lördag 7 juli 2012

Nationella fack och transnationella arbetare

Arbetsmarknadsforskarna Nathan Lillie (Groningen) och Markku Sippola (Jyväskylä) tar i sin artikel "National unions and transnational workers: the case of Olkiluoto 3, Finland" från 2011 ett för facket-och-EU:s-arbetsmarknadslitteraturen ovanligt starkt teoretiskt och makro-ställningstagande. De hävdar (1) att utstationeringen skapat avreglerade sfärer utan arbetarrättigheter: "through transnational subcontracting, Olkiluoto 3 is marked off from the rest of Finland as an exceptional deregulated space" (s 293). Och (2), att de fackliga strategier mot social dumping som Kahmann 2006, Eldring et al 2012, Meardi et al 2012 studerat är fundamentalt otillräckliga och inte räcker för att hejda den sociala dumping som sker. De skriver:
"Unions around Europe have experimented with strategies for organizing and representing posted migrants (Lillie and Greer, 2007) but these tactics remain caught between the partially contradictory imperatives of representing migrants, protecting native union members from foreign competition (Penninx and Roosblad, 2000) and complying with an EU regulatory framework that is increasingly restrictive on trade union action (Hyde and Ressaissi, 2009)." (s 293)
Ja, pessimismen är stor. De når sina slutsatser genom en fallstudie av bygget av ett kärnkraftverk i Finland, där ett tysk-franskt konsortium ledde bygget och utförde det framför allt med användande av utstationerade baltiska arbetare. Lillie och Sippola:
"The case of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant construction site in Finland shows that although Finnish unions have a powerful set of tools to regulate Finland’s labour market, including secondary boycotts and legally extended collective agreements, posted work gives employers the means to ‘opt out’ of national regulation. The temporary and mobile nature of posted migrant work and partial legal immunity from local labour standards provided by the EU regulatory framework circumvent the nationally focused structure of union representation. The nation-state focus of the labour movement ensures that the Finnish construction union does not have a strong interest in representing, or the technical ability or an adequately protected legal right to represent, posted migrants under the circumstances at Olkiluoto 3." (s 293)
Finland har, menar Lillie och Sippola (s 294), "probably" Europas starkaste byggnadsarbetarfack, Rakennusliitto. Dessa och metallfacket Metallityöväenliitto var det som försökte organisera på Olkiluoto 3. Lillie och Sippola har intervjuat tio funktionärer från facket (inklusive två på europeisk nivå), tre chefer på arbetsplatsen och tre chefer på underleverantörer, tre funktionärer från arbetsgivarföreningen (inklusive en på europeisk nivå), tre statliga tjänstemän, och tre HR-chefer på finska byggföretag som inte var verksamma på Olkiluoto 3. De säger att de intervjuade ofta uppfattade intervjuerna som ett "politiskt spel", och påståendena tas därför inte för givna, utan trianguleras mot varandra och mot annat material, såsom dagstidningar, fackliga tidningar och branschtidningar.


Utstationeringens särskilda karaktär
Utstationeringen är speciell:
"As Dolvik and Eldring point out, intra-EU migration of individuals and migration as posted workers are regulated under EU law via separate channels. Those who migrate as individuals are regulated under EU frameworks for labour mobility, while those who are posted are regulated as dependant employees of service providers, even though both kinds of workers compete in the same labour and product markets (Dolvik and Eldring, 2008: 51–52). Regulation of labour mobility as a service, in particular, raises issues of union jurisdiction and transnational inter-union relations." (s 295)
Och gör det svårt att organisera arbetare fackligt:
"Posted work, however, short-circuits possibilities for union representation of migrants, by shortening the time horizons and by making the right of access to union representation legally uncertain. Posted work changes the regulatory landscape from one in which migrants move from one geographically self-contained regulatory regime to another, to one in which different regulatory regimes apply to different people depending on the situation (Lillie, 2010)." (s 296)
Empiriska resultat
ca 15 000 av 100 000 byggnadsarbetare är utländska (s 299)

"Finnish unions undertake no special activities to integrate migrants but rather perceive their representation as part of their ‘normal’ work (Alho, 2008: 306). Instead of thinking in terms of organizing posted workers, Finnish unions think in terms of providing labour rights information and ‘monitoring’ to ensure conditions are not below established norms. There are no special recruitment efforts for foreign workers and they are almost completely unrepresented in the nearly all-Finnish staff and lay activist structures of the Finnish labour movement. Migrant programmes are limited to brochures in various languages and the Rakennusliitto’s special section employing Russian- and Estonian-speaking staff to monitor posted worker conditions." (s 297)
"Finland’s legislation specifies that posted workers are covered by the extended CBAs, meaning all employers, including those at Olkiluoto 3, must pay CBA rates to posted workers. The Laval ruling specifically upholds the right to industrial action to support legally established standards. Rakennusliitto officials maintain they will continue to use boycott tactics and have the legal basis to do so (construction union official #4)." (s 298)

"Olkiluoto 3 resembles a veritable Tower of Babel, involving over 1500 contractors from 28 different countries (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2008). In August 2008, about a third of the 3400 workers were Finnish, with the rest coming from over 50 different countries, the largest foreign groups being French, German and Polish (Backman, 2008)." (s 299)

"the Rakennusliitto’s boycotts tactics were unsuccessful, since it did not have the membership to stop work at the foreign contractors" (s 299)
"We got together, after great efforts, more than one hundred members. But then their half-year stints ended and new people came. When it takes four months to get someone to sign up, he’s a member for a few weeks and then leaves" (s 302)

"Posted workers came from a wide variety of countries and Finnish shop stewards were hard put to verify the authenticity of the foreign pay documentation they were presented with as evidence of compliance with Finnish standards. As Timo Kallio, the Rakennusliitto’s site convenor, states, ‘On paper, you can write whatever you want.’" (s 302)

"Although professing to want the Olkiluoto posted workers to support the Rakennusliitto’s agenda, it turned out the Rakennusliitto was reluctant to support the posted workers’ agenda when they showed themselves willing to strike on their own behalf. In August, 2007, Polish Rakennusliitto members employed by the Atlanco Rimec Group complained to the Satakunta Rakennusliitto office of wage, working hours, holiday pay and other violations. Atlanco Rimec is a major transnational labour agency based in Ireland, which supplies mostly East European workers for industrial and construction work around Europe. It had more than 300 workers at Olkiluoto (Ajankohtainen kakkonen, 2008a). The most important complaint was that Rimec had taken large pay deductions, of about 30 per cent of the workers’ salaries, for ‘taxes’ to be paid to the government of Cyprus. The workers, however, were hired from Poland and their tax liability was to Poland or Finland, depending on their length of stay. The deductions appeared fraudulent.
When the Rakennusliitto appeared to do nothing the workers became frustrated and cancelled their memberships. Satakunta union officials and Olkiluoto 3 shop stewards kept the incident secret from the national office, prompting the Polish workers to pursue the matter through other channels, among other things by contacting the Warsaw office of the European Migrant Workers Union (EMWU), an organization created by the German construction workers union, IG Bau, to organize posted migrants (contruction union official #3, German union official)." (s 302f)
- R vägrade samarbeta med EMWU eftersom de inte såg den som ett riktigt fack, och att de hade för konfrontativ inställning för Finland

"It emerged then that the workers actually were employed via Cyprus, although without their knowledge and were therefore liable for social fees there. Since the deductions were apparently legal, a strike might have been judged illegal. The Rakennusliitto therefore cancelled the strike warning. Many of the Polish workers felt they had not had enough input into the negotiations and strike decision-making process." (s 303)
- jfr:
"Because the employers appeared to be in compliance with EU regulations, which allowed them to use Cyprus as a ‘home’ in which to base their workers’ employment contracts, the Rakennusliitto felt it could not risk strike action" (s 304)

"Key factors in the Rakennusliitto’s failure at Olkiluoto 3 were the ineffectiveness of secondary boycott tactics, the inability to organize, develop leadership among and win the trust of posted migrants and an unwillingness to cooperate with foreign unions."

"Migrant organizing techniques and union structures to integrate migrants better and more quickly into leadership positions would have been useful at Olkiluoto 3. However, neither of these solutions or even both of them together resolves the root problem, which is that nationally based, ‘ethnocentric’ union structures are inappropriate to represent workers in a transnational labour market. Organizing migrants is usually not financially self-sustaining because, if the migrants only stay a short time, the investment in organizing them will not justify itself financially." (s 305)
"At Olkiluoto 3, the workers expected to be there at longest for the duration of the project or sometimes only six months, before moving to another project, which could be anywhere in Europe"

"EU regulation explicitly treats posted workers as commodities, rather than as ‘full human beings’. Regulation of posted workers in this way illegalizes attempts to enforce equal treatment of workers within defined territorial spaces as violations of the principle of free movement. Most distressingly, the labour movement has shied away from setting itself in opposition to this vision of a future of labour markets segmented by national origin and citizenship rights determined by contingency." (s 306)


Referenser
Nathan Lillie och Markku Sippola, "National unions and transnational workers: the case of Olkiluoto 3, Finland", Work Employment and Society 2011

Inga kommentarer: