Trade unions and labour market dualisation: a comparison of policies and attitudes towards agency and migrant workers in Germany and Belgium

Valeria Pulignano, Guglielmo Meardi and Nadja Doerflinger
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Valeria Pulignano: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Guglielmo Meardi: University of Warwick, UK
Nadja Doerflinger: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Work, Employment & Society, 2015, vol. 29, issue 5, 808-825

Abstract: This article addresses the questions of the extent to which, and the reasons why, western European trade unions may have privileged the protection of ‘insiders’ over that of ‘outsiders’. Temporary agency workers, among whom migrant workers are over-represented, are taken as a test case of ‘outsiders’. The findings from a comparison of Belgian and German multinational plants show that collective agreements have allowed a protection gap between permanent and agency workers to emerge in Germany, but not in Belgium. However, the weaker protection in Germany depends less on an explicit union choice for insiders than on the weakening of the institutional environment for union representation and collective bargaining. The conclusion suggests that European unions are increasingly trying to defend the outsiders, but meet institutional obstacles that vary by country.

Keywords: comparative employment relations; dualisation; flexibility; labour market; migrant work; temporary agency work; trade unions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:29:y:2015:i:5:p:808-825

DOI: 10.1177/0950017014564603

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