Labour strategies, cross-border solidarity and the mobility of health workers: Evidence from five New Member States

Abstract

Shortages of health workers in Western Europe have been addressed, in part, by recruitment from New Member States. In addition to concerns regarding social dumping and cohesion, the loss of human capital and subsequent deleterious impact on services poses a new challenge for trade unions. The aim of this article is to examine the strategies and interventions of health worker trade unions in five countries: Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Union capacity is analysed through the dimensions of structural power (ability to cause disruption through industrial action); institutional power (lobbying and negotiating with appropriate bodies); and coalitional power (mobilizing support across borders with labour and non-labour organizations). While structural power is generally weak, the deployment of institutional and coalitional power has been more varied across the five countries.

Is migration from Central and Eastern Europe an opportunity for trade unions to demand higher wages? Evidence from the Romanian health sector

“…It is doubtful, however, that migration automatically leads to labour shortages in the healthcare sector, as governments' commitment to neoliberal reforms not only leads them to enforce caps on employment but also precludes them from recognising reduced numbers of healthcare worker as 'labour shortages' to which they have to respond. Moreover, it is also doubtful that unions' bargaining power is automatically reinforced by out-migration (Hardy et al, 2014), as eastward EU enlargement led to decreased union power and 'voice' (Meardi, 2007(Meardi, , 2012). Yet this did not preclude unions from actively using migration as an argument in the promotion of their interests (Hardy et al, 2014).…”

“…Moreover, it is also doubtful that unions' bargaining power is automatically reinforced by out-migration (Hardy et al, 2014), as eastward EU enlargement led to decreased union power and 'voice' (Meardi, 2007(Meardi, , 2012). Yet this did not preclude unions from actively using migration as an argument in the promotion of their interests (Hardy et al, 2014).…”

“…The response of CEE unions to migration has been mainly seen in terms of whether they utilize the opportunity offered by migration-induced labour shortages to increase workers' wages (Hardy et al, 2014;Kaminska and Kahancová, 2011;Meardi, 2007Meardi, , 2012. A historical approach looking at concrete processes of capitalist integration recognises the importance of socially mediated meanings (Ragin and Zaret, 1983) for the way these processes are defined and experienced by those whom they affect.…”

“…We consider migration to be constitutive of global capitalism (Hardy et al, 2014;Sassen, 1988;Stan and Erne, 2014), and east-west migration as constitutive of the EU enlargement project (Meardi, 2007(Meardi, , 2012. This means that in order to account comparatively for union strategies on migration we need to adopt an approach that concentrates on the process of capitalist integration and on the theoretically and empirically significant links we can establish between this process, migration and union action across time.…”

“…Industrial relations scholars have seen east-west labour migration in the enlarged EU as a cause of labour shortages in sending countries (Hardy and Fitzgerald, 2010;Hardy et al, 2014;Meardi, 2007Meardi, , 2012Trif, 2008), providing an opportunity for unions to win higher wages (Kaminska and Kahancová, 2011). By focusing on the distributional aspect of wage policies, we challenge the assumption of a virtuous circle between migration, labour shortages and collective wage increases.…”