Working against Racism in the Trade Unions is a research partnership made up of teams working closely with the trade unions in Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy and the UK . It has been funded by the European Union’s Fifth Directorate to conduct research into the role of the trade unions both in challenging racism and xenophobia in the workplace, and in tolerating these attitudes.
The principal objective of the WaR project is to evaluate participation mechanisms for collective action at all levels of governance in a key area of civil society. Trade unions are voluntary voice organisations representing a significant proportion of EU citizens in dialogue with their employers, governments and civil society. This research will examine the processes by which unions succeed or fail in the inclusion of the voice and interests of racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants, and ascertain the effectiveness of their impact on discrimination in labour market policies and practices. Through matching case studies of race relations and trade union behaviours in selected workplaces and within their surrounding communities in four Member States and in one Candidate State, our research will evaluate the trade union participation mechanism as a means of challenging racism and xenophobia. It will help increase the understanding of the causes and effects of racism in Europe and will report and encourage best practice in combating racism by governments, the social partners and civil society.
The project researchers will conduct a focused study of the issues involved in discrimination and of the trade union policies and practical responses in comparable sectors in five countries: Belgium, France, Italy, the UK and Bulgaria. This will enable us to examine the factors leading to different outcomes and to identify good practices that can be disseminated and used by the trade unions and policy-makers. Throughout, our aim is to keep the research focused and manageable but also sufficiently broad in order to allow the most fruitful generalisation of its results. We are using the same criteria in each country in deciding upon the case study areas and are everywhere adopting the same methodologies, with common interview schedules and qualitative computer data analysis software; the initial interviews in each sector in each country will be conducted by joint research teams in order to ensure full comparability of the interview process.
The project researchers will pay special attention to the historical and cultural dimensions behind the current situation of each union and country through the examination of the trajectories of each country’s racial and ethnic minority communities, of attitudes to race among workers and the general population, and of current policy and actions by public authorities and the unions themselves around these issues. Further, we will bring a gender perspective into our research, as in each country at least one of the case study areas selected is highly feminised. The project is multi-disciplinary, bringing together researchers from industrial relations, labour sociology, the humanities and history.
For more information on RITU/WaR, visit the project website at www.workingagainstracism.org.
