Helsinki (21.08.2003 - Daryl Taylor) Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Lahti seminar weekend (read the Trunf report on it) was the choice of main theme. There is probably some truth in the cynical observation that Finland’s trade union mainstream has only taken an active interest in the welfare of immigrants since it became clear that many of these workers could not be kept out of the Finnish labour market following European Union enlargement, and would therefore be able to compete with Finns for jobs in Finland.
Thus we have the slightly paradoxical situation that Finland’s largest labour confederation SAK established an office in Tallinn, Estonia, to advise prospective migrants about their rights in the Finnish labour market while simultaneously seeking to negotiate transition periods impeding the mobility of labour from the new Member States. To their credit, however, Finland’s unions have now understood the point that it is important to recruit these newcomers into union membership as quickly as possible.
There is still a regrettable tendency for Finnish unions to view migrant workers as a service problem instead of an organisational opportunity. While Faduma Dayib expressed her interest in playing a more active role in her union, it is not clear how the traditional Finnish union organisation structure could give her the basic experience necessary to equip her for such a role. Instead of considering this structural question, most unions tend to worry about how they can provide services to immigrants within their existing structure.
I addressed this question as a guest speaker at one of the Lahti seminar working groups by outlining the self-help model that has worked quite well at Service Unions United – PAM. The most important feature of this model is that it involves migrants in providing union services for themselves, while allowing immigrant union activists to emerge naturally.
The problem for the parent union in such cases is that the "immigrant sections" created by this process gain a life of their own and may develop in directions that are strange and unpredictable. Successfully implemented, however, immigrant sections can solve both the recruitment and the service problem, and provide a new generation of intercultural union activists.
*The writer is the vice chairman of the Advisory Board for Ethnic Relations ETNO, where he represents immigrants and ethnic minorities