Trade Unions and Immigration in the Netherlands

This chapter focuses on trade union strategies to represent immigrant and ethnic minority workers in the Netherlands. Since the early 1990s, trade unions in the Netherlands countries started developing policies to better represent the rights of immigrant and ethnic minority workers. Trade unions focused on the labour market inclusion of ethnic minority workers by promoting and supporting initiatives related to education and training, and measures aimed at fighting labour market discriminations. These initiatives were mainly developed through tripartite and bipartite negotiations within an industrial relations system characterised by a strong tradition of social dialogue which also guaranteed a high degree of institutional embeddedness in trade unions. According to the analytical framework presented in Chapter 1, the dominant logic of action of Dutch trade unions was between race/ethnicity and social rights.