italy and Greece, it makes the case that when migrants join unions, it is usually a result of an individual movement out of precarious and sometimes informal work into secure, formal work relations. The availability of such secure jobs for migrants is a result of inclusive national institutions of labour market regulation, and a strong trade union workplace presence. Although in all three countries the migrants were quite passive and instrumentalist in their relations to unions, they nonetheless generally joined when working in unionized contexts, as a way of conforming to workplace norms.

This introductory chapter develops an original framework to explain why unions are more or less successful in containing the spread of precarious work. It argues that employment precarity is both an outcome of and a central contributing factor to a mutually reinforcing feedback relationship between labour market, welfare state, and collective bargaining institutions; worker identity and identification; and employer and union strategies. This framework builds on academic discussions of institutional change, dualism, and precarious work from three broad research traditions: comparative political economy, critical sociology, and comparative employment relations. The chapter reviews this literature, outlines the framework, and discusses the chapter findings in the book with reference to the framework.

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Il saggio si incentra sull’impatto del processo di integrazione europea sulla tradizionale nozione di sovranita nazionale. Lo studio, condotto nel settore edile attraverso interviste sul campo, analizza le conseguenze negative connesse al distacco transnazionale dei lavoratori. Gli Autori mettono in luce come proprio il contesto integrato europeo consenta l’elusione dei limiti posti dalle normative nazionali, cosi determinando una riduzione di costi e garanzie che conduce ad una segmentazione delle tutele nel mercato a scapito dei diritti dei lavoratori.

European integration through mutual recognition has facilitated the growth of a pan-European labour supply system in which transnational subcontractors ‘post’ workers from low-wage areas to higher wage areas. This allows employers to create spaces of exception in which the national industrial relations system of the country where work occurs does not fully apply. Drawing on interviews with managers, workers, unionists and works councillors at the European Central Bank construction site in Frankfurt, Germany, this article shows how transnational subcontracting allows employers to access, and create competition between, sovereign regulatory regimes. It concludes that high-cost, high-collective good national systems such as the German one, which depend on territorial boundedness for their integrity, are likely to be destabilized by this aspect of European integration.

The EU regulatory regime and employers’ cross-border recruitment practices complicate unions’ ability to represent increasingly diverse and transnationally mobile workers. Even in institutional contexts where the industrial relations structure and labour law are favourable, such as the Netherlands, unions struggle with maintaining labour standards for these workers. This article analyses Dutch union efforts to represent hyper-mobile construction workers at the Eemshaven construction sites. It shows that the nexus of subcontracting, transnational mobility, legal insularity and employer anti-unionism complicate enforcement so that even well-resourced unions can, at best, improve employment conditions for a limited set of workers and only for a limited period of time.

The emergence of the European Union citizenship agenda has mainly taken place along the evolution of mobility rights, with the goal of creating a pan-European labor market. Mobility undermines the nationally embedded notion of industrial citizenship. Industrial citizenship protects workers’ rights and secures their participation in national political systems. The Europeanization of labor markets severs the relationship between state, territory and citizen on which industrial citizenship has been built, undermining worker collectivism and access to representation. This is legitimated in terms of building market-citizenship, i.e., enabling mobile workers as market actors. However, the way mobility is regulated in the EU has the purpose and effect of weakening collective labor institutions, which also undermines workers’ ability to act as autonomous market actors. The same factors which undermine the industrial citizenship of mobile workers also prevent them from being effective free market agents: i.e., they can neither negotiate nor enforce individual contracts effectively in the face of systematic employer fraud and wage theft. The “Arendtian dilemma” of the “right to have rights” — a dilemma that derives from the claim that rights depend on the existence of a political community, which until now is the territorially exclusive nation-state, rather than universal personhood — emerges as industrial citizenship is internationalized. By disembeddeding workers from host-country industrial relations systems, EU regulation provides the social context in which workers’ rights become alienable.

L’articolo argomenta che la costruzione istituzionale del processo di integrazione dell’Unione europea ha promosso la libera circolazione, producendo pero un effetto boomerang a causa delle dinamiche meccanicistiche che la caratterizzano. La reazione contro la liberta di movimento si manifesta nella riduzione dei diritti sociali riconosciuti ai cittadini , che a sua volta produce un incremento della precarieta dei migranti interni. Considerato l’elevato numero di cittadini UE mobili, limitare il loro accesso alla cittadinanza significa creare una vasta sottoclasse, poiche gli individui possono muoversi da un posto all’altro per lavorare, ma hanno un accesso differenziato ai diritti sociali in base al valore della loro forza lavoro nel mercato e alla loro relazione con il territorio in cui si trovano. La mancanza di diritti li rende piu vulnerabili e disponibili ad accettare paghe piu basse, producendo un inasprimento delle condizioni di lavoro per tutti i lavoratori. Di conseguenza, l’introduzione di limiti ai diritti sociali di cittadinanza, peggiora ulteriormente il problema che vorrebbe risolvere, poiche genera un processo di ri-mercificazione del lavoro di chi e escluso dall’affascinante sfera della cittadinanza sociale.

This article argues, through analysing industrial relations at the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant construction site in Finland, that national unionism is inappropriately structured for the transnational construction industry. Olkiluoto 3 is being built by a French/German consortium employing mostly posted migrants via transnational subcontractors from around Europe. Despite the strong Finnish unions, contractors successfully contested the right of Finnish actors to regulate the site, placing labour relations in a deregulated space between national systems. Although the posted migrants eventually self-organized, Finnish unions remained unresponsive, reluctant to act outside the normal Finnish social partnership industrial relations paradigm. The case illustrates how the nationally based structure of the labour movement is ill-suited to represent a pan-European labour force.

Using evidence from the shipbuilding and construction industries in Finland, this article shows how trade union responses to the introduction of migrant workers can be conditioned by product markets. Growing numbers of ‘posted workers’, or intra-European Union work migrants employed via transnational subcontractors, are segmenting the labour market, by competing with domestically domiciled workers whose employment is more tightly regulated. In Finland, the construction worker’s union has had a far more assertive and successful approach to enforcing wage norms than the union in shipbuilding. This appears to be related to the greater exposure of shipbuilding to international product market competition.

This article argues that off-shore is losing its exceptionality by being absorbed into a broader process of variegation and deterritorialization of sovereignty, and that capital’s search for a new ‘‘fix’’ is driving this process. Capital goes off-shore by exploiting non-territorial definitions of sovereignty, as a means of shifting the regulatory regime under which social relations take place, without moving in a geographic sense. In this way, capital shields itself from social control by defining certain spaces and contexts as off-shore, creating spaces of production in which the sovereign regulatory capacities of the state and society are systematically constrained. This ‘‘unbundling’’ and deterritorialization of sovereignty is a way for capital to escape from national class compromises and undermine working-class associational power. As tensions and contradictions created by off-shore production unravel, conditions on-shore and offshore converge, and off-shore loses its distinctiveness. Ultimately, this process threatens to undermine the sovereignty norm, state autonomy, and capitalist hegemony. The ability to reconfigure sovereign authority in defiance of physical geography is the basis of the ‘‘off-shore’’ concept. While the term ‘‘off-shore’’ evokes images of beaches, palm trees, and suitcases full of cash, off-shore is not merely an exotic semi-criminal exception to normal business, but rather a key cog in the global economic machine. By using non-territorial definitions of sovereignty, or exploiting situations in which territorial sovereignty is little more than a convenient fiction, capital shifts the sovereign regulatory regime under which social relations take place. As Ronen Palan writes, the process of bifurcating sovereignty is driven by the expansive logic of capitalism, confronted with the constraints of the Westphalian international system (Palan 2003:3–4). Mobile elements of capital can operate in areas of less regulation by ‘‘bracketing’’ their activities, without challenging the right of the state to ‘‘carry on discharging traditional roles as if nothing had happened’’ (Palan 1998:627). This article argues that this narrow form of off-shore is losing its exceptionality by being absorbed in a broader process of variegation and deterritorialization of sovereignty, and that capital’s search for a ‘‘spatial-juridical fix’’ is driving the 1 Author’s Note: Thanks is due to Ian Greer, Miguel Martinez Lucio, the editor and reviewers of ISQ, participants

Transnational politics and labor markets are undermining national industrial relations systems in Europe. This article examines the construction industry, where the internationalization of the labor market has gone especially far. To test hypotheses about di ferences between “national systems,” the authors examine the United Kingdom, Finland, and Germany, alongside European-level policy making. Regardless of overall national institutional framework, employers seek to avoid industrial relations rules, while unions attempt to relocalize labor relations. Both use shop-floor, national, and European power resources. The authors argue that comparative industrial relations should take seriously the connection between action at the national and transnational levels.

Introduction: Social dumping and the EU integration process Magdalena Bernaciak Part I Intra-EU labour and service mobility: Threat to labour standards? 1. Large-scale migration in an open labour market: The Irish experience with post-2004 labour mobility and the regulation of employment standards Torben Krings, Alicja Bobek, Elaine Moriarty, Justyna Salamonska and James Wickham 2. Breaking the law? Varieties of social dumping in a pan-European labour market Lisa Berntsen and Nathan Lillie 3. The politics of migrant irregularity: Social dumping in the French construction industry Marcus Kahmann 4. Varying perceptions of social dumping in similar countries Jens Arnholtz and Line Eldring 5. Socioeconomic cleavages between workers from new member states and host-country labour forces in the EU during the Great Recession Martin Guzi and Martin Kahanec Part II Social dumping pressures in manufacturing sectors 6. Marketization and social dumping. Management whipsawing in Europe's automotive industry Ian Greer and Marco Hauptmeier 7. Social dumping with no divide. Evidence from multinational companies in Europe Vera Trappmann 8. Coordinated interest representation along the automotive value chain as a response to social dumping practices Volker Telljohann Part III The deregulation agenda at the EU and national levels 9. EU economic freedoms and social dumping Jan Cremers 10. Have your competitiveness and eat it too. The pull and limits of cost competition in Hungary and Slovakia Vera Scepanovic 11. Tracing the competitiveness discourse in Spain: Social dumping in disguise? Monica Clua-Losada Conclusion Magdalena Bernaciak

There has been an explosion of interest in the idea of European Union citizenship in recent years, as a defining example of postnational cosmopolitan citizenship potentially replacing, or at least layered on top of national citizenships. We argue this form of EU citizenship undermines industrial citizenship, which is a crucial support for the egalitarianism and social solidarity on which other types of citizenship are based. Because industrial citizenship arises from collectivities based in class identities and national institutions, it depends on the nation state erritorial order and the social closure inherent in this. EU citizenship in its current ‘postnational’ form is realized through practices of mobility, placing it at tension with bounded class-based collectivities. Though practices of working class cosmopolitanism may eventually give rise to a working class conciousness, the fragmented nature of this vision impedes the development of transnational class based collectivities. Industrial and cosmopolitan citizenship must be reimagined together if European integration is to be democratized. peerReviewed

Worker ‘posting’ or temporary migration of manual workers sent by their employers to work on projects abroad has become increasingly prominent in the European construction industry. It is now normal to find groups of workers from all around Europe on construction sites, living in nearby temporary accommodations, moving on to other projects or back home when the project is complete. This article highlights the interaction between the social and spatial segregation and transnational mobility of these workers in the European Union construction labour market. We argue that the work-focused and employer-dominated nature of the posted workers' social world abroad contributes to their segregation from host societies and reinforces a nationally based labour market segmentation of the European construction labour market. This is because posted workers do not have the same opportunity or interest to build political, social and economic resources in host societies and workplaces as more permanent migrants. peerReviewed

This article compares forms of labour transnationalism in three industrial sectors: motor manufacturing, maritime shipping and clothing and textile manufacturing. In each case, unions engage in very different transnational activities to reassert control over labour markets and competition. As institutions of transnational cooperation deepen, unions continue to struggle with competitive tensions (worker to worker and union to union) which vary from one industry to another.

Under the auspices of the International Transport Workers’ Federation’s (ITF) Flag of Convenience campaign, maritime unions have developed transnational global structures exploiting interdependencies in transportation production chains. The ITF, a London-based association of transport unions, connects the struggles of seafarers and port workers through a global strategy of union networking and coordinated industrial action. Seafaring unions draw on the industrial leverage of port workers to negotiate minimum standard pay agreements, while dock unions leverage the growing influence of the ITF in fighting union busting in ports. A global transnational ship inspector network provides the power basis for imposing collective agreements on shipowners. Although conceived as a resource for organizing seafarers, the inspectorate also provides port unions with leverage., Le transport maritime demeure sans contredit le secteur industriel le plus mondialisé de tous les secteurs et c’est également celui où l’on retrouve une coordination au plan de la stratégie syndicale transnationale la plus importante. Sous l’égide de la campagne contre les pavillons de complaisance de la Fédération internationale des ouvriers du transport, les syndicats maritimes ont élaboré des structures mondiales transnationales qui bénéficient des interdépendances des chaînes de production et de transport, en fournissant un levier à la puissance syndicale dans une portion de la chaîne, celle des ports, afin de promouvoir les intérêts des travailleurs dans une autre section de la chaîne, celle des bateaux en mer. Les marins sur les bateaux et les débardeurs dans les ports travaillent dans un réseau de liens interdépendants au sein d’un même processus de production. La Fédération internationale des ouvriers du transport, une fédération internationale composée de syndicats de travailleurs du transport, basée à Londres, réunit les batailles des marins et des débardeurs sous une stratégie mondiale de « réseautage » syndical et d’action industrielle coordonnée. Les syndicats de marins s’appuient sur le levier industriel des travailleurs dans les ports en vue de négocier des ententes sur une rémunération minimale standard, alors que les débardeurs se servent du levier de l’influence croissante de la Fédération internationale dans leurs efforts pour contrecarrer le délogement des syndicats dans les ports. La présence de la Fédération internationale sur le terrain est assurée par la réserve de pouvoir de la campagne contre l’utilisation des pavillons de complaisance, c’est-à-dire par le réseau d’inspection des navires de la Fédération internationale. Ce réseau fournit la base du pouvoir en vue d’imposer des ententes collectives aux propriétaires de bateaux. Quoique conçue au départ comme une ressource dans la campagne contre les pavillons de complaisance, la section de l’inspection, soit directement, soit indirectement par le biais de l’influence de la Fédération internationale auprès des propriétaires de bateaux, confère en plus un levier aux syndicats dans les ports. Cet exemple met en évidence le potentiel, pour une stratégie syndicale, d’identifier et d’exploiter les interdépendances et les liens inhérents à des processus de production transnationaux, en édifiant des institutions et des réseaux transnationaux adaptés à la logique particulière de la production dans un secteur industriel.La manière particulière adoptée par l’industrie du transport maritime pour se restructurer en empruntant des orientations internationales, en dirigeant en partie la mondialisation de la production dans d’autres secteurs tout en étant également poussée par cette dernière, a créé un impact sur les possibilités de résistance chez les travailleurs des ports et les marins. La Fédération internationale et les syndicats de marins ont mis au point des stratégies pour bénéficier de ces possibilités. Ces stratégies syndicales se sont développées en interaction avec les contre-stratégies des propriétaires du capital. À différents niveaux, on voit que le capital maritime cherche à déstabiliser, à circonvenir et à défier ouvertement le contrôle qu’exercent les travailleurs du transport sur leurs processus de production; ils cherchent aussi à limiter leur capacité d’agir de façon solidaire avec d’autres travailleurs. Les stratégies des propriétaires des capitaux en vue de contenir l’aliénation des travailleurs maritimes se manifestent différemment sur les bateaux et dans les ports, à cause des différences que l’on constate chez les propriétaires au plan des occasions qui se présentent de reconfigurer les caractéristiques de la régulation des espaces dans les processus de production. Sur les bateaux, la mondialisation des réservoirs de main-d’oeuvre et l’absence de lien (par le biais de l’utilisation de pavillons de complaisance) entre les activités d’expédition et les espaces légaux, dont les syndicats ont régularisé l’accès institutionnel, ont façonné la structure des nouveaux réseaux de syndicats transnationaux aptes à représenter les marins. D’un autre côté, dans les ports, les propriétaires ne peuvent échapper à la législation nationale du travail, aux syndicats et aux communautés riveraines. Les propriétaires qui ont une base dans les ports sont obligés de se battre pour les espaces où les travailleurs sont capables d’opposer une résistance efficace. Quoiqu’elle demeure solidement fondée sur une force nationale et locale, la stratégie internationale d’un syndicat dans un port demeure néanmoins fortement liée à la campagne contre les pavillons de complaisance, à cause des liens étroits entre les marins au sein des processus de production et à cause des menaces communes et croissantes de la part de leurs employeurs communs.La capacité de la Fédération internationale des ouvriers du transport de mener une action transnationale repose sur son réseau d’inspecteurs de bateaux, répartis dans les ports du monde entier, qui ont obtenu des accords collectifs et qui sont capables de les faire appliquer. Les inspecteurs de la Fédération voient à ce que les contrats soient respectés, coordonnent l’action du secteur sur les bateaux sans contrat et ils aident les marins en difficulté. Le réseau d’inspecteurs occupe une position critique eu égard au fonctionnement de la campagne contre les pavillons de complaisance, en fournissant une infrastructure qui permet à la Fédération internationale d’apparier la stratégie mondiale aux tactiques au niveau local. Les politiques et les méthodes de la Fédération peuvent être décidées collectivement à Londres et mises en application par le Secrétariat à travers ses propres canaux sans réviser les désaccords entre les affiliés chaque fois qu’une action est envisagée au plan transnational. Le résultat des pressions exercées par les inspecteurs de la Fédération fait en sorte que cette dernière compte environ 6 000 bateaux sous un contrat de travail. La négociation collective entre la Fédération mondiale des employeurs et la Fédération internationale des travailleurs du secteur maritime et ses affiliés établit le salaire standard de l’industrie pour le secteur maritime. Les syndicats de débardeurs se servent de la force de la campagne contre les pavillons de complaisance comme levier dans le but de promouvoir de temps à autre leurs propres objectifs.Le syndicalisme international dans le secteur maritime fonctionne de manière différente des syndicats nationaux en ce sens qu’il est organisé sur la base d’un réseau, mais de façon plus flexible : il reflète donc le besoin pour une action rapide et cohérente sous une immense variété de circonstances. La base de cette nouvelle structure demeure le réseau d’inspecteurs de la Fédération internationale, par lequel cette dernière rallie les unions locales et les débardeurs de la base aux stratégies mondiales entourant la logique de la négociation sur une base industrielle. Ce faisant, la Fédération exploite les nouveaux espaces de contestation qu’on retrouve au sein même des processus fluides de production que crée la mondialisation. Ce cas montre que des formes radicalement nouvelles d’organisation des travailleurs peuvent être nécessaires pour tirer un avantage de la nouvelle vulnérabilité des propriétaires. Ceci se présente pour les syndicats comme un défi de nature à la fois technique et créative, dans une compréhension de ce que sont les nouvelles structures. C’est aussi un défi sur le plan organisationnel et idéologique en cherchant à redéfinir qui mérite de la solidarité et dans quelles circonstances. L’industrie maritime, tout en ne fournissant pas une feuille de route particulière conduisant au syndicalisme international, met en évidence l’importance d’une conformité de la structure syndicale à la logique de la production dans un secteur industriel., Bajo los auspicios de la campaña “Bandera de conveniencia” de la Federación internacional de trabajadores del transporte (FITT), los sindicatos marítimos han desarrollado estructuras mundiales transnacionales aprovechando las interdependencias de las cadenas de transporte de productos. La FITT, una asociación de sindicatos del transporte con sede en Londres, conecta las luchas de los marineros y de los trabajadores portuarios mediante una estrategia global de red sindical y acción revindicativa coordinada. Los sindicatos de marineros aprovechan del empuje laboral de los trabajadores portuarios para negociar acuerdos sobre el salario mínimo normativo, mientras que los sindicatos de muelles apuntalan la influencia creciente de la FITT enfrentando la acción anti-sindical en los puertos. Una red transnacional de inspectores en barco procura la base de poder para imponer las convenciones colectivas a los armadores. Concebida como un recurso para organizar de los marineros, la red de inspección procura también un impulso a los sindicatos portuarios.

Two multinational retail firms, IKEA and Wal-Mart, illuminate the implications of a new era of labor standards—focused on the transnational firm. Global labor standards are increasingly enforced through transnational corporation (TNC) adherence to voluntary codes rather than through national labor regulation. Nonetheless, privatized labor-standards regimes within TNCs continue to be influenced by the national market governance framework in the TNC country of origin. Although, in principle, labor standards are arrived at through global political processes, in practice they are applied in conjunction with TNC production and marketing strategies. The way in which corporate objectives intersect with labor practices is different from one TNC to another, depending in large part on political and regulatory influences in the country of origin of a particular TNC.

The most significant case of transnational union bargaining co-ordination in existence is in the maritime shipping industry. A global union association, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), and a global employers’ federation, the International Maritime Employers’ Committee (IMEC), now negotiate over pay scales for seafarers on Flag of Convenience (FOC) ships. These negotiations set the pattern for pay and working conditions for a signifi-cant portion of the global seafaring work-force. The ITF brought about global wage bargaining by building and enforcing a global inter-union consensus between developed and developing countries around a uniform wage rate.

Despite the rapid increase in cross-national labour migration since EU enlargement in 2004, there has been little research on transnational union efforts to organize migrant workers. This article examines the European Migrant Workers Union, created by the German union IG BAU in a shift away from national protectionism towards transnational organizing. The initiative largely failed, primarily because of decisions by other unions to reject the transnational approach and instead to defend existing institutional arrangements. We argue that this inaction constitutes a setback for union reassertion of control over markets and for bringing industrial citizenship to Europe’s hyper-mobile workers.