Trade Unions at a Crossroads : A Qualitative Case Study of Blue-Collar Trade Unions and Challenges from Labor Migration

As a result of the increasing mobility of labor globally, trade unions find themselves at a crossroads. Although labor migration has become a common feature of labor markets, it poses a threat to trade unions’ collective agreements by speeding up the downward pressure on wages and employment conditions. Yet recruiting migrant workers may help unions to reverse the trend of declining membership rates and protect collective agreements. Hence, trade unions must take a position toward labor migration and thus face a range of dilemmas surrounding inclusion. Therefore, this thesis aims to investigate trade unions’ development of strategic responses to include migrant workers. The study is conducted in the form of a comparative case study, where seven Swedish blue-collar unions serve as subjects of study. The focus is specifically on the work of local trade union chapters. The main findings include that concrete strategies focusing on the recruitment of migrant workers are rarely in place, and that local union representatives work according to a case-by-case approach. Moreover, sectoral differences do not seem to have any particular influence on trade union practices in this regard.