Despite these temptations , British unions’ attitude has been mainly inclusive , with original efforts at ‘community organizing ’ of foreign workers, including in construction (Fitzgerald,2009 ). The main union concern has been defending institutionally fragile collective bargaining from the disruption of foreign companies , by demanding wage transparency for instance. In engineering construction , the only explicitly protectionist argument used by a Unite union interviewee is rather marginal and refers to the lack of the lack of expenditure in the local economy
The same unionist mentions mentions , as proof of union intentions , a dispute against Hungarian workers being paid 8.60 per hour instead of the collectively agree 19 per hour . When the company reacted by sending the Hangarian workers back to Hungary , thereby placing British unions against the Hungarian workers, the union claimed , and obtained , back pay at the collective agreement level as well as reinstatement at work for the Hungarian workres.