Organising migrant workers: the living wage campaign at the University of East London

• Author: Timothy Hall,Ana Lopes
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12099
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015

Organising migrant workers: the living

wage campaign at the University of

East London

Ana Lopes and Timothy Hall

ABSTRACT

This critical case study looks at the campaign led by Citizens UK and Unison to get

the University of East London (UEL) to sign up to the London living wage (LLW).

UEL agreed to pay the LLW after a brief campaign in November 2010 and it was

subsequently implemented in August 2011. The study charts the course of the cam-

paign and draws on mobilisation theory and new primary research to account for its

success. What our findings suggest is that community organisers and union activists

were able to organise and mobilise a largely apolitical group of migrant workers. This,

we suggest, can be explained by the successful mobilisation of the community and

augurs well for future broad-based campaigns.

1 INTRODUCTION

What opportunities present themselves, today, for organising migrant workers on

issues of pay and working conditions? What forms should this organisation take and

what prospects of success do such campaigns have? While these questions are not

especially new, they are nonetheless timely and urgent. Migrant workers represent

some of the most vulnerable and least protected groups of workers in the UK.

According to the report of the Commission on Vulnerable Employment (2008: 12),

migrant workers are disproportionately represented in vulnerable employment: more

likely to suffer problems at work and summary dismissal; less likely to be members of

trade unions and therefore be in a position to have their rights and conditions covered

by collective bargaining; less likely to know their employment rights; and more likely

to be subject to routine bullying in the workplace. In addition, recent studies have

shown that these problems are compounded by recent cuts in public spending in the

UK (Rogers et al., 2009). All of this would suggest that the circumstances could

hardly be less promising for organising migrant workers. All the more striking, then,

that we should see a proliferation of living wage campaigns led by citizens’ organisa-

tions, trade unions, civic engagement groups and political parties. At present, there

❒Ana Lopes is a Senior Lecturer at University of the West of England and Timothy Hall is a Principal

Lecturer at University of East London. Correspondence should be addressed to Ana Lopes, University of

the West of England, Centre for Employment Studies Research, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane,

Bristol BS16 1QY; email: Ana2.Lopes@uwe.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 46:3, 208–221

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd