Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

196 Norbert Cyrus
8 Another trend deeply influencing trade union policy in the construction sector
was the economic performance of the construction industry. In the aftermath
of the collapse of the GDR and the relocation of the German capital from
Bonn to Berlin, the need for construction services increased in the 1990s to an
unprecedented degree. Initially, the demand for labour increased and, until
1994, the use of migrant workers was complementary to resident employment.
The number of workers employed by domestic firms increased from about
100,000 to 1.08 million employees from 1991 to 1994. The replacement of
domestic labour began only in 1995, when the numbers of workers liable to
social insurance fell (between 1995 and 1998, there were about 245,000 fewer)
but the amount of migrant workers nevertheless increased (Bosch et al. 2000:
676). According to this account, since 1996, a substitution of resident construction
workers can be observed. The number of employed resident workers
liable to social insurance fell from 1.1 million in 1994, to 800,000 in 1998
(Hochstadt et al. 1999: 201ff).
9 The political volatility of this situation was exacerbated by the fact that the
replacement of resident workers was unevenly distributed. Besides the disadvantaged
areas of East Germany, the urban agglomerations with a number
of construction sites which were difficult to control were also affected. The
most dramatic locus of this development was Berlin. Here, the amount of
construction activities increased between 1992 and 1995 by about 40 per cent,
with a nearly constant level of employed resident construction workers liable
to social insurance. Since 1996, construction activities and employment
have decreased. At the end of the 1990s, the number of construction workers
in Berlin was equal to the number of construction workers in the West Berlin
of 1990. In view of the amount of construction activities in 1998, about 88,000
construction workers are required. However, only 28,000 resident workers
are employed: ‘The missing 60,000 employees either come from other regions
of Germany (because of the advantages in the wage level, most likely from
adjacent East Germany) or legal and illegal foreign workers from abroad or
resident “moonlighters”‘ (Bosch et al. 2000: 676).
10 The already relatively low rate of unionisation, estimated at 30–5 per cent, is
still falling, which places the unions in a weaker position when presenting their
arguments (Lubanski 1999: 284). The number of IG BAU members decreased
from 653,000 in 1994 to 539,744 in 2000. 3 Taking into account that IG BAU
had gained 80,000 new members by merging with a small trade union, the loss
of members is even more dramatic (see Streeck and Visser 1998).
As a result of these independent, but overlapping and mutually reinforcing
developments, the labour market situation and the bargaining power of trade unions
in the construction sector was eroded. According to an observer one can
imagine that these are hard times for the German construction union IG BAU.
Its strong bargaining power, which had successfully survived the crisis of the
construction industry in the 1970s and in the 1980s, has now been upset. It is