Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

German trade unions and Polish migrant workers 201
membership, trade unions in Europe have to take into account the morale of their
members who finance the organisation through their membership fee and provide
the basis for political influence. The efficiency and success of interest representation
in each of the policy channels depend on the organisational ability to mobilise the
members for political action (strikes on the shop floor level, public manifestations)
(Erne 2001). If members do not go along with the policy and strategy, the
organisation will get into trouble. To persuade members that the organisation can
act successfully in the interests of its clients is an elementary task of every organisation
based on voluntary membership. Like every membership organisation, the
cognitive horizon of members is the starting point of activities and forms the cultural
opportunity space. In order to follow interests, trade unions have to take into account
two constraints: the increasingly European shaped political opportunity structure
and the still nationally rooted cultural opportunity structure.
Trade unions are reflexive organisations and their officials are aware of the
tightrope they must walk between changing political opportunities whilst cultural
convictions lag behind. As early as the early 1990s, trade union officials had pointed
to the national frame of reference that affect the room for manoeuvre:
Trade unions’ migration policy had to operate in an extremely narrow
opportunity space. On the one hand the policy was determined by the federal
stipulation which was impossible for trade unions to change. On the other side,
the trade unions’ policy depended on the consent of the native majority of
members, who showed more or less willingness to make concessions and often
showed more understanding of a restrictive immigration state-policy than for
the own organisation, which had the programmematic claim to represent
foreign workers equally alongside the inland majority of members.
(Kühne et al. 1994: 19)
The deep transformations since the end of the 1980s challenged the taken-forgranted
interpretation the cultural apparatus used to offer its members during
neo-corporatist national isolation. The increasing presence of workers from
abroad accompanied by rising unemployment of domestic workers called for new
and intensified cognitive efforts to keep the support of members. IG BAU also
consciously took into account the constraints of the cultural opportunity structure.
This becomes clear in an statement by two trade union officials who outline a
‘double strategy’:
Inevitably the IG BAU will be confronted with the question who is the clientele
the organisation will have to organise and if it is possible that all interests can be
represented by one national trade union. In the absence of an overriding
principle, the increasing competition for jobs will leave no space for solidarity.
Therefore a speedy concentration of interests on binding collective regulations
is necessary. The IG BAU will have to follow a double strategy: on the one hand
it is necessary to present the organisation to all workers from the whole of Europe
as a strong and reliable organisation with attractive services. Simultaneously the