Construction Trade Union (FCTU) and the Service Union United (SUU); e.g. how 

the unions react to labor immigration, whether unions seek to include migrants 

in the unions, and what is migrants’ position in the unions. The two unions were 

chosen as the focus of the research because the workforce in the sectors they 

represent is migrant-dense. The study also analyzed the experiences that migrants 

who work in these sectors have with trade unions. The Estonian labor market 

situation –including the role of Estonian trade unions– was also examined as it 

has a considerable impact on the operating environment of the FCTU. 

The results of the study indicate that immigration is a contradictory issue 

for both unions. On the one hand, they strive to include migrants as trade union 

members and to defend migrants’ labor rights. On the other hand, they, together 

with their umbrella organization the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions 

(SAK), seek to prevent labor immigration from outside the EU and EEA countries. 

They actively defend current labor immigration restrictions by drawing atten- 

tion to high unemployment figures and to the breaches of working conditions 

migrants encounter. 

In contrast, the employer organizations promote a more liberal state policy on 

labor immigration because they see it as a boost for business. Both the unions and 

the employer organizations ground their arguments on national interest. However, 

the position of the trade union movement is not uniform: unions belonging to the 

Confederation of Unions for Professionals and Managerial Staff in Finland (Akava) 

embrace more liberal labor immigration stances than the SAK. 

A key trade union strategy is to try to guarantee that migrants’ working condi- 

tions do not differ from those of the natives. The FCTU and the SUU inform migrants 

about Finnish collective agreements and trade union membership in the most 

common migrant languages. This is important for the unions because it is not in 

their interest that migrants’ working conditions are undercut. The interviewed 

migrants said that natives had more negotiating power with employers, which 

is often negatively portrayed in migrants’ working conditions. Migrants perceive 

that trade unions have an important role in protecting their working conditions. 

However, they stressed that migrants’ knowledge of unions is often very limited. 

The number of migrants in both two unions studied here is increasing. Espe- 

cially in the SUU, a considerable proportion of the new members are migrants. The 

FCTU is in a more challenging situation than the SUU because migrant construc- 

tion workers often work only for short periods in Finland and are consequently 

not interested in becoming union members. The unions’ strategies partly differ: 

the FCTU was the first Finnish trade union to establish a trade union branch/lo- 

cal for migrant members. The goal is to facilitate migrants’ inclusion in the union 

and to highlight the specific problems they face. The SUU, for its part, insists that 

such a special strategy would exclude migrants within the union organization. 

Despite the unions’ strategies, migrants are still underrepresented as union 

members and officials, which some of the interviewed migrants saw as a problem. 

Immigrants’ perception of trade unions was pragmatic: they had joined unions 

when membership yielded concrete benefits. 

In spite of the unions’ strategies, migrants –and temporary migrants– encoun- 

ter specific problems in terms of working conditions. Both unions demand more 

state intervention to protect migrants’ labor rights because overseeing working 

conditions consumes union resources. However, without the unions’ intervention, 

these problems would be more common than is currently the case. For instance, 

some of the interviewed migrants had received trade union assistance in claim- 

ing unpaid wages. 

The study demonstrated with the help of building on Walter Korpi’s power 

resources theory, that immigration is a power resource issue for the unions: suc- 

cessful immigration-related strategies strengthen unions –and vice versa. The 

research also showed how the unions’ operating environments constrain and 

enable their immigration-related strategies. 

This study has illuminated a previously ignored dimension: the immigrant- 

inclusive strategies of the Finnish trade unions. 

The research material consists of 78 qualitative interviews, observation in 

trade union events, and trade unions’ and employer organizations’ public state- 

ments.