 |
|
|
 Essex and Herts unionlearn forum Unions and Employers helping to build Working Communities  |
TUC Education European ReviewIssue 47 June 2009 In this issue :
Welcome to the twenty first issue of the new-look European Review which will be emailed four times a year as a supplement to those registered to receive TUC Education Update. A hard copy will also be posted to Union Education Officers, TUC course co-ordinators and tutors. Everyone with an interest in European affairs as they affect trade unionists can still access the magazine online at http://www.tueip.dircon.co.uk/ or at http://www.unionlearn.org.uk/education/index.cfm?mins=88 Bargaining round upMALTA WAS RECENTLY THE RECIPIENT of a spanking new hospital but for industrial relations it has apparently caused more problems than it has solved. Last March, two years after the hospital opened, the UHM union held a press conference to publicise eight separate disputes that it had with the government involving the new facility. The issues ranged from the recruitment of dentists to parking and food arrangements and were brought to a head when the government failed to send a representative to a conciliation meeting. The union's Secretary General, Gejtu Vella, warned that a series of strikes would be called covering the whole health care sector. Within a fortnight however, the Minister of Finance had met UHM and signed an agreement that promised action on all eight points. THE WORLDWIDE CRASH IN THE FINANCIAL system that presaged the current economic crisis led to many governments effectively taking over many of their countries' banks. Most trade unions initially welcomed this but now they are beginning to worry about what it will mean for jobs. In Portugal the Business Bank, BPN, was nationalised in November as the Central Bank of Portugal had found losses of €700 million due to mismanagement as well as the crash. All deposits were guaranteed by the government, and the state-owned banking corporation, CGD, took control. While the Portuguese banking unions approved the arrangement they criticised the lack of any explicit commitment to employees. Their fears appeared justified when the new management team announced at the start of 2009 that no fixed-term contracts would be renewed, jeopardising 250 jobs. According to the unions this move contradicts a promise given by Prime Minister Socrates at the time of nationalisation; they also question the legality of some contracts. Meanwhile, the Belgian government took a minority stake, nationalised and injected capital into the three largest banks, Fortis, Dexia and KBC respectively. Here as well trades unions welcomed the rescue but are now fearful of job cuts; Fortis is the largest private sector employer in Belgium and the LBC-NVK union estimates that about 15,000 could go in the next few years. It is hoping that these cuts will be achieved by not replacing the many financial services workers approaching retirement age. In the case of KBC, job security pledges have been extended until the end of 2009 in return for a recruitment freeze and the withdrawal of bonuses. This chimes with national policy as the government has recently limited severance pay for all managers to a maximum of twelve months salary. Socialists lack bite in apathetic Euro-electionTHE 2009 ELECTIONS FOR THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT showed the electorate less motivated than at any time since they were enfranchised in 1979. Despite the all-enveloping financial crisis beginning to cost Europeans their jobs and menace some national governments, only about 43% of voters turned out to try to steer the direction of this increasingly influential institution. The UK followed the trend with an even lower figure of 34% with Slovakia at the foot of the league table on 19.6%.
As for the results themselves, the main feature of the new parliament, whose total membership was cut down from 785 to 736 MEPs, was the shrinking of the Socialist contingent, the PES, down from 217 to 161. The centre-right EPP bloc did well to reduce from 288 to 264 members as the British Conservatives defected to a new grouping. In theory the total number of right-wing MEPs is now sufficient to outvote all the others although it is unlikely that the different political groupings on the right will be able to maintain such unity. Despite fears of an advance by the far-right their performance was patchy with losses in Member States such as Poland and France offsetting gains in the Netherlands and the shameful election of fascists in the UK for the first time. The other group with grounds for satisfaction proved to be the Greens who increased from 43 to 51 after a very good showing in Germany and France. The new MEPs will be predominantly male with a slight rise from 30% to 31% in the proportion of women elected. The President of the PES, Poul-Nyrup Rasmussen agreed that voter apathy was the biggest problem, 'To those who announce a profound crisis in European socialism, I say no. Our voters stayed away. They simply didn't see the relevance of these elections'.
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT 2009 - KEY TO PARTIES
Opel makes Russian mouths water as UK fears for jobsIN OUR SURVEY OF THE TROUBLED European car industry (see last issue) no mention was made of Russia but now that country looks to have a decisive influence in the solution to the current biggest problem. Opel of Germany forms the largest part of GM (General Motors) Europe. With the American arm of the company filing for bankruptcy the German government wants it to separate from its big brother and is prepared to kick in over €2 billion to aid a takeover. After four foreign consortia indicated interest, including the Italian firm Fiat and a Chinese company, the government chose an alliance of Canadian car parts manufacturer Magna and Russian finance institution Sberbank as preferred bidder. With another €4.5 billion pledged in loan guarantees by the Berlin authorities, the deal has attracted criticism in Germany with one politician describing it as 'throwing taxpayer money out of the window with a sort of free-beer-for-everyone mentality'.
To head off these complaints the government will be anxious to save as many German jobs as possible leading to fears that factories in other EU Member States, such as the UK and Belgium, will bear the brunt of the 10,000 job cuts that occur under the Magna plan. While British business minister Lord Mandelson issued a stern warning of cuts, Swedes, in whose country GM subsidiary Saab is located, and Belgians seemed less worried. 'I do not think that it will disappear at any time in the future' said the mayor of the town where Saab is based while a union official at the threatened Antwerp factory believed that the €500 million that the local Flemish government had promised would protect ''The Plant They Couldn't Close''
In Germany too, trade unions thought that the cuts would not be as severe as in the U.S. where 21,000 workers are to be made redundant under a rescue plan that will give the United Auto Workers union a 20% stake in the U.S. company. Klaus Franz, union spokesman at Opel opined 'In the U.S., you get money to close down factories. In Europe, you get money to keep them open and safeguard jobs'. While analysts insist that, even if jobs are saved now, the European car industry will have to cut over-capacity in the future and therefore the outlook is uncertain, the EU Commissioner for Industry feels that the only winner in the deal will be the Russians. 'They are going to gain access to more modern technologies and can then build up their own automobile industry, suitable for export', said Günter Verheugen. Economic dive could lead to 'meltdown' in LatviaLATVIA WAS IN THE WORST POSITION of the East European countries we surveyed in the last issue of the European Review. Since then the news has been uniformly bleak and the country seems to be nearing the edge of an economic precipice. The estimate of a contraction of 12% in the economy this year, staggering in itself, has now increased to 16%. Wage reductions of 25% and closures of schools and hospitals having led to the fall of the government in February, further cuts could not be agreed by parliament which caused the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to suspend the latest instalment of a vital €8.5 billion loan in March.
In an attempt to shore up the country's currency, the lats, which is shadowing the euro in preparation for entry, the central bank has spent the equivalent of €920 million this year. Meanwhile the Latvian government gained union approval to lop a further 10% off the budget, warning that without the rest of the loan the country faces bankruptcy. It also asked for a relaxation in the IMF terms and the EU budget deficit limits for Euro applicants. The main trade union confederation, LBAS, still plans to hold protests to prevent those on low incomes being hit hardest by the cuts. The alternative of devaluation would halt the run on the country's treasury but would make it nearly impossible for home-buyers paid in Lati to pay back loans, 90% of which were borrowed in euros. Swedish banks who made the loans would then face debt problems similar to those experienced by some of their British counterparts. UK government kills off working time reform after five years of talkingTHE LONG AND WINDING ROAD OF REFORM OF THE EU DIRECTIVE on Working Time seems to have finally reached a dead-end in negotiations in Brussels. Originally passed in 1993 as health and safety legislation it was challenged in the courts by the then-Tory British government. When Labour came to power in 1997 they agreed to sign up to it on condition that workers had an opt-out by which they could agree to work longer than the 48 hours average per week laid down by the directive. The original law included a provision for its effect to be evaluated seven years after its implementation in Member States; this period elapsed in late 2003. Chief among the topics to be looked at was the UK opt-out, at the time no other country was using it, as working hours did not appear to have reduced in Britain which had, in the words of the TUC, 'a long hours culture'. After looking at the effects of the law the EU commission proposed several amendments including tightening up on the opt-out. By this time (September 2004) the situation had been complicated by European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings (SIMAP and Jaeger) that suggested that on-call time, for instance for doctors, must count as working time; several other countries then tried to make use of the opt-out as a way of avoiding employing thousands of extra health care staff to comply with the court. The UK, which had tried to block the law revision from the first, was thus joined by additional Member States in opposition to it. The European Parliament also objected to the Commission proposals but from the other direction, making amendments in May 2005 that called for the abolition of the opt-out within three years and all on-call time to count as working hours. It took three years for a compromise to be agreed at the Council of Ministers that would have retained the opt-out, but with more safeguards, and counted 'on-call time' as working hours, only if the employee was 'active'. Perhaps not surprisingly, however, when this common position returned to the parliament under the co-decision procedure in December last year, MEPs again stuck to their previous position on the opt-out and on-call issues (see issue 45). All that was left under the EU legislative process was 'conciliation'. A joint committee of the Council of Ministers and the parliament was convened and given two months to come up with a solution. Although hopes were slim it was also true that no conciliation had failed since the procedure was introduced in 1999. Yet by April 27th with no hope of further progress the parliamentary delegation voted to end negotiations. Recriminations soon followed: Petr Necas, the head of the Council's delegation, claimed that, influenced by the approaching EU elections, MEPs 'gave priority to ideology over political and economic reality. If the Parliament really wanted to improve protection of employees, it should have accepted the Council's proposals'. But Jose Silva Peneda from the parliamentary side claimed that 'a minority of member states wants to bury some fundamental values that have existed since the origin and the development of the European social model'. In the UK the government was predictably delighted by the stalemate 'Millions of people are better off because of the opt-out and I am relieved we have been able to resist its removal' said Lord Mandelson but the TUC took a different view 'We are disappointed that another opportunity has been missed to end the UK's dangerous long hours culture. Long hours cause stress, illness and lower productivity' insisted General Secretary Brendan Barber. The unamended directive will now remain in force though there will continue to be problems for national governments in reconciling it with the 'on-call' court judgments. Vladimír Špidla, the EU Employment Commissioner, believes that 'The likely outcome is that more - not less - member states will start using the opt-out ... and there won't even be more safeguards for workers who do use the opt-out.' 'Gender pay gap' in Germany must spark law changeA RECENT STUDY FOR THE Ministry for the Family has underlined the wide gap in earnings between women and men in Germany. With the overall difference in the UK estimated at between 17% and 22% it is scant consolation that the survey reveals an even worse figure of 23%. There are a number of factors advanced to explain this apart from naked discrimination: 'occupational segregation', leading to low-paid sectors having a majority of female workers with men attracted to the more highly paid areas, career interruptions caused by child care and stereotyped gender roles leading to more men than women earning overtime payments. Furthermore the gap has widened since 2000 as the growing German low-wage economy has absorbed more female than male employees. Allowing for these factors the report found that women still earned 12% less than men with the same skills and of the same age. There were a number of suggestions from the government as to how to tackle this inequality. Minister for the Family, Ursula von der Leyen encouraged firms to make use of a software package called Logib-D to distinguish between 'objective' factors and pure discrimination. However Minister for Labour and Social Affairs, Olaf Scholz, regarded changes to legislation such as the 2006 General Equal* Treatment law as essential. He suggested that works councils should have the right to demand a 'statistical diagnosis' of pay in their company and should co-operate with the Federal Antidiscrimination Agency to uphold the rights of individuals. He also advocated the setting up of an Equal Pay Centre to undertake pay audits and using contracts for public procurement to ensure work would only be given to contractors with equal pay policies. 2 views of chemicals agency as danger list drawn up: 'Excellent job!' or 'shaky start'The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) recently completed the first major stage of its work with the compiling of a list of substances to be included on an 'authorisation list'. However while the agency congratulated itself on having met a deadline, critics pointed out that only seven chemicals had been named out of the 1,500 to 2,000 on the market which are thought to be dangerous. So, is it 'good job' or 'must do better' for the new watchdog? The health and safety department of the ETUI has published an article that estimates that more than 800 chemicals could have been placed on the 'authorisation' list. It partly blames the discrepancy on the complicated procedure that emerged from the protracted negotiations as the law was being shaped by the European Parliament and the Commission. It also believes that political considerations have played a part in shortening its length as companies were afraid that inclusion on the list would automatically lead to a boycott by consumers. Anybody is entitled to ask manufacturers if their products contain a substance from the candidate roster. The unions want 306 of the over eight hundred chemicals already classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or harmful to reproduction by the previous Dangerous Substances Directive to be listed. The fact that they have already been identified should cut down on administration according to the ETUC. It estimates that dangerous chemicals are responsible for one in three of occupational diseases in EU workplaces and that 191 of those on their list are linked to specific ailments. The ETUC also points out that including a substance ensures that much more information about its attributes and use becomes known. Although the ECHA has finalised its own register, there is a long way to go before the end of the authorisation procedure. Both the Member States and the Commission have to comment on the chosen chemicals and recommend a 'sunset' date when each one can no longer be used without specific authorisation. Companies then have another two years to submit requests for these which the ECHA has to evaluate and the Commission to finally decide on. The ETUI envisions the first substances reaching the end of this process in about 2013! While these are on this long journey it is possible for additional chemicals to be named as of 'very high concern', either by Member States or the European Commission. At the time of writing another five have been put forward. In the view of the ETUI this is nowhere near enough. They say that the REACH law itself specifies that the number of chemicals subject to authorisation cannot exceed the capacity of the ECHA to handle likely applications and predict that 'the final number of substances will likely struggle to get into double figures'. 'At this rate, it will take more than a century to rid ourselves of the manufactured chemicals that pose most health concerns for workers'. According to Anna-Liisa Sundquist who chairs the Member States Committee 'It has managed its tasks extremely well' and has done 'an excellent job!' but the ETUC contends that after the 'very shaky start' of the procedure the authorities must 'sort things out now if the high hopes [of] workers and consumers...are not to be betrayed'.
Unprecedented asbestos firm trial starts in ItalyWhile the European Union has now banned almost all forms of asbestos the effects of this once-huge industry linger on, not least in the mesothelioma 'time-bomb' whereby substantial numbers of asbestos workers and others exposed to the substance will develop cancer of the lining of the lung for many years to come. Now one company that made huge profits from the deadly manufacture has landed in court in Turin THE LONG CAMPAIGN AGAINST ASBESTOS has included its fair share of legal actions, not least against Turner and Newall in the UK. However the trial which recently opened in Turin of the Eternit company promises to dwarf them all. Although Inail, the Italian state agency which provides compulsory insurance for workers as well as various government, environmental and consumer bodies are claiming compensation from the company, there are nearly three thousand injured parties in total.
In the dock are the top Eternit bosses Baron Cartier de Marchienne from Belgium and the Swiss national Stephan Schmidheiny. They presided over a paternalistic business where employees were free to take home asbestos tiles and use factory spoil for roof insulation and bags, which were slit open by hand until 1980, to harvest potatoes. As coach loads of former workers arrived from Eternit's plants in Italy they spoke of many former colleagues who had died of lung cancer. Investigations for the trial have found 2,200 related deaths and 700 other cases of mesothelioma while in Casale Monferrato, the location of Eternit's biggest factory, there are forty new cases a year. Whatever the outcome of the proceedings, they will not be short or easy. There are 220,000 pages of documents in the case file and the defendants have retained a top legal team. Recent rulings from the European CourtsRetirement age: yes to UK, no to Greece The long-running action by Age Concern from the UK (see issue 44) reached final judgment at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) a few weeks before another case from Greece involving retirement. In the first case the court's Advocate General's opinion was confirmed that the UK was not necessarily in breach of the EU's Equal Treatment in Employment Directive in allowing employers to operate a compulsory retirement age in certain circumstances. The UK High Court must still decide if the allowed circumstances are justified by 'legitimate employment policy, labour market and vocational training objectives'. In the second the ECJ outlawed the Greek pensions regime which stipulates shorter lengths of service and earlier retirement for women employees in the civil service and armed forces. The court considered that occupational pensions should be treated as pay and therefore could not be discriminatory even for the purposes of offsetting social disadvantages faced by particular groups. However it said that other positive measures could be taken to this end. Turkish union wins right to strike A Turkish trade union active in the energy and construction sectors, Enerji Yapi-Yol Sens, has finally won a case lodged with the European Court of Human Rights in 2000. In 1996 a circular was issued by the government of Turkey forbidding public servants from joining a 'national action day' by public sector federation KESK aimed at securing a collective bargaining agreement. Union members who took part were disciplined. In Turkey the definition of 'public servant' is very wide and includes some industrial workers. This was one reason why the court decided in favour of the union. They also found no evidence that the action was prohibited and held that the government had not justified such an anti-democratic measure by any 'pressing social need'. The ETUC is now calling on the ECJ to modify recent judgments (e.g. Viking) which have limited the right to strike. Health and SafetyBolivian baker's mutilation in Spain highlights plight of migrant workers A HORRIFIC REPORT FROM SPAIN UNDERLINES the fact that mistreatment of migrant workers is not confined to the UK. After a bakery worker's arm became trapped in a dough-making machine he was left unattended for ten minutes before his boss drove him to hospital having thrown the detached limb into a skip. He was left one hundred metres from the entrance and warned not to tell doctors where he had been working. Police recovered the arm on the following day, too late for it to be re-attached. Spanish trade union federation Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO) said that Franns Rilles Melgar had been working 12-hour days at the bakery for about a year and a half without a contract, earning €23 a day. After they lodged a complaint the authorities shut the bakery and detained two bosses. Mr. Rilles Melgar, who says that he came to Spain to improve his quality of life and ended up in conditions of 'near-slavery' much worse than in his native Bolivia, has now been given legal right of residence in Spain. The case highlights the increasingly difficult position of migrant workers in the country, who have been employed in jobs unwanted by Spaniards in the recent boom, now that unemployment is the highest in the EU.
French survey adds unemployment to stress as suicide risk AFTER A SPATE OF SUICIDES IN French workplaces which were blamed on stress caused by unreasonable targets and fast-paced work (see issue 42), a new investigation has highlighted similar risks among those in short-term jobs and the unemployed. A survey comparing people being helped by support groups with the general population concluded that one in five adults were in a distressed state which could lead to suicide. It also found a close link between probability of suicide and employment status. Workers least at risk were those in permanent jobs while the most exposed were benefit claimants. Researchers expect the figures to get worse as the economic crisis deepens leading to what American psychologists have dubbed 'econocides' and British academics have warned that sudden recessions can cause insecurity even among those who retain their employment. Swedish robot lands firm in court A SWEDISH COMPANY HAS FALLEN foul of the health and safety authorities after one of its workers attacked another employee: in a possibly unprecedented case, however, this was robot versus human. The robot spent its working life lifting rocks in a factory at Bålsta but when its colleague attempted to repair the defective machine it decided that humans were also part of its job description and grabbed the unfortunate worker's head. The incident turned out to be anything but a joke as the company faced charges following an investigation by the Swedish Work Environment Authority and the police. According to the public prosecutor, who fined the company 25,000 kronor (£2,100), 'The man was very lucky. He broke four ribs and came close to losing his life'. Leif Johansson criticised both the employer and the human employee but confessed that 'I've never heard of a robot attacking somebody like this'. Union victory on drivers' hours THE EUROPEAN TRANSPORT WORKERS' FEDERATION (ETF) has succeeded in squashing a proposal by the EU Commission that would have removed all restrictions on working time for professional drivers classed as self-employed. In 2006 the regulations on driving and rest time reduced driving time to a maximum of 56 hours a week (see issue 34). Previously extensions of the working time directive (WTD) to the road transport sector had reduced working time to a maximum of 60 hours a week. However, in order to get this measure through the conciliation process between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, a study on self-employed drivers was to be done before the seven-year deadline for implementing the law was up (see issue 18). On this basis the Commission wanted to exclude this group from the WTD arguing that they would still be covered by the drive time rules. However MEPs took the view that driving made up, on average, only half of a driver's working time and, according to Stephen Hughes of the Socialist group, 'those not covered could indeed end up working 86 hours per week, every week of the year'. He also reminded the parliament that drivers of vehicles of less than 3.5 tonnes did not come under the driving regs. so that if they were excluded 'there will be no limits at all on their working time'. The ETF welcomed the rejection of the proposal by the parliament 'For us, there was no compromise on this issue.....Drivers are qualified professionals, whose skills are key to public safety on European roads. It's about time their value was recognised!' said General Secretary Eduardo Chagas. EU to control RFID so 'Internet of things' will be trustedTHREE ISSUES AGO we first mentioned the term the 'Internet of things' which refers to devices that will not need human oversight to interact with the third generation of the worldwide web. For instance mobile heart monitors could automatically send back readings via the Internet while the patient goes about their normal day and librarians could stock-take with a single swish of an automatic reader because each book on the shelf would identify its title. Much of this is possible because of something called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). All RFID systems work with a tag and a reader, usually over very short distances. The tag sends out a radio signal which identifies the object, or person, that it is attached to and the reader picks this up and sends it to a computer. In this way the tagged item can be networked and appear on the web. There are already six billion of these so-called 'smart chips' in operation; you might use them to get into your office or to pay for transport fares (the Oyster card in London).
All these uses seem like a boon to daily life but there are drawbacks. RFID-enabled chips can be so small as to be practically invisible, if they come near enough to a reader, complex information can be networked without the knowledge of its supposed user. Office managers could gather data on when you arrive and leave work and transport companies could follow your movements around the system. Protection of privacy and personal data is therefore crucial, both for its own sake and to build trust in the technology. The European Commission has decided to beef up the existing directives with a recommendation on RFID. The approach adopted is to 'opt-in'; in other words any tag that might pose a threat to privacy or data protection should be deactivated unless the user specifically allows it to be active. All tags should be signposted so that the user is aware of their presence and an EU-wide design for this is currently being developed. For example if you buy a bottle of water which has a RFID tag attached, the sign should alert you and the retailer should have conducted an assessment to make sure that it does not carry information that could interfere with your privacy. Even then you could still object to the tag and have it deactivated or removed, according to the Commission. In the case of person-specific RFID uses like door access and transport cards the Commission recommends that the user is told the purposes of their application and exactly which data is being processed.   Smart key fobs from China and various biometric readers from India According to Information Commissioner Viviane Reding 'The Commission ... wants RFID technology to empower consumers to control their data security, which is the best way to make sure it is an economic success'. Estonia leads e-charge in Euro electionsESTONIA BECAME THE FIRST Member State to allow its citizens to vote electronically in European Parliament elections in June; this followed a World first in a national ballot in 2007. The small Baltic country boasts high levels of internet access and a computer-readable identity card but the mayor of the capital, Tallinn, went further by sending voters a text message imploring them to 'Rise and shine, vote 104, your Edgar'. Perhaps because of these tactics turnout went up from 26.8% in 2004 to 43.9% compared to a slight fall over the whole EU. This was despite strenuous efforts by the parliament to engage with cyberspace including starting its own feed on the micro weblog site Twitter, its own page on social network Facebook and uploading several videos to the YouTube web site. One of these, featuring a woman chased by an axeman into a polling booth, was watched by 300,000 people. Websites and reports mentioned in this section are available at: Commission Recommendation on the implementation of privacy and data protection principles in applications supported by radio-frequency identification: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/rfid/ From RFID towards the Internet of Things: http://www.iot-visitthefuture.eu/ European election videos are on parliament's TV: http://www.europarltv.europa.eu/StartPage.aspx The European Parliament's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/europeanparliament Stats and factsSpain fears deflation spiral as economic indicators go into reverse
EU inflation lower in Euro area The latest monthly survey by Eurostat, the EU's statistical service, has found that annual inflation is still on a downward trend, if at a slower rate, and that all the Member States in deflation are part of the Euro currency area. The average for this group, based on April 2009 compared to April 2008, is +0.6% whereas the non-Euro countries came out at +1.2% per year. As well as Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Luxembourg have negative rates, in other words prices are actually going down. Analysing the figures further, alcohol and tobacco (3.3%) and hotels and restaurants (2.6%) are two categories in which costs are still rising whereas transport (-3.6%) and communications (-1.6%) show falls. If April's prices are compared to the month before however, a different picture emerges. This snapshot shows the enormous turnaround that has happened in the economies of the Baltic states. From annual rates as high as +6.0% countries such as Latvia and Lithuania are in deflation (-0.4% and -0.1% respectively) since March.
350,000 on the streets as ETUC warns against 'business as usual'THE EUROPEAN TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION (ETUC) organised a series of big demonstrations in May both in support of their demands for a new social deal in Europe and as a warning to national governments, the EU Commission and the financial sector that there should be no return to the 'casino capitalism', that led to the recent crash, once the immediate crisis is past. The four main events in Berlin, Brussels, Madrid and Prague were joined by offshoots in Birmingham, Bucharest and Luxembourg as a total of about 350,000 people took to the streets.
In his speech at the Berlin rally General Secretary John Monks said that the term 'casino capitalism' was not sufficient to describe the recent behaviour of the finance sector as 'casinos are more honestly run than many banks - and more effectively regulated'. Raising the spectre of the nineteen-thirties he stressed that the challenge of the far-right political parties could be beaten back if national governments worked in unison just as trade unions did through the ETUC. He urged them to initiate a new social deal which would spend 1% of GDP on green technologies, transport and energy as well as research. He also demanded subsidies for industry to prevent workers being laid off and swift help for those made redundant by investment in training and employment services. In a swipe at recent unfavourable judgments from the European Court of Justice, Mr. Monks said of the ETUC 'We want to stop free movement of services in the EU sweeping aside collective agreements'. Following the successful protests he concluded 'The size of these Euro-demonstrations reveals the widespread concerns for the future.... never again can greed and selfishness be allowed to cause damage of amounts of trillions of euros'.
Diary: conferences and coursesNational Hazards Conference 10-12 July Greater Manchester Hazards Centre, University of Manchester, Sackville Street, Manchester Tel: 0161-636-7558 E-mail: hazconf@gmhazards.org.uk 19th International Symposium Shiftwork and Working Time. Health and Well-being in the 24-h Society 2-6 August Working Time Society, International Commission on Occupational Health, San Servolo Island, Venice, Italy Daniela Fano Tel: +39-02-50320146 Email: info@shiftwork2009.it 4th International Conference on Nanotechnology - Occupational and Environmental Health 26-29 August Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Paasitorni, Helsinki, Finland Ms. Varpu Taavettila Tel: +358-3-233-0430 Fax: +358-3-233-0444 Email: nanoeh2009@tavicon.fi Establishing trade union strategies for tackling the crisis 2-5 September ETUI Education, Boulevard du Roi Albert II, 5, box 7, B1210 Brussels, Belgium Alexandre Dias Tel: +32-2-224-0570 E-mail: adias@etui.org
Newsletter (6,200 words) issued 7 Jul 2009  Occupational Health and Wellbeing in the workplace Trade Union Education in Preston Provided by Manchester College Union rep courses Scotland – January to June 2012 |
|
|
unionlearn Telephone 020 7079 6920 |
||
As economic output has fallen and unemployment increased over the last few months, prices in the EU, usually in the 2-4% bracket classed as mild inflation, have 'headed south' and even turned negative in some countries. Spain is one of those Member States where consumer price falls (-0.2% in the year to April) plus rocketing jobless rates (17.4% in March) have stoked fears of a 1930s style deflationary spiral. As sales fall companies cut jobs and reduce prices but consumer spending is lowered both by loss of earnings and postponement of purchases in the hope that prices will fall further. Therefore firms' revenue continues to fall and more cuts are made. With the price index negative for the first time in fifty years and 35.4% of the 15-24 age group out of work there are genuine concerns about the country's future.
