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 Essex and Herts unionlearn forum Unions and Employers helping to build Working Communities  |
TUC Education European ReviewIssue 51 July 2010 Welcome to the twenty-fifth issue of the new-look European Review and the fifty first in all which is 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 upTHE GERMAN SUBSIDIARY OF THE US MULTI-NATIONAL drinks company Coca-Cola has concluded an agreement with the NGG trade union which specifies modest pay rises of up to 2.3% in 2012 in return for a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies. There will also be no further out-sourcing, including van-driving, and the company has undertaken to employ all trainees as they complete their training. However flexibility will increase with the employer able to extend weekly hours to 48. MALTA HAS BEEN PLAGUED WITH INTER-UNION rivalries in recent years and they played a part in the government's recent success in raising tariffs on water and electricity. In 2008 united action by the two main union blocs, the Organisation of Maltese Unions (OMU) and the Confederation of Malta Trade Unions (CMTU) persuaded the authorities to alter their plans. However, under pressure from the economic recession, the administration announced new increases at the end of last year. This time the divisions on the union side came to the fore. The OMU held protests and enlisted the support of the Maltese Labour Party but the CMTU refused to take part. They preferred to attend meetings with the government as part of the country's Economic Council. The government, having ignored requests to open talks outside this forum, defeated the Labour Party motion calling for withdrawal of the increases, which were approved. IN THE NETHERLANDS WAGE DEALS HAVE BEEN made in a number of industries but civil servants have signalled their intention to hold rotating strikes to protest against a 0% pay 'offer' from employers. Both union confederations, FNV and CNV, want to achieve at least a 1% increase as well as committing the employer to invest 1% of the total wage bill in training and employment opportunities. The employers regard these demands as 'irresponsible' saying that they will cost jobs. Meanwhile agreements have been reached at the Philips electronics company and in the iron and steel industry for increases of 1.75% and 1.65% respectively. Gender pay gap: EU's Women's Charter aims to spur further actionFOLLOWING THE 'ROADMAP FOR EQUALITY BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN' (see issue 37) which planned to attack gender discrimination in the workplace between 2006 and 2010, the European Commission is trying to reinvigorate the process with a 'Women's Charter' as part of its strategy for gender equality 2010-2015. Its five key actions, as set out by Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, are the promotion of equality in the labour market, cutting the gender pay gap by 2015, ensuring more women are decision-makers, eradicating violence against women and the encouragement of gender equality beyond the EU. The continued focus on the pay gap is unsurprising as it remains stubbornly high, women earning, on average, 18% less than men in 2008. Among the possible laws that the Commission will consider are measures to reveal salary figures at both company and individual level, an obligation for employers to ensure gender-neutral job descriptions and pay scales, and stiffer penalties for breaches of equal pay legislation. The EU will also seek to help both companies and workers by raising awareness of the pay gap and the reasons for it, continuing to promote labels, charters and awards for good practice and developing statistical tools for analysing the size of salary differences within firms. To this end a new web page has been introduced on the site of the Employment, Social Affairs to calculate the gender pay gap in their company and tells employees the size of the gap in the economic sector and country where they are working. 'I am deeply concerned that the gender pay gap has barely fallen over the last 15 years and in some countries it is even increasing' said Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship. She added: 'In these times of crisis, the gender pay gap is a cost Europe cannot afford'. President Barroso affirmed that the Women's Charter was an integral part of the EU's Europe 2020 strategy: 'Especially in times of crisis, we need to incorporate the gender dimension in all of our policies, for the benefit of both women and men'. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), in its contribution to the consultation on the new charter, stressed the importance of the regulation of working hours and of reversing the trend towards long and flexible working weeks that confirms traditional stereotypes as men are at work for longer while women take up part-time jobs to fit in with child care. Time off from work, such as parental leave, for working parents will only be truly helpful when there is no loss of wages involved, according to the ETUC. They say that there is evidence that the economic crisis is hitting women harder than men as cuts to public sector jobs disproportionately affect them.
Self-employed drivers' work time: union victory again nearTHE LABYRINTHINE DECISION-MAKING process of the European Parliament and its committees appears to be almost ready to deliver a victory to trade unions on the issue of working time for self-employed drivers. We have reported previously (see issues 48 and 47) as it seemed that an EU Commission proposal to exclude self-employed drivers from the working time regulations of the transport industry would be rejected. Following a meeting of the employment committee which voted down 25-24 a decision of the full parliament against the Commission, the 'rapporteur' Edit Bauer, a Slovakian conservative (EPP group), produced a new report which advocated acceptance of the Commission proposal saying 'I am firmly convinced the self-employed do not need protection from themselves'. However, after over a hundred amendments had been tabled the committee voted 30-18 to reject it. Shadow rapporteur Stephen Hughes (UK, Socialist) replied 'Fatigue kills and it does not make any difference if the driver is employed or self-employed'. A full plenary session of the parliament confirmed this decision on 17th June by 368 to 301. A trade union lobbying campaign was held responsible for the victory, having convinced enough EPP MEPs to desert their colleagues and vote against the Commission.
The Transport Commissioner, Siim Kallas, said the EU executive reserved the right to withdraw its proposal but in the meantime self-employed drivers will be added to the 2002 Road Transport directive as should have occurred in 2009 but for the Commission's intervention. Member States must enforce a limitation to 60 hours' working time per week or have infringement proceedings started against them. EU financial regulation: details hold up dealFOLLOWING THE FINANCIAL COLLAPSE IN 2008 THE 'Washington Consensus' of unregulated money markets was universally acknowledged to have reached the end of its usefulness, if it ever had any. The need for reform was further underlined as the crisis spread to the real economy and, due to the attack by the markets on national debt, to the political and social spheres. Although some regulation of these global activities was obviously needed at world level, for instance the imposition of a financial transfer tax (see our last issue), the European Union, some of whose members have been worst affected by the debt crisis, also wanted to introduce controls. Now, 21 months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sparked the acute phase of the financial crash, there are some details of the proposed reform emerging from the fog of negotiation and lobbying behind closed doors. Three new European supervisory authorities would be set up: for the securities, banking and pensions sectors while a European Economic Crisis Committee (CERS) would monitor macroeconomic trends and individual companies if necessary; it would also have the power to declare a state of emergency. A proposed European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) would have the power to prohibit complicated financial transactions such as 'short-selling' and 'credit default swaps' in an 'emergency situation'. A European Banking Authority (EBA) is envisaged to manage a fund, established by a levy on banks, to guarantee savers' deposits and to restructure failing banks. There would also be a second fund controlled by national governments. A European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) would regulate the pensions sector. Opposition to the proposed measures generally took the form of Member States (particularly the UK) objecting to a possible infringement of their sovereignty while the Council of Ministers is thought to favour national supervisors retaining the main responsibility for regulation instead of a joined-up system at EU level as put forward by the Commission and the Parliament. Other disagreements centred on the control of hedge funds, mainly based in London, and British doubts about banning particular kinds of transactions, for example 'naked short selling' where the seller does not actually possess the share or bond offered, already forbidden in Germany. On the other hand trade unions were pleased that the European Parliament adopted many of their amendments strengthening their role in the new institutions. It is hoped that the Parliament will vote for the new measures in July and that they will come into effect in 2011. European Day of Action to protest austerity cuts
Europe 2020? Let's get through 2010 first, say unions!AFTER A PROLONGED PERIOD OF CONSULTATION, COGITATION AND CO-ORDINATION the European Commission has come up with a replacement for the Lisbon process of modernisation designed to produce the 'most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world' by this year. Europe 2020 aims to be 'a vision of Europe's social market economy for the 21st century'. The emphasis is on economic growth as the creator of jobs but the Commission wants this to be smart, sustainable and inclusive. Education, innovation and the digital society must be fostered to ensure that economic expansion is knowledge-based, the use of resources must be more efficient to ensure that growth is sustainable and based on low-carbon industry, and nobody must be left behind as new jobs are created so skills must be acquired and labour market participation raised. To this end five targets are set by the strategy to be met by 2020: 75% of the working age population employed (up from an unmet 70% in the Lisbon process), 3% of GDP to be spent on research, a 20% reduction in carbon emissions with 20% of EU energy being generated from renewable sources, less than 10% of school pupils leaving early, and 40% acquiring a degree, and 20 million less people at risk of poverty. According to EU Commission President Barroso the targets are 'ambitious but attainable' and the strategy designed to 'look beyond the short term' to get Europe 'back on track'. The initial reaction of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) described the plan as 'flawed', criticising its failure to address the causes of the financial crash and to remedy the tendency for tax systems and capital markets to 'encourage speculation and short-termism at the expense of long-term commitment to the real economy'. It also beseeched Laszlo Andor, the Employment Commissioner to focus more on unemployment, particularly among young people. The social partners naturally differed in their view of the new initiative but, after meetings with President Barroso and Commissioner Andor, the ETUC and Business Europe agreed on a joint statement that stressed the need for economic growth and job creation as well as reform of the global economic system and blamed the relative failure of the Lisbon process on a lack of co-ordination at EU-level of the plans of individual Member States. While there have been improvements in the strategy since its first draft, such as the targets for poverty reduction and educational attainment requested by the European Parliament and the European Youth Forum, the sections on disabled people and women still disappoint bodies such as the European Women's Lobby and the European Disability Forum seeking more concrete targets and commitments. The ETUC, for its part, sees the current vogue for austerity packages and public spending cuts among national governments as the biggest barrier to achieving the aims of Europe 2020. Spanish harmony evaporates before ink dries on agreementAFTER THE NATIONAL FRAMEWORK AGREEMENT was recently signed by Spanish unions and employers (see our last issue) the government congratulated both parties and harmony reigned. In a few short weeks however this has disappeared as Prime Minister Zapatero announced austerity measures to head off pressure from financial markets to add to public sector job cuts already approved. Only one in ten of the vacancies caused by retiring civil servants will be filled until 2013 in aid of reducing the budget deficit by 5.7% of GDP. Reportedly under pressure from U.S. President Obama, Mr. Zapatero has loosened labour laws, allowing employers to lay off workers more easily and to pay only 25 days of salary as severance rather than 45. Public sector wages will also be reduced by 5% in a package designed to take €15 billion out of the economy. The trade union attitude has changed completely since the framework agreement: the CCOO federation criticised a lack of consultation and together with the UGT called a general strike for September 29th. This will coincide with a European Day of Action organised by the European Trade Union Confederation . Ireland: strikes boom as economy crashesFOR IRELAND 2009 WAS A YEAR OF public spending cuts, greatly increased unemployment and a nose-diving economy. This has now been underlined by recently released statistics for both wages and strikes. Average weekly earnings decreased by 0.8% from the year before reflecting a reduction in average hours worked of 2.6%. The weekly earnings of clerical, sales and service employees fell by 3% while production, transport, craft and other manual workers saw a decline of 2.8%. A decrease of 0.2% was recorded for managers, professionals and 'associated professionals'. Not surprisingly discontent with both pay and job cuts led to the re-emergence of widespread industrial action but the scale of the increase was staggering. 329,706 working days were lost to disputes in 2009, compared with 4,179 days in 2008 (a 79-fold increase). Between 2001 and 2008 the average annual figure was about 30,000 days. Although the manufacturing and transport sectors recorded greatly increased figures, the public sector accounted for 75% of the total stoppage days and 95% of the workers involved. A one-day national public sector strike in November saw 265,400 employees walk out and added up to 72% of total days lost. Traditional union activities still the key to recruitment says report
Faced with this decline unions have pursued various new initiatives to win back members. Special women's and youth sections have been set up and migrant workers, who typically work in unorganised sectors of the economy (the report quotes figures from the Danish construction industry where only 4% of migrants are union members compared to 85% of all workers), targeted. Squads of organisers have been trained to carry out recruitment campaigns and networks of contacts established for members in small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). Another approach is to offer individual incentives through benefits that unions can negotiate such as health plans, insurance and legal and tax advice. Sometimes this extends to shopping discounts and even, in Finland, to a lottery with reduced union dues as a prize. How successful have these initiatives been? Between 2000 and 2006 Belgium was the only EU Member State where both union membership and density rose. Then there are a group of countries, including Finland, Ireland and Italy, where raw membership numbers increased as the percentage of the working population in unions fell. This is often due to the expansion of employment in sectors of the economy where it is hard to organise outweighing recruitment in more traditional areas. In most countries however the decline continued in this period. Advances have been made in organising women workers. In Nordic and some eastern Member States women are now more unionised than men though this has not been reflected by more females in executive positions within unions. It is also worth noting that the resources to mount new kinds of recruitment are dependent on the traditional strengths of membership and organisation. As potential members have become more heterogeneous trade unions have adapted their techniques but the report confirms the importance of traditional methods.
New French union law does not break EU charter says court
However the Force Ouvrière (FO) confederation, which had not been party to the union/employer 'common position' challenged the legislation in the courts alleging that the 10% rule broke international law. They cited, among others, International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions on collective bargaining and worker representation and the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. After a local court had upheld FO's objections the Cour de Cassation was asked for a definitive ruling. The higher court has agreed that the right of unions to negotiate with employers is an essential part of the right to protection of their members but has also affirmed that governments can restrict this to representative organisations. The 10% rule does not weaken union reps., according to the court as it increases the ability of employees to determine who is best at defending their interests. The CFDT confederation, one of the signatories of the 'common position', agreed, saying that a major step towards 'genuine democracy' in industrial relations had been taken. The fact that workers will now effectively elect union reps directly will give them greater strength and legitimacy, they added. Recent rulings from the European CourtsEasyJet fined by French court UK-based airline EasyJet has been fined €150,000 by a French court and ordered to pay €1.4 million damages to the insurance authorities and €40,000 to trade unions. An inspection in 2006 found that 170 staff had been employed on British employment contracts since 2003. Despite appeals by both EasyJet and Ryanair the French government decree that insisted all flight crew based in the country must be covered by French employment law was upheld in 2007. EasyJet argued that flight personnel worked on UK contracts because the company is based there, and the employees' place of work is on an aeroplane, rather than in a specific country. 'Ossi' slur does not count as discrimination A Stuttgart court has ruled that there was no discrimination against an unsuccessful candidate for a job who had her application returned to her with the word 'Ossi' written on it. The term is a derogatory expression for people originally from the former East Germany. A local door and window manufacturer admitted that it had made an 'embarrassing oversight' but refused to settle the complainant's €5,000 claim stating that it employed many former East Germans. The Equal* Treatment law of 2006 forbids discrimination on the grounds of 'race or ethnic origin' as opposed to 'homeland and origin' as in Germany's constitution. Austrian employer wrong on three counts The local government of Tyrol in Austria must change rules that deprived fixed-term and casual workers of employment rights, took away accumulated holiday entitlement from employees switching from full to part-time and cancelled out leave earned in the year before the birth of a child for parents taking two years' parental leave. The European Court of Justice backed up the contention of the works council at Tyrol's hospitals that EU law had been broken. Nano inventory needed as Danes warn of 'new asbestos'A LARGE PUBLIC CONSULTATION BY the European Commission on how to deal with nanotechnology has found that most concerned parties favour an inventory of the microscopically-altered substances and the uses to which they have already been put. The online survey received over 700 replies from industry, individuals, consumer groups, research organisations and public authorities. Although perceptions varied between these groups, the need for a list of materials that include nanos was generally acknowledged, even by the trade association CEFIC. Applications of the technology in agriculture, food and household items were regarded with the greatest suspicion while its use in the fields of aerospace, construction and chemistry was seen as likely to bring the most benefit.
Meanwhile a Danish trade union has warned of a parallel between nano-particles and asbestos. The LO federation's weekly newspaper recently took stock of the state of research, prevention and safety of nanos and concluded that 'ignorance is so big in this area that there is no common scientific practice to evaluate the hazards of nanoproducts'. Despite this a study by the National Research Centre for the Working Environment (NFA) led to a ban on a window cleaning spray. Other research by the centre has found that test animals developed pleura cancer, also present in many asbestos workers. Ejner K. Holst, LO secretary and member of the NFA's management, is afraid the same mistakes would be made as asbestos wasn't banned 'until corpses were on the table'. Tough new Irish safety policy reaps rewardsA U-TURN IN HEALTH AND SAFETY enforcement policy in the Republic of Ireland has shown up in much improved figures for accidents and fatalities in the country. Statistics from the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) show that there were 43 reported deaths in 2009, the lowest number since 1989, and 6,707 non-fatal accidents, down from 8,390 in 2008. In 2005 the Irish government put an end to a US-style 'voluntary protection programme', based on self-regulation, after an increase in workplace fatalities. The new policy put more emphasis on enforcement, more inspectors were recruited and, as a result, the number of inspections climbed to 18,451 last year (much better proportionately than the UK's 23,004), a rise of 15% on 2008. HSA chief executive Martin O'Halloran said 'The main focus of our inspections is to help workplaces improve health and safety standards with the overall goal of reducing accidents. The vast majority of employers and employees want this'. Italian managers go to jail after asbestos deaths
Turkish expert says unions could stop mine disastersRESPONDING TO A THIRD EXPLOSION IN the last three months in Turkish coal mines, a union safety expert has pointed to the lack of unions in all three pits. Fikret Sazak, who works for the Maden-Is trade union, also blamed the use of sub-contractors. 'An organized worker warns his representative when he feels something is going wrong. And the union, depending on its power of organisation, can get the engineer responsible for on-the-job safety and the employer to stop the work' while 'accidents occur at places that are run by subcontractor firms' he said. The latest accident killed 28 workers in the Karadon mine in Zonguldak province, the scene of Turkey's worst mining disaster in 1992. Although all mines have safety engineers they are paid by the employer which compromises their independence, according to Mr.Sazak. Instead he proposed that they should be contracted to the government directorate that is responsible for the industry. Digital agenda plan aims to give EU internet leadAS PART OF THE EUROPE 2020 strategy seven 'flagship' initiatives are envisaged. First off the blocks is the plan for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to be called the 'Digital Agenda for Europe'. It starts from the assumption that the EU is falling behind other parts of the World in both access to and quality of the Worldwide Web as well as commercial use of it and the popularity of local content. While 15% of South Koreans and 12% of people in Japan have access to the fastest, fibre-based, internet connection, only 1% of EU citizens have it. 30% of Europeans have never used the internet. Only four of the 54 most popular web sites in the EU are of European origin. The European Commission wants to remedy this by 2013, when everybody should have basic broadband, rolling out the high-speed version, above 30 Megabits per second (Mbps) to all by 2020. It will also try to double the amount spent on research and development by 2020 to increase multilingual and culturally diverse content.
When it comes to business the Commission feels that national boundaries still play a large part in inhibiting online purchases. Only 8% of online shoppers in the EU buy across borders and 60% of attempted cross-border purchases fail due to technical or legal reasons such as the refusal of credit cards based in foreign countries. This leads to a preponderance of illegal activities such as music downloads where the legal market is four times bigger in the USA. The Commission has a number of solutions to these problems. It plans to set a deadline for the creation of a single market in online payments and to propose a new directive on copyright clearance and cross-border licensing, before the end of this year. In order to increase trust among consumers of online shopping sites, it plans to implement EU-wide e-authentication, which goes beyond passwords as a safe way of establishing your identity, to initiate 'trustmarks' for web sites and to facilitate European online dispute resolution. ECHA debuts another IT helperFollowing the launch of the 'Navigator' (see last issue), designed to find out if a substance should be submitted by a company to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the agency has now come up with CHESAR (CHEmical Safety Assessment and Reporting tool) which will help users to actually carry out a safety assessment and report, if necessary.
Eastern countries still lag west in rich listFigures recently released by Eurostat show that in 2009 most of the newer Member States, mainly in eastern Europe, are still at the bottom of the league when it comes to prosperity. The two most recent entrants, Bulgaria and Romania, are in the last two places and the eight poorest countries are all post-2004 members. Only the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Cyprus have become richer than any older Member States. At the other end of the scale Luxembourg is way ahead with a figure of 268 compared with an average of a 100 for the whole EU in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per inhabitant. However this statistic is misleading as the small size of the country means that much of its wealth is created by workers who live in neighbouring states. Perhaps surprisingly, Ireland is the second richest Member State even after its economic crash, followed by the Netherlands and Austria.
Slump in jobs slows downThe number of people employed in the EU is still falling but less rapidly than recently. Figures for the January to March period of this year show a 0.2% decrease compared to the previous quarter. Manufacturing and construction continue to haemorrhage jobs, with falls of 1.2% and 2.3% respectively, but financial and other services and agriculture were up slightly. When the statistics are counted year-on-year however a darker picture emerges with 1.5% fewer people in work than at the start of 2009.
New books from ETUITwo new publications from the European Trade Union Institute, which covers research, education and health and safety for the European Trade Union Confederation, have caught the eye of the European Review this quarter. In After the Crisis: towards a sustainable growth model editors Andrew Watt and Andreas Botsch bring together 39 authors from Europe and the USA to answer the question 'Where do we go from here?'. Based on the pre-supposition that the economic crisis has opened up a space for progressive reform the book recommends that rather than 'merely tinkering with problematic elements of the financial sector', there is a 'need for a broad-based reform agenda' to prevent 'a return to neo-liberal 'business as usual'. Contributions are divided into four sections which cover financial market re-regulation, labour market and social policy, macroeconomic policy reform and ecologically sustainable growth. Meanwhile over at the health and safety division, author Tony Musu considers the still-evolving REACH regulations on chemicals in REACH: an opportunity for trade unions. Putting knowledge to work in the workplace. While the European trade union movement was generally in favour of REACH, the booklet warns that 'Trade unions would be mistaken to ease up on their efforts in the belief that REACH implementation will now be plain sailing'. Real progress will only be made when 'union representatives take ownership of the law'. Therefore the publication aims to inform and empower reps by explaining the main points of the law, setting out employer's obligations, detailing how REACH fits in with other worker protection legislation and adds a fourth section with practical tips on how to use it for union action in workplaces.
Diary: conferences and courses5th International Conference Workingonsafety.net 7-10 September European Work Hazards Network Conference 10-12 September Poverty and social exclusion - the social question at the start of the 21st century 12-14 September EPSU Public Services Network 29 September-1 October
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AS SUCCESSIVE EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS have responded with austerity measures to the attacks by financial markets on their borrowing, trade unions have warned of the effects, both on those losing their jobs and the services they carry out, and on the future of the economy as a whole. The public sector will bear the brunt of the cuts so the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) is in the forefront of protest at these policies. Conscious of the possibility of a 'double-dip' recession Carola Fischbach-Pyttel, the EPSU General Secretary commented 'As governments swing the austerity axe they risk chopping off any green shoots of recovery, leaving workers, pensioners and communities to face the prospect of an even longer recession'. The federation, which is an umbrella for 250 unions organising a range of occupations from tax collector to nurse and librarian to prison guard, estimates that the current cuts of more than €200 billion will reduce employment by about 200,000 throughout Europe. As well as hitting the sick, elderly, poor and vulnerable and the education of children, EPSU believes that a reduction in public officials will result in companies getting away with health and safety violations and tax evasion. It is therefore supporting the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) Day of Action which will take place in Brussels on September 29th. The protest will reject austerity cuts and call for quality jobs and services, decent pay and pensions, a tax on financial transactions and the development of industry with low carbon consumption and emission to engender sustainable economic growth.
After the Crisis: towards a sustainable growth model, ISBN 978-2-87452-170-6, price €20, is available at 
REACH: an opportunity for trade unions. Putting knowledge to work in the workplace, ISBN 978-287452176-8, price €10, is available at 