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The European Union & the new social order

category international | workplace struggles | press release author Monday May 26, 2008 22:31author by Confederación General de Trabajo - CGT Report this post to the editors

The Lisbon Treaty and the agreement on flexicurity between the ETUC and European employers

On 18 October 2007, the European Council met in Lisbon and adopted the new Treaty of the Union, a mini-Treaty of what was once the European Constitution Project and a reform of the current EU Treaty drawn up in Nice 2000. At the same time, the president of the European Commissionsion and the President of the Council at the time, announced the signing of a principle of agreement on flexicurity in the EU, between the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and European employers.


The Treaty of the European Union (Lisbon Treaty) and the agreement on flexicurity between the ETUC and European employers

On 18 October 2007, the European (1) Council met in Lisbon and adopted the new Treaty of the Union, a mini-Treaty of what was once the European Constitution Project and a reform of the current EU Treaty drawn up in Nice 2000. At the same time, the president of the European Commissionsion (Durao Barroso) and the President of the Council at the time (Sócrates, Prime Minister of Portugal), announced the signing of a principle of agreement on flexicurity (2)2 in the EU, between the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and European employers.

Both agreements (EU Treaty, which was to be called the Lisbon Treaty), and flexicurity seek to find solutions (political) for the EU’s real situation on the globalisation and competitiveness scenarios in this world social order.

The new Treaty of the Union is a reform of the treaty that is currently in force and is even more antidemocratic in its preparation than the European Constitution Project, which was at least discussed and accepted or rejected by the citizens of certain countries through referendum.

The EU, its heads of state and its Commission have understood that including (albeit in a very limited and controlled way) citizens involves the risk of their understanding that the social order under constitution has nothing to do with social relations based on the respect for the rights of everyone living or working in the space called the EU.

The new Treaty deals with the deregulation of all the production and services markets in greater detail and enables the practical application of the Bolkestein Directive, holding open "the door to the complete privatesation of health, education, water and pensions".

This treaty closes the business strategies laid down in Lisbon 2000, which were based on competitiveness in an increasingly global world and confirmed by the unions of the ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation) in the joint work programme 2006-2008.

The strategies do away with public services on both a rhetorical and real scale (health, pensions, railways, education, water, housing, etc.) and introduce the middle market in both their conception ("services of general interest") and resolution (the person who saves will have private health and a complementary pension, etc.).

As with tax policies, the social policies, public spending on social cover and benefits (pensions, health, dependence, education, housing, public transport and mobility models) "are still vetoed, making the corresponding Community policy impossible, at the same time as they allow tax havens within the Union itself" (R.F. Durán 2007).

If free competition (competitiveness) is the governing principle, the employment markets and policies can be governed only by the rule of labour deregulation (flexibilisation) and the comprehensive precariousness of the workforce (removal of social and labour rights).

This is the reason for the relaunch of the Lisbon Strategy, agreed and signed in the Joint Work Programme 2006-2008:

"JOINT WORK PROGRAMME 2006-2008: OBJECTIVES AND INITIATIVES

OBJECTIVES

* The organisations CES, UNICE/UEAPME, CEEP and EUROCADRES/CEC reiterate their support for the Lisbon strategy. * They wish to contribute to and promote growth, employment and the modernisation of the European social model, undertaking to perform a joint analysis of the key challenges facing European employment markets. * The new work programme is also a means for strengthening the independence of social players.

SUBJECTS

* Microeconomic and employment market policies. * Demographic change, active ageing, integration of youth, mobility and migrations. * Permanent learning, competitiveness, innovation and integration of underprivileged groups into the employment market. * Balance between flexibility and security. * Undeclared work.

INSTRUMENTS AND COMMITMENTS

* Joint recommendations to European and national institutions. * Define the priorities to be included in a framework of actions on employment by the social players. * Negotiate an autonomous framework agreement on the labour integration of underprivileged groups and permanent learning. * Negotiate a voluntary framework agreement on harassment and violence in 2006. * Develop and assess guidelines for managing the change and its social consequences, together with conclusions on European business committees. * Report on the application of agreements on teleworking, stress and the framework of actions on gender equality. Develop a common understanding of these instruments and how they can have a positive effect on the various levels of social dialogue."

The European Commission acquires "absolute power" through the appropriate internal policies (fundamentally, directives) to guarantee "competitive European enterprises access to the world markets and secure operation on them". Furthermore, its Court of Justice (ECJ) guarantees market freedom (as the only freedom) and the defence of free competition as a condition for the labour, social and environmental precarisation of the populations of the 27 member states.

The homogenisation of labour relations, i.e. the protective workers statute itself, is not a mandatory condition for harmonisation, but rather the opposite. It makes use of social dumping and denies the right to strike (3), requiring the same labour conditions for the relocation of enterprise, all in the name of a highly competitive social market economy.

The Community immigration policies respond to the logic of the market and double morality: on the one hand, the need for extra-Community labour owing to a Europe that is "growing old" (labour that is necessary and sufficient for guaranteeing the type of precarious work required by competitiveness); and, on the other, policies that deny the rights to citizenship which, on a basis of repression and control, uphold the unequal, unfair and neo-colonial relations between North and South and, above all, the euro-Mediterranean area of influence. The new Lisbon Treaty is to come into effect on 1 January 2009 and it was ratified by the European Council in Lisbon on 13 December 2007.

Except perhaps Ireland, the member states of the EU (27) have no obligation to hold referendums on this treaty and it will be ratified by each state’s national parliament.

THE SPECIFIC POLICIES ON COMPETITIVENESS AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE GREEN PAPER (FLEXICURITY) AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE REFORMS ON DISMISSAL IN THE EU

The concept of flexicurity, as laid down in the EU's Green Paper titled "Modernising labour law to meet the challenges of the 21st century", is based on specific national experiences such as the Dutch and Danish models and the term covers issues that range from the flexibility of employment conditions and protection from dismissal to protection for finding relatively high levels of unemployment subsidy during the period between losing one job and finding another.

A concept in which business flexibility in labour management involves absolute freedom for organising work and which, at the same time, is apparently aimed at security for workers, who need a guarantee of adaptability in the constant changes from one job to another and during periods of continuous training.

Since the Council of the EU held in Lisbon in the year 2000, the European employment strategy has laid down a framework that focuses strictly on the action of the EU's member states in the necessary regulation of employment.

The 21st century consecrates flexibility as an objective need owing to international competition and technological change. During the second half of the year 2005, the European Commission relaunched the Lisbon strategy based on three pillars (the economy, society and the environment) and a number of "guidelines" were created for the economic and employment policies of the Union's member states.

Each member state had to send Brussels its national reform programmes (NRP), in accordance with the priorities of the guidelines that were given and, with regard to Spain and, in particular, employment, the EU considered that the monitoring of the degree of fulfilment of the Lisbon strategy by Spain and other member states of the EU-15, such as Portugal, Italy, France and Germany, was insufficient and more drastic reforms were necessary in two areas: employment and pensions.

Competitiveness includes not only social dumping, i.e. the privatisation of services that are essential for the population, but also and at the same time, it forces the reduction of employment costs through or by means of policies that increase the flexibility, mobility of the workforce and the capacity for adjustment (these are guidelines taken from the EU Council's recommendation in July 2005 and clearly adopted in the Joint Work Programme 2006- 2008, agreed by and between the ETUC and European employers).

The law is that of flexibility, which, in its "European" version, within the strategic framework of the EU, is renamed "flexicurity". Flexicurity plays the fundamental role of starting up and coordinating simultaneous labour relations in the various member states of the EU (4).

Flexibility requires the availability of labour in accordance with production requirements. Accordingly, the job markets are mere mechanisms which, in both the way they behave, i.e. act, and the way they operate, are governed by regulations (laws, decrees, special courts, directives, etc.) and institutions.

COORDINATION, CO-OPERATION AND OUR STRATEGIES REGARDING THESE POLICIES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

Within these labour and social frameworks, traditional trade unionism and, in particular, the "permanent social pact" trade unionism represented by ETUC has been put in check and its union action is either cancelled or rendered inefficient due to the fact that its assignment, based on the employee's stability within a specific organisation (the enterprise), has been shattered into a thousand pieces, together with the effectiveness of trade union practice.

Working on a social and trade union level in this complex, wide-ranging and diffuse movement in which we are today trapped by exploitation is not a task for traditional trade unionism. Accordingly, we take up a stance that opposes the logic of the segmentation and flexibilisation of the social and productive models of global capitalism and we consider that the starting (and finishing) line must be the rights of all men and women (not only labour rights, but also social and civil rights).

The social character consists of removing the economic, political and civil obstacles that are limiting freedom and equality in practice, as well as their effective participation in the organisation of the social order. Direct participation is possible only on the basis of mutual support and solidarity.

Their competitiveness is to be found in the antipodes of our SOLIDARITY.

From the Alternative Euro-Maghreb Coordinating Committee and from any alternative coherent trade union model that upholds the rights and interests of employees and considers that society should be organised on the basis of solidarity and not competition; from respect, freedom and equality and not from authoritarianism, individualism and the absence of democracy; from these values and these attitudes, only one response is possible: SOCIAL MOBILISATION.

CGT- Confederación General de Trabajo - Spain

http://www.cgt.org.es
http://www.royoynegro.info


Notes:

1. Council comprising all the presidents of each of the 27 states, plus their vice-presidents, foreign affairs ministers, etc.

2. The term is used in the so-called policies on competitiveness, laid down in the Lisbon strategy (2000) and adapted and modified in the "Joint Work Programme 2006-2008: Objectives and Initiatives", signed by the ETUC and European employers.

3. Sentences of 11 and 18 December 2007, the Viking case (denial of the right to strike) and the Laval Case (support for social dumping), respectively.

4. Since 2005, Germany, France and Italy, as strong countries in the areas of social security and "strict" labour rights, have reformed their job markets in the same areas as Spain: unemployment benefits, less protection from dismissal, increase in the retirement age, contract flexibility, etc.

Related Link: http://www.cgt.org.es
author by Barry Daviespublication date Tue May 27, 2008 20:31author email barry.davies2 at ntlworld dot comauthor address author phone Report this post to the editors

It seems that pro constitutional europhiles still believe that they can fool the public by claiming that the Lisbon treaty is a mini treaty or a scaled down version of the democratically rejected constitution, it isn't. The Lisbon treaty is a re written constitution making it it difficult to understand, but as 26 national leaders, and Giscard d'estaing who wrote the original constitution have admitted it is the constitution, only Gordon Brown sticks to the lie that it anything other than this, because he knows that the people of Britain would vote against it, and he has a manifesto promise to hold a referendum on the constitution.

This vile piece of legislation has nothing to do with increasing democracy, it does the opposite, by handing even more competencies, that's european for power to the unelected commission, not since nazi europe has the region become so unstable due to political gerrymandering as it is now, there is no doubt that in the near future we will be seeing reports of terrorist bombs in brussels and strasbourg, as countries national citizens start to fight back against the political elite.

 
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