While labor unions have fought for years for the recognition of work-related illnesses and accidents, they are now encouraged, by European directives on antidiscrimination, international norms and Belgian law, to pay greater attention to the inclusion and participation of workers in the ordinary labor market. The new legal and policy frame opens new opportunities to mobilize the law and the legal system, to collaborate with national and European agencies, and to transform the ways labor unions assist their members.
From interviews in three labor unions in Belgium, this contribution shows that union representatives are very cautious when they mobilize both social law and antidiscrimination law as a resource in the negotiation with employers about disabilities. Their cautiousness reveals not only the difficulties that union representatives face when they articulate social law and antidiscriminatory law in practice, but also their fear to produce interindividual conflicts, between one worker and the employer, in a context mostly dominated by collective bargaining.
Built on the debates among socio-legal scholars on legal mobilization in Europe, this contribution suggests several new perspectives to understand activists’ constraints and resources when they make individual and collective rights real.
