GMB Southern Region - Building a sustainable Migrant Worker strategy
Establishing the Need
Alan Fraser, Regional Education/Health and Safety Officer says,
“The first principle in recognising the issues that migrant workers face is one of exploitation by employers, the second is to recognise that as trade unionists we don’t differentiate between workers and the third is that we seek to organise and unite all workers black, white, women, men, young, migrants and disabled.”
The GMB Southern Region set about building a migrant worker strategy blueprint from initial work undertaken in Southampton. It was established that 30,000 Polish people lived in the city - 10% of the population. Alan described how they started by holding a series of meetings with the Polish community, establishing that the main barrier migrant workers face is in speaking and understanding English. The GMB, therefore, decided to assist by providing English language classes and are currently helping over 100 Polish workers per week in Southampton to learn English.
Through the Union Learning Fund the GMB have been working to put in place a regional strategy for the learning agenda linking it directly to the union’s Organising agenda and this has been very successful. The ULF project included the migrant worker strategy and as part of the initiative in Southampton, Joanne Lucyszyn was appointed as a Project Worker initially to work on this element of the project.
The Migrant Workers Branch
In Plymouth on 6th October 2006 the GMB Southern Region made history by setting up the first post-war migrant workers Branch in Britain. It was constituted at a meeting following GMB protocol and procedural arrangements, and attended by 70 Migrant Workers.
Alan said,
“Concern had been expressed in the union that establishing a special branch for migrant workers keeps them separate from other union members.” He went on to say, “The strategy is to build their confidence, skills and knowledge in order for them to integrate into mainstream democratic processes of the union.”
In Brighton where the strategy was pursued, a meeting of 25 migrant workers decided to form a migrant workers section of the main Brighton branch thus showing the flexibility of the strategy.
Following on from the success of the English classes Joanne, working with the Branch and the Regional team, established a learning centre and appointed a further Project Worker for the centre called Bernadetta Mruklik. The learning centre is currently delivering ESOL and ICT courses to migrant workers.
A flexible strategy for the region
Alan says that the ULF and the learning agenda has been central to delivering a balanced approach to the learning needs of GMB members in his region and this approach has been a vital ingredient in the migrant workers project. He went on to say that the migrant worker strategy is not about delivering a scattergun approach, but one in which GMB are developing a flexible strategy and template that can be rolled out to the rest of the region linked to Area teams. He also said that the strategy is linked to areas where resources are made available to implement the strategy and where a dedicated organiser is working with the migrant workers.
Martin Smith, GMB Head of Organising said in a recent article,
“Migrant workers can again play a central role in reinvigorating our movement but we must do this with our eyes open to the potential pitfalls, the difficulties and the requirements for change that it necessitates. If we fail to do this or if we see this as just another “sexy issue” we are bound to fail.”
The GMB Southern Region approach does address these issues. It is a serious approach to delivering a strategy for migrant workers, where the workplace is the key building block to encourage self organisation and where organising is sustainable.
