The European Union & the new social order
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workplace struggles |
press release
Monday May 26, 2008 22:31 by Confederación General de Trabajo - CGT
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.
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Jump To Comment: 1It 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.