Regional Case Study. From Ukraine to Finland and Estonia via Poland : Migration and posting of third country nationals. Work package 4

This report gives an overview of the Con3Post project1 research that analyses a new and understudied phenomenon of posting third country nationals (TCNs) in the European construction sector, with a special focus on the posting flow involving workers from Ukraine being posted to Finland and Estonia through Poland. The research highlights severe regulatory challenges related to the phenomenon. These include posted TCNs being exposed to multiple vulnerabilities that are even more extreme than intra-European Union (EU) posted workers are usually exposed to. These are: lack of occupational safety and health training and having no accident insurance coverage, not receiving wages and other employm…

Overcoming Barriers to Transnational Organizing Through Identity Work : Finnish-Estonian Trade Union Cooperation

This article analyses a project by Finnish and Estonian unions to adopt ‘organizing model’ strategies through establishing the transnational ‘Baltic Organising Academy’. Initially aimed at Estonian workplaces, successful campaigns inspired Finnish unions to copy the model in Finland. This cooperation was originally motivated by labour market interdependence between the two countries, and the failure of past social-partnership oriented union strategies in Estonia. The willingness of Finnish and Estonian unions to commit resources to transnational cooperation around an ‘organizing model’ marks a dramatic departure from the unions’ previous strategies. This change was accomplished by transnati…

Enhancing Economic Democracy for Posted Workers : The Case of Finland

This report is based on two focus group interviews with three Finnish Construction Trade Union (Rakennusliitto, RL) representatives and two Industrial Union (Teollisuusliitto, TL) representatives and on individual interviews with Finnish Electrical Workers´ Union (Sähköliitto, SL), and the Federation of Finnish Enterprises (Suomen Yrittäjät, SY) representatives. Interviews were conducted between April and May 2018. It also relies on interviews with Estonian construction workers working in Finland conducted between 2011 and 2017, under other projects: TWES, ERC grant #263782 and Academy of Finland, Industrial Citizenship and Labour Mobility in the EU, a Migrant Centered Study of Estonia-Finl…

Post-crisis innovation within Estonian private sector unions

Union campaigns against precarious work in the retail sector of Estonia, Poland, and Slovenia

Enhancing Economic Democracy for Posted Workers : PROMO report

The PROMO project is based around a series of policy workshops and conferences from 2017 and 2018. The project aims to make recommendations to improve: • national labour protection systems for posted workers; • institutions, practices and channels for promoting industrial democracy for posted workers; • the collection of data relevant to making informed posted worker policy decisions. Our method is to take existing research knowledge and improve on it through policy workshop discussions with experts and stakeholders. The first PROMO report (Kall and Lillie 2017), based on an extensive literature review, established that posted workers more often than not are not represented collectively and…

Locked in Inferiority? : The Positions of Estonian Construction Workers in the Finnish Migrant Labour Regime

Abstract The aim of this article is to analyse how different policies and actors have structured the current migrant labour regime in the Finnish construction sector and to discuss the consequences for migrants. Our study shows that a strong industrial relations system such as in Finland is able to curb the posting of workers regime (the most disadvantageous for migrant workers). The position of labour migrants has become more diverse in the segmented labour market, although it remains inferior compared to that of the natives. Consideration of the policy development revolving around the changing migrant labour regimes constitutes the first part of the analysis and is based on government and…