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HomeRacial and ethnic minorities, immigration and the role of trade unions in combating discrimination and xenophobia, in encouraging participation and in securing social inclusion and citizenship
RITU
Racial and ethnic minorities, immigration and the role of trade unions in combating discrimination and xenophobia, in encouraging participation and in securing social inclusion and citizenship
RITU
Publication metadata
Against the background of 9/11, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and growing Islamaphobia, racism and xenophobia are speaking with a louder voice. The policy relevance of this project covers the role and responsibilities of trade unions in challenging racism. Unions remain the largest independent voluntary and democratic organisations directly representing the interests of Europe’s working peoples. Research into how unions mediate racism in the workplace was carried out by teams in Belgium, Italy, France, UK and in Bulgaria between 2003 and 2005. In this period the ethnicisation of many lowpaid and lesser-skilled jobs in Western Europe accelerated while the rising international mobility of labour began to impact on wage levels. ● Racism is defined by the researchers as occurring where, to the stereotyping prejudice of xenophobia, is added a power relationship that either aims to or achieves the subordination of the ‘inferior other’. ● Racism occurs either ‘directly’, where minority workers are deliberately and consciously discriminated against, or ‘indirectly’, where market structure or the organisation’s rules, procedures and practices disadvantage ethnic minorities. The researchers conducted comparative studies of the public transport, retail and health sectors, and single country case studies in the light engineering and shipbuilding industries (Italy) and in the construction, textile and tobacco industries (Bulgaria). They found: ● Disadvantaging discriminatory practices occurred in all five countries against those described variously as ‘foreigners’, or ‘immigrants’, as ‘black’ workers or ‘ethnic minority’ workers, or as ‘national minority’ workers. ● Occasionally this discrimination involved physical rejection or direct abuse. ● More often it involved indirect racism and the toleration of a status quo that subordinated the minority workers. The toleration of discrimination by employers and the low priority given by many trade unions to challenging it at workplace level combine to penalise the minority and to maintain ‘white’ or ‘national’ privileges. ● Unions are still sending out ambiguous messages, veering between inclusion and exclusion. They are particularly unclear as to how to define and challenge ‘indirect racism’. ● Workplace level union responses range from forms of protectionism often involving denial, to assimilation or integration, and to positive action. ● Union ambiguities reflect the tension between market and societal trade union goals and between delegate and representative trade union organisational democracy. ● Union decline additionally exposes many workers to a sense of disempowerment, with legal remedies far from filling the gap caused by the retreat from collective responses. Minority workers in particular lack confidence that the unions wish to respond to their problems, while knowing that legal remedies to the discrimination they experience actually constitute a high risk strategy for the individual. The researchers recommend: 1) Trade unions should be given additional resources to develop European, national and local ‘working against racism’ action programmes. These should include: ● Training of national-level and local activists to identify and monitor indirect racism. ● Supporting specific steps aimed at increasing minority worker involvement in the unions. 2) Trade unions try to find ways of placing minority workers’ demands for greater equality on to the social dialogue collective bargaining agenda with the employers. This step is essential if the trade unions are to retain and win the support of minority workers in the defence of Europe’s more egalitarian social model. 3) The EUMC should be funded to produce a European Discrimination Index to better enable national level monitoring of segmentation within the labour force. 4) The Commission should encourage Member States to take positive action and encourage social dialogue processes to challenge racism at work through the promotion of equality.
- Published:
- Corporate author(s): Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (European Commission)
- Themes: Employment policy , Social policy , Social sciences research
- Subject: anti-discriminatory measure , equal treatment , labour market , migrant worker , protection of minorities , racial discrimination , racism , rights of minorities , trade union , xenophobia
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| ISSN 1018-5593 | ISBN 978-92-79-07787-6 | DOI 10.2777/23909 | Catalogue number KI-NA-23157-EN-N |
- Released on EU Publications:
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