Job Precarity and Attitudes Towards Labour Unions: The Mitigating Role of Immigrant Background

Abstract

Despite their significant and growing role in the European workforce, to date, little research attention has been paid to immigrant workers’ attitudes towards trade unions and provided mixed results. On the one hand, immigrants are expected to be more positive towards unions due to their lower economic capital and greater need for job protection. On the other hand, immigrants may hold more pessimistic attitudes towards unions because of their reduced social network, lower perceived benefits of collective action and unions’ historical aversion to immigrant workers. Here, we contribute to this understudied field of research by concentrating on increasing job precarity in non-standard employment forms which is highly concentrated among immigrant workers. More specifically, we ask to what extent does the internationalization of the workforce and the increasing presence of non-standard employment relate to attitudes towards trade unions in advanced democracies? We argue that immigrants in precarious employment face a double vulnerability where the distinct importance of the workplace for the social and political integration of immigrants, the reinforcement of pre-existing immigrant-specific labour market discrimination, and the link between employment and residence status could explain why job precarity has particularly negative effects on immigrants´view of unions compared to natives. Using an original survey data from 13 Western European countries, we show that while immigrant status alone is not a predictor of attitudes towards unions, immigrants in temporary contracts have significantly more adverse attitudes towards unions than those immigrants in permanent contracts. Importantly, when compared with native workers, there is a wider cleavage in attitudes towards unions among immigrant workers based on the precarity of their employment status, highlighting this clear intersection of immigrant status and employment precarity in shaping attitudes towards unions. Our findings highlight a crucial issue that needs to be addressed for the future sustainability of social dialogue and industrial relations in Europe.