Irregular Migrants' Struggle for Human Rights: some more random notes

1. Community Unionism in Japan

"With the high economic growth of the 1960s and 1970s, however, Japanese trade union members became the members of a 'new labour aristocracy' which accepted the need for 'false part-time workers' to guarantee its own stability of employment. This has been the main reason why the unionization of part-time workers has not made much progress. Of course, there has also been a reluctance on the part of the part-time workers themselves to join unions, but more important has been the negative attitude of the full-time employees. One can therefore understand why there has been no interest at all among the enterprise unions in recruiting foreign workers who are hired on the same short-term basis as part-time Japanese employees. Neither can such interest be expected to develop in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, some Japanese unions are open to accepting foreign workers as members. These are the new-style "community unions" which begun to appear in the trade union movement in 1983 and has since spread rapidly across the country. At the end of 1987 they numbered more than thirty. Their organizing strength is still slight and, as in the case of the Edogawa Union and Union Higourou, membership is measured in the hundreds rather than in the thousands.
"The number of part-time workers has risen sharply and this has been one important factor which has caused a drop in union membership year by year. Both Souhyou and Rengou had therefore begun to emphasize the importance more active recruiting campaigns. If, on the other hand, the community union movement continues to grow, then the character of the trade union movement as a whole will change and may very well become more amenable to accepting foreign workers. ..." (p. 263)

(Nimura Kazuo, "The Trade Union Response to Migrant Workers," in Glenn D. Hook and Michael Weiner, eds., 1992/2001 The Internationalization of Japan, London: Sheffield Centre of Japanese Studies/Routledge Series)

Unions in US, UK construction industry

"Historically, there have been craft unions that developed more open organizing approaches, foreshadowing the inclusive strategies of industrial unionism. See, e.g., Dorothy Sue Cobble, Lost Ways of Organizing: Reviving the AFL’s Direct Affiliate
Strategy, 36 INDUS. REL. 278, 279–80 (1997). Furthermore, in the past few decades, craft unions such as the building trades have found that their exclusivity has been their downfall in the face of an influx of nonunion construction firms, often staffed by new immigrants. The resulting loss of market share and decline in union strength in the construction industry has led many in the building trades to rethink the classic craft union model and to develop programs to draw in immigrants and others historically excluded from their ranks. See, e.g., Bruce Nissen, The Role of Labor Education in Transforming a Union Toward Organizing Immigrants: A Case Study, 27 LAB. STUD. J. 109, 109–13 (2002)." (p. 515)

"With the influx of immigrants into the industry over the past few decades, building trades unions’ control over construction jobs has been severely eroded. The unions’ first reaction was to seek to expel the immigrants. Of late, however, the construction unions who organize the less elite members of the construction workforce—including the bricklayers, laborers, and carpenters—have begun to invite them within the circle. Nissen, supra note 34 (providing a case study of the role of labor
education in efforts by the South Florida Regional Council of Carpenters to organize new immigrant workers); Miriam Jordan, Rebuilding Plan: Carpenters Union Courts Immigrants to Increase Clout— Undocumented Workers See Risk of Firings, Fewer Jobs, WALL ST. J., Dec. 15, 2005, at A1 (discussing union efforts to court immigrants); Nate Schweber, Worked Over? Union Organizers Say Immigrants Get Cheated, HERALD NEWS (Passaic County, N.J.), Sept. 6, 2004, at A1 (recounting outreach efforts
by the Laborers’ International Union of North America to reach out to immigrants on construction sites in New Jersey); Nicole Andrea Silverman, Deserving of Decent Work: The Complications of Organizing Irregular Workers Without Legal Rights (Oxford Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, Working Paper No. 21, 2005) (discussing a case study of efforts by the New England Regional Council of Carpenters to organize Latino immigrant workers)." (p. 517)






2. The Theory of Community Unions

"So, internationally, the situation in the late 1990s is that industrial unions have declining appeal and effectiveness, while enterprise unions have been an instrument for promoting functional flexibility and employment security for core workers. ... One can dimly see what is needed - institutions that can resist pressures of co-option, promote dynamic efficiency in production and have a redistributive effect beyond the confines of an individual firm. Are there any germs of hope?
"...In terms of flexible labour relations, what is needed is a movement that brings together bodies representing local groups of employed and those at the margins of the labour force to bargain over distributional, security and production issues.
"What might be called community unions or citizenship associations could be the most effective way forward if a strategy of ditributive justice is to be pursued. For this traditional unions must recognize that their long-term representative capacity will depend on their appeal to flexiworkers and those on the labour force margins. ... The agenda of community unions would differ from that of enterprise unions, giving higher priority for social income issues, including environmental protection and share entitlement to social benefits by those in regular and non-regular forms of employment, and from industrial unions, in that they would give less emphasis on the money wage relative to other components of the social income." (p. 391)

(Guy Standing, 1999, Global Labor Flexibility: seeking redistributive justice, New York: St. Martins Press)

3. European countries that deny that they have an obligation to respect human rights of irregular migrant: Sweden, Austria and Germany

"Another issue is whether irregular immigrants have social and human rights, whether these must be recognised wherever a person is and whatever his or her status is and whether states have a moral duty toward undocumented migrants. Most countries because they accept their international obligations under the various human rights conventions affirm this question and permit at least limited access to health care, primary education for children, and access to the legal system. Three countries as I have critically analysed this elsewhere deny these rights, Sweden, Austria and Germany." (pp. 12-13)

Countries where unions increasingly represent irregular migrant workers: US, Portugal, UK and Germany (p. 10)

(Frank Duvell, 2006, "Illegal Immigration in Europe: Patterns, Causes and Consequences")