How to restore the right to strike and to bargain collectively in the face of a continuing European-wide legal assault is the central issue facing the trade union movement and it is a challenge that poses historic political issues too.
The shocking reality facing workers who assert their rights emerged at a conference called by the Institute of Employment Rights (IER) over the weekend. At the heart of the matter are a series of judgements by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The ECJ was dubbed “the new spectre haunting Europe” at the event attended by over 100 trade unionists at the Trade Union Congress headquarters.
Carolyn Jones, Keith Ewing and John Hendy of the Institute cited several key recent judgements by the court:
* The Viking case against the International Transport Workers Federation and the Finnish Seaman’s Union (December 2007)
* The Laval case in which the ECJ prevented Swedish trade unions from taking strike action to force a Latvian company to pay its workers the going Swedish rate (December 2007)
* The Rüffert case in which the court decided against the state of Lower Saxony in Germany (April 2008), ruling that a Polish contractor could not be required to observe local collective agreements.
IER president Ewing said that these cases “struck at the heart of trade union activities”. The ECJ was using European Union treaties to uphold the right of businesses to “freedom of establishment” over the right of trade unions to pursue industrial action.
In a recent court action against BA, the British Airline Pilots Association were legally stymied, even though they had voted overwhelmingly (86%) for strike action when BA’s Open Skies service threatened their pay and conditions.
The issues which sparked the Lindsey oil refineries strikes earlier this year revealed the impact of the Laval case because it allowed employers to undercut local pay and conditions agreements. These and other issues are explained in detail in the IER’s new book.
Ewing told the conference that the latest drastic legal restrictions on the capacity of a trade union to take action on behalf of its members had dragged trade union rights a century back to the period of the notorious Taff Vale dispute of 1901. Then, a court ruling against the rail workers made their union liable for losses incurred during a strike.
Both Ewing and Hendy raised the historic issues involved in the legal fetters placed on collective organisation. Today’s struggles had “echoes” of the period when the unions formed their own political party, the Labour Party, in order to change the law, they noted.
Ewing proposed that the unions should exploit the fact that the ECJ’s decisions were in breach of International Labour Organisation rules and the European Convention of Human Rights which guarantees the freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. “If they cannot persuade the government to protect our fundamental freedoms or collective agreements, then trade unions should use their political funds to pay for litigation,” he said.
But, as one dissident voice at the conference, a member of the University and College Union noted, to be surprised that the ECJ should rule in favour of employers is disingenuous. “The EU was always about free markets,” she said. New Labour’s “trade liberalisation” project has committed Britain to all international trade agreements which protect global corporations and employers against workers.
Yet since 1997 New Labour has received £100 million from the trade unions despite the fact that it has kept all the Tory anti-union laws on the statute books and further tightened the shackles.
The trade unions are at the 11th hour when it comes to breaking with New Labour and campaign for a political movement based on securing and developing fundamental democratic and social rights in a struggle against the nascent European capitalist state and the corporations it protects. Without such a perspective, the trade union movement is in serious danger of losing its way completely.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label European Court of Justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label European Court of Justice. Show all posts
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, September 08, 2008
No justice for unions
On the eve of the Trade Union Congress conference in Britain, transport union leader Bob Crow has warned of a massive erosion of workers’ rights resulting from the decisions of the European Court of Justice.
“Anti-trade union decisions by the unaccountable European Court of Justice have undermined workers' rights even further than the Thatcher anti-union laws,” Crow said. Recent rulings by the ECJ “add up to the most serious attack on union rights since the Taff Vale judgement more than a century ago. The ECJ is an unaccountable and politically driven body which aims to extend the ‘internal market’ - that's privatisation to you and me - and its rulings effectively render the right to strike meaningless”, the RMT leader said.
The union’s statement points to ECJ rulings which undermine trade union efforts to prevent employers using immigrant workers as cheap labour and split the workforce. “The ECJ has taken upon itself the right to judge the legitimacy and the proportionality of a dispute and the effect on the employer,” it says.
The RMT rightly points to the historic issues involved in the Taff Vale judgement of 1901. Its own predecessor, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, was fined £23,000 when it was held liable for losses the Taff Vale railway company sustained in a strike of rail union members. The reversal of this decision was only made possible when the trade unions elected members to Parliament in 1906 and the Trades Dispute Act was passed, granting unions immunity from prosecution. Crow says that unless the European Court rulings are rolled back, trades unionists “will be left defenceless against the EU's drive to liberalise markets and institutionalise social dumping”. He calls for “stepping up the campaign for a Trade Union Freedom Act and ensuring that any new UK Bill of Rights includes all ILO conventions, and... working with unions across Europe to demand the reversal of the ECJ's anti-union rulings”.
While Crow concentrated his fire on the unaccountable ECJ, other trade union leaders have attacked New Labour. Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, has accused up-and-coming Foreign Secretary and leadership contender David Miliband, of being “smug” and “arrogant”. And the normally pro-government Dave Prentis, head of Unison, Britain’s biggest union, has accused New Labour of pandering to big business. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber has called for higher taxation of those earning over £100,000 saying that extreme wealth was "socially divisive and morally objectionable". His statement accompanies a new TUC study Do the super rich matter? which compares the fortunes of Britain's wealthiest people with the largest estates left in wills in each decade since the 1850s. The wealthiest few in the UK now own as much, if not more, than their equivalents did at the end of the nineteenth century. The TUC points to how “this surge in wealth at the top has overturned the advances made in a century that saw the gap between rich and poor narrow as a result of progressive taxation, the growth of trade unions and regulation”.
The TUC’s report says that the super-rich have acted like Robin Hood in reverse – taking an ever larger share of the cake. But its leaders never point to the fact that the very essence of New Labour has been its shamelss embrace of corporate interests . It has championed the the very same billionaires who are now riding high on the hog in the City of London. And now, paralysed by the economic crisis, it is on the brink of handing over power to Cameron’s Conservatives.
The stark fact is that no parliament in its present form can or will legislate sorely needed basic rights or a fundamental change in the economy to shift wealth away from corporate interests. To ensure basic rights for ordinary working people requires a different type of parliament altogether. To achieve this means deconstructing today’s empty “democracy” and preparing political and economic alternatives – the aim of Stand Up for Your Rights Festival on October 18.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
“Anti-trade union decisions by the unaccountable European Court of Justice have undermined workers' rights even further than the Thatcher anti-union laws,” Crow said. Recent rulings by the ECJ “add up to the most serious attack on union rights since the Taff Vale judgement more than a century ago. The ECJ is an unaccountable and politically driven body which aims to extend the ‘internal market’ - that's privatisation to you and me - and its rulings effectively render the right to strike meaningless”, the RMT leader said.
The union’s statement points to ECJ rulings which undermine trade union efforts to prevent employers using immigrant workers as cheap labour and split the workforce. “The ECJ has taken upon itself the right to judge the legitimacy and the proportionality of a dispute and the effect on the employer,” it says.
The RMT rightly points to the historic issues involved in the Taff Vale judgement of 1901. Its own predecessor, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, was fined £23,000 when it was held liable for losses the Taff Vale railway company sustained in a strike of rail union members. The reversal of this decision was only made possible when the trade unions elected members to Parliament in 1906 and the Trades Dispute Act was passed, granting unions immunity from prosecution. Crow says that unless the European Court rulings are rolled back, trades unionists “will be left defenceless against the EU's drive to liberalise markets and institutionalise social dumping”. He calls for “stepping up the campaign for a Trade Union Freedom Act and ensuring that any new UK Bill of Rights includes all ILO conventions, and... working with unions across Europe to demand the reversal of the ECJ's anti-union rulings”.
While Crow concentrated his fire on the unaccountable ECJ, other trade union leaders have attacked New Labour. Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, has accused up-and-coming Foreign Secretary and leadership contender David Miliband, of being “smug” and “arrogant”. And the normally pro-government Dave Prentis, head of Unison, Britain’s biggest union, has accused New Labour of pandering to big business. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber has called for higher taxation of those earning over £100,000 saying that extreme wealth was "socially divisive and morally objectionable". His statement accompanies a new TUC study Do the super rich matter? which compares the fortunes of Britain's wealthiest people with the largest estates left in wills in each decade since the 1850s. The wealthiest few in the UK now own as much, if not more, than their equivalents did at the end of the nineteenth century. The TUC points to how “this surge in wealth at the top has overturned the advances made in a century that saw the gap between rich and poor narrow as a result of progressive taxation, the growth of trade unions and regulation”.
The TUC’s report says that the super-rich have acted like Robin Hood in reverse – taking an ever larger share of the cake. But its leaders never point to the fact that the very essence of New Labour has been its shamelss embrace of corporate interests . It has championed the the very same billionaires who are now riding high on the hog in the City of London. And now, paralysed by the economic crisis, it is on the brink of handing over power to Cameron’s Conservatives.
The stark fact is that no parliament in its present form can or will legislate sorely needed basic rights or a fundamental change in the economy to shift wealth away from corporate interests. To ensure basic rights for ordinary working people requires a different type of parliament altogether. To achieve this means deconstructing today’s empty “democracy” and preparing political and economic alternatives – the aim of Stand Up for Your Rights Festival on October 18.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
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