International

In the Eurozone countries which have received financial support from the European Commission and where the troika of European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are calling the shots, social rights are being massively abused. This isn’t just the opinion of the SP: the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Council of Europe have also condemned the policies responsible. Little attention is paid to this in the media, but fortunately a network of jurists has now been established which is making its voice heard: labour is not a commodity and social rights must be respected.

This week I received a note from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) calling attention to a manifesto issued by five hundred jurists in the field of social and labour law. The manifesto represents a direct attack on Europe’s destructive policies. The legal experts reject the treatment of labour as a commodity and demand respect for trade union rights, rights such as those contained in the internationally agreed Philadelphia Declaration of 1944 which was what led to the foundation of the ILO. The ILO is not a trade union body as such but represents both sides of industry as well as government, so that the Agreement has legal force in the countries which ratified it. The manifesto should provide a lead for European governments: stop the destruction of social rights and don’t make the workers pay for the results of the economic crisis.

Not many people realise that what is happening in southern Europe is an experiment with a new economic model: labour markets are being totally deregulated, national agreements on rates of pay, working conditions and conditions of service are being devalued, protection against dismissal undermined and secure jobs transformed en masse for ‘flexible’ employment.

These measures represent a frontal attack on the position of the labour movement in the Mediterranean member states, which was traditionally strong. Should it succeed in imposing this asocial model in southern Europe, the rest of Europe will follow of its own accord, at least in the view of the neoliberals. That’s why it’s more necessary than ever that the unions get together and as actively as possible combat these policies. In this they can use all the help they can get, because the mainstream media utterly ignore social protests. Only if violence breaks out on a demonstration does it get reported.

Hopefully the new network, a number of the affiliates to which are Dutch academics, will help to change this, and quickly. A Europe in which labour is treated as a commodity is not at all what we want to see.

Information and news regarding the network as well as the complete text of the manifesto