democracy | ukwatch.net

A dead end for the EU?

eddie — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:19:22 +0000

Since the 1980s the main strategy adopted by the leaders of the European Union has been to pursue market-based economic integration to the increasing exclusion of other, political or social, initiatives. The hope has been that the emergence of a powerful integrated economy would provide a foundation for eventual steps towards greater political unity.

At first this strategy seemed to enjoy considerable success – reforms aimed at consolidating Europe-wide markets and at reinforcing competition did give an important impetus to institutional development, especially with the successful introduction of the euro and the European Central Bank. Meanwhile, the collapse of the Soviet bloc permitted an eastward expansion of the EU, which has helped bring its membership from 12 states at the time of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 up to 27 today. There are signs, however, that the drive for market-based integration is losing momentum. In particular, the Lisbon strategy, which set ambitious targets for economic growth through market-oriented reforms, is now widely seen as a failure. And the EU’s consistent sacrifice of social objectives to the overriding priority of market-led economic integration has tended to deprive it of popular support and political legitimacy. The rejection of the Reform Treaty in the Irish Referendum, which blocks institutional change in the EU, is the latest evidence of this.

It is argued here that it will be very difficult for the EU to change direction and to start to correct the democratic and social imbalances of its structures and policies. But such a correction is nevertheless indispensable, because if these imbalances are not corrected the whole integration project will become increasingly fragile and increasingly exposed to populist challenges.

The four freedoms

Many commentators have identified the key imbalances in the EU. Sometimes they have referred to ‘negative’ integration (the removal of barriers to market exchange) running ahead of ‘positive’ integration (common policies and institutional construction). The terminology used by Fritz Scharpf is more exact: he speaks of ‘market creation’ running ahead of ‘market correction’, because he recognises that many active, ‘positive’, measures are indeed necessary to integrate markets.[1] The point is that there seems to be little concern, at EU level, to prevent or compensate for the adverse social consequences of market processes.

Essentially the same point is often made in terms of a ‘social deficit’ in the EU. In the sphere of economics and market competition, hard and fast rules are laid down; clear legal entitlements and obligations are established; member state interventions are decisively constrained. In the social sphere, however, there are declarations of principle, and the non-binding ‘guidelines’ which emerge from the ‘open method of coordination’, but few effective initiatives. The imbalance is structural and guaranteed by the EU’s budget, which is so small as to rule out any effective redistributive measures.

To many observers, the frequently mentioned ‘democratic deficit’ is closely related to the same imbalances. The way decisions are made in the EU strengthens executive power as against the power of legislatures. This is because the Commission, the EU’s executive, controls the policy agenda; and the Council of Ministers, the key decision-making body, represents member state governments. The European Parliament, although it has been more ready recently to challenge the Council and the Commission, cannot counterbalance their power. It has legitimacy problems of its own because most voters choose candidates in terms of national, not European, politics and because turnout in European elections is now very low, having fallen continuously from 63 per cent in the first European elections in 1979 to 46 per cent in 2004. In the absence of effective Europe-wide political parties and social movements, business lobbies have even more influence on EU-level decisions than on those taken by member states.

The clearest and most convincing explanation for these imbalances and ‘deficits’ is that put forward by Phillipe Schmitter.[2] The main features of the EU as it actually exists, although they do not inspire any strong allegiance from European citizens, are in fact tremendously advantageous to corporations active in Europe. As the basis for market integration the EU confers four rights, the ‘four freedoms’, on all economic agents: rights to move goods, services, capital and labour anywhere in its territory, without obstacles at the frontiers between member states and without hindrance from member state authorities.

These are justiciable rights, which will be upheld not only by the EU’s Court of Justice but by national courts as well, so that if a corporation is prevented from exercising its economic rights it can usually obtain a remedy from the courts in its home country, even against its own overnment. At the same time, a central responsibility of the Commission, as the EU’s executive, is to safeguard the integrity of the markets based on these four freedoms, and to propose legislation to remove any remaining obstacles to free exchange and any new barriers which may emerge. These policies and legislation on the internal market are completely within the competence of the EU; decisions are by majority voting in Council and Parliament; member states cannot veto these decisions.

Of course it is normally corporations rather than individuals which exercise these freedoms; essentially they guarantee that corporations are free to do business throughout the territory of the Union. One way to understand the ‘four freedoms’ is to refer to Marx’s account of the capitalist process. This begins with money in the form of capital, which is then exchanged for the goods or commodities that constitute the means of production, and for labour power; the production process then follows, in which labour services are performed, giving rise to the outputs which constitute the commodity product; finally, the sale of these outputs restores the original money capital, now augmented by profit. The four freedoms mean that no barriers to any phase of this process can be erected by any member state or at any national frontier.

After nearly sixty years of increasing economic interdependence, the commercial, industrial and financial interests linked to market integration are immense. These interests are by no means all opposed to those of ordinary citizens; on the contrary, they usually serve the interests of citizens as consumers and employees. But it is crucial to note that the four freedoms are in practice exercised by corporations, and generally by the larger corporations, which are most likely to be active in more than one member state. This means that corporate Europe is deeply committed to the EU and to its continuation in its present form.

Social Europe

The positive assertion of economic rights is indispensable to the Europe of the corporations. But the absence of positive social rights and of integrated regulations and interventions, together with the absence of a unified tax structure, is almost as crucial. Most of these issues remain firmly within the competence of the member states: each of them is free to determine its own social policies, to finance them with its own taxes, and to regulate business activity in order to protect consumers, workers and the environment (although economic interventions at national level tend to be either inhibited or prohibited by the competition rules of the EU).

This state of affairs establishes regime competition among the member states and makes possible regime shopping by the corporations. And it should be noted here that the EU is, at least for corporations, an open economic space: US, Japanese and indeed virtually all corporations in the world are free to establish themselves in any member state and then to conduct business on the same basis as European corporations. Thus the regime competition associated with the EU is global in character – member state governments strive to attract investment and employment onto their own territories by cutting corporate taxation, deregulating business activities and making labour markets and employment law as ‘flexible’ as possible. This process does not always become a ‘race to the bottom’ – there is usually significant resistance within the member states – but it limits redistributive policies and impairs the social control of business activity.

It was not always thus. In the early years of the European project some powerful employers, particularly in Germany, sought to tighten regulatory standards and improve working conditions in other member states. They were concerned to avoid ‘social dumping’, competition from other member states based on lower employment standards or looser regulation. Today, the larger German corporations take a different view – they are much more likely to use their increasing presence in other countries to press for lower standards in Germany rather than the other way round. A dramatic example last year was a demand by Siemens for a longer work week from its German employees, without any increase in weekly wages, under the threat of a move to Hungary. Today the trade unions still sometimes contest social dumping but the theme is no longer of interest to employers.

The suggestion here, that the absence of any real social Europe is essential to the way the EU functions, contradicts the rhetoric of EU leaders, which makes much of the ‘European Social Model’ and continues to insist that there are profound differences between European and US varieties of capitalism.

There has indeed been a ‘social dimension’ to European integration from the very start in the 1950s. But the social content of integration has been considerably attenuated over the years since the Maastricht Treaty. The refusal of the largest and richest member states to expand the EU budget is one reason for this: although the accession of new member states formerly in the Soviet bloc has greatly widened the disparities in income within the EU, there are no significant resources available for redistribution. In the early 1950s the European Social Fund had the realistic aim of compensating those who lost out from the integration of coal and steel industries: in the event, mostly Belgian miners, who received reasonable pensions and severance payments. Today the Fund is little more than symbolic.

The notion of a ‘European Social Model’ is an abstraction from the specific social models of individual (Western European) countries. There are indeed some family resemblances among these models, but they are also very different, and the EU has little influence over them, since most aspects of social policy remain very firmly in the hands of the member states. This situation is in part a response to the success of the EU in the economic sphere; the member states have given up most of their responsibility for economic policy – the competition rules and the four freedoms prevent most interventions to strengthen their economies; and, for those that use the euro, monetary policy is centralised in the ECB and there are tight limits on taxation and public spending. This makes member states guard their control over social policies very jealously. In an economic emergency these are the only instruments available to them.

In recent years the EU has sought to influence, without controlling, these member state social policies through the ‘open method of coordination’ – a series of discussions among policy communities resulting in non-binding recommendations to governments. This does not seem to have had much effect on policy practice, but it is interesting that one theme pushed by the Commission in such debates is the ‘modernisation of the European Social Model’. This is code for the partial privatisation of pension systems, which has for some time been a priority of the Commission, as of the OECD and other international bodies.

In fact the national character of Europe’s social models calls into question the Commission’s claim that the social situation in the EU is preferable to that in the US. It is certainly true that there is much less inequality in the EU than in the US, if we make the comparison with the US one country at a time. But if we take the EU as a whole the reverse is the case: the US is much more egalitarian than the EU: although there are sharp regional disparities in the US, there is nothing that begins to compare with the gap between, say, Lithuania and the Netherlands, or between Slovakia and Denmark. The US has limited but effective mechanisms for regional redistribution in the working of the Federal income tax and the social security system; there is nothing comparable in the EU. While most Europeans take their own country as their frame of reference, it is logical to make comparisons between the US and individual countries; but if one ceased to do so and started to take a Europe-wide view, then the EU would be seen to be marked by extreme inequalities. Thus the claims made for ‘Social Europe’ depend on the non-existence of a European society.[3]

‘Flexicurity’ and the retreat from labour market regulation

The account of the EU given here so far is of a simple dichotomy: the economy and the rules of the market are controlled by the Union; social policy by the member states. The sphere of employment regulation and labour market policies is an intermediate zone – member states defi ne their own positions, but subject to some general standards promulgated through EU directives, and to non-binding recommendations. This probably corresponds to the market logic of the integration project: if member states had a completely free hand they might use labour market policies to interfere with the working of competition; on the other hand, a centralised labour market policy at EU level would be very unwelcome to the big employers, who much prefer regime competition.

In any case, an important body of EU labour law has gradually emerged, and, although stronger measures might be desirable, it has worked to strengthen employee rights and to sustain working conditions in member states where national employment law is weak. The main fields concerned are health and safety, gender equality and the rights of workers on ‘atypical contracts’ – such as agency workers, part-time workers or those on fixed-term contracts.

However, the Commission seems recently to have changed its position on labour market regulation.[4] Several recent initiatives indicate that, under pressure from the employers, it is now seeking to dilute existing employment regulations and to intensify cross-border competition in labour markets. Examples of this shift include proposals to weaken the working time directive and the posted workers directive (which accords workers temporarily sent by their employer to another member state at least some of the employment rights which have been established in that state); and there has also been an attempt – so far blocked by the European Parliament – to deregulate employment conditions in enterprises providing services in other member states (this was one aspect of the Bolkestein draft directive which was strongly resisted by trade unions).

This general change in position is confirmed by recent policy documents from the Commission, on the ‘modernisation’ of labour law and on ‘flexicurity’. This last term denotes in principle a supposed reconciliation of ‘flexible’ labour markets and economic security for employees, but its main practical implication seems to be a drive to weaken standard labour contracts, in place of previous attempts to strengthen the protection of employees with non-standard, ‘atypical’ contracts.

Thus in employment regulation – one of the few spheres where a genuine European level social policy might be said to exist – the current trend is to reduce standards and to intensify competition among workers.

The Lisbon agenda

The priority given to economic objectives by EU leaders, however, is very far from achieving the dynamic economic results which they promised. Although the Lisbon Agenda – which was meant to guide the EU through the first decade of the new century – took as its slogan ‘the knowledge-based economy’, it was essentially a business oriented programme, heavily influenced by the dot.com boom in the US, which was at its height at the time. A generally deregulatory approach could, it was believed, permit Europe to match or surpass American performance in business start-ups and productivity. The absurd objective was to make the EU ‘the easiest and cheapest place to do business in the world’.

The Lisbon Agenda did make a nod towards the ‘European Social Model’, but social policy was clearly subordinated to market-led integration; the contributions of social policy would be to promote skills and increase employment. A central thrust of the strategy was to build integrated financial markets in Europe, which would resemble their US models as closely as possible. Financial integration was not in itself an irrational goal, but the uncritical enthusiasm with which it was pursued threatened to replicate the worst features of the US financial system without significantly accelerating European economic development. (The recent preoccupation of the branch of the Commission responsible for the internal market has been to argue for an integrated EU mortgage market – again along US lines; this policy at least seems unlikely to survive the current fi nancial turmoil, which is rooted in US mortgages.)

Very soon it became clear that there was no chance of achieving the ambitious targets of the Lisbon agenda for output and employment growth.[5] On the one hand the conservative macroeconomic stance of the European Central Bank, and of several member state governments, especially that of Germany, did not permit the kind of expansion which was envisaged. On the other, the collapse of the dot.com bubble made it clear that the immediate potential of the new technologies to accelerate economic development had been greatly exaggerated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Thus the priority given to corporate interests in the EU by no means ensures rapid development even in the private sector: the public investments and interventions needed to reduce uncertainties, lower external costs and ensure sustainability are neglected in its key strategy. And in their absence, its largest economies have been close to stagnation for over ten years.

Treaties, constitutional and otherwise

The failure of the EU to secure the relatively minor changes to its rules and functioning which were included in the draft Constitutional Treaty illustrate its continuing loss of legitimacy. The two electorates who rejected the treaty in referendums were those of France and the Netherlands, countries which participated in European construction from the start, and where there was in general considerable support for it. Objections to the Treaty were of two types, although they often overlapped.

Firstly, there were political concerns about the lack of democracy in EU structures, both as regards the balance between EU powers and those at member state level, and regarding the preponderance of the executive in EU decision making. (There are sharp differences, however, among those with such objections: for some, often but by no means only on the right, the necessary response is to decentralise power to the member states; others believe that a larger measure of centralised power would be acceptable on the condition that it be exercised in a more democratic way.)

The second main objection – by those most concerned with the subordination of social needs to economic objectives, usually on the left – was that the Treaty gave constitutional status to the present economic rules of the EU – that is, to the four freedoms, as well as to the extremely narrow and restrictive macroeconomic regime centred on the European Central Bank. Repeatedly the Treaty called for ‘free and undistorted competition’ – limiting the scope for interventionist economic policies at both EU and national level. It gave only the most minimal and grudging recognition of the need to exempt public services from the rule of market forces, and required, wherever possible, open competition to provide such services, as well as stating that EU interests must not be seriously affected by public service provision. It eliminated long-standing safeguard clauses that have allowed member states to control capital flows in emergency situations.

When ratifi cation of the Constitutional Treaty was blocked by the Dutch and French referendums, the EU faced technical diffi culties, in that it had included certain changes to its procedures that were necessary to deal with the big increase in the number of member states. Some minimal, essentially uncontroversial, revisions to the existing Treaties would always have been necessary to deal with this issue, and with the need to organise common actions on emerging issues such as global warming.

But the ‘Reform Treaty’ that is proposed as a replacement (sometimes known as the Lisbon Treaty) goes far beyond such revisions. Its takes a different form from the Constitutional Treaty, in that it amends rather than replaces previous EU Treaties.[6] But the content of the two Treaties is – in the view of those who drafted them – virtually identical. The hope was that, by presenting things in this way and by giving up the expression ‘constitution’ (as well as by dropping reference to a few symbols such as the twelve-star flag and the Ode to Joy), the Treaty could be presented as a relatively minor change, hardly needing to be endorsed by referendum. In many member states (including the UK) this seems to have been the outcome, but this tactic failed when the Irish referendum rejected the Treaty.

This situation reflects the political problems of the EU in two ways: firstly in the dogmatic refusal to alter the substantive policies of the Union in the face of both policy failure and popular discontent; secondly in the attempt to evade that discontent by procedural methods which narrow and restrict public debate.

Strength and fragility of the EU

An early head of the European Commission, Walter Hallstein, remarked that the European Union (or at that stage, Economic Community) was a creature of law. He spoke truer than he knew, for in the 1950s European law was only certain to prevail when all six of the then member states were agreed that it should do so. Thus the law would be enforced against corporations or individuals, but when states had serious differences these were nearly always resolved by political negotiations rather than by litigation.

This situation changed only slowly up to the 1980s. But then member states became increasingly sceptical about economic interventions at national level, and increasingly willing to accept market outcomes. This meant that they were ready to accept a much more legalistic version of European construction, in which the competition rules of the EU nearly always prevailed, even when this required changes in member state policies. This strengthening of EU law, which relates above all to the four freedoms, is, as pointed out above, very much in the interests of the large corporations, since it means that they can buy, sell, produce and invest wherever in the EU they choose to do so; and that if any member state government tries to prevent them they will have an effective remedy not just in the EU Court of Justice, but usually in the national courts, including those of the member state concerned.[7]

This situation is the basis of the strong support given to the EU by corporate Europe; and the wealth and influence of the corporations in turn strengthen the EU. The same interests, however, tend to discourage any strong initiatives beyond competition and market integration, since centralised policies on taxation, employment conditions or social provision would be very unwelcome to the corporations. It is not suggested here that there is a complete opposition between the interests of the corporations and those of the citizens; but the interests of citizens, both collective and individual, are often much wider than those of the big enterprises. Yet the way the EU is presently organised, and the way it functions, work against these wider interests and prevent their effective expression.

This dominance of corporate interests and of the competition rules which underpin them, is, however, extremely fragile. There are now twenty-seven member states, and only consistent good behaviour by every branch of government in each of them preserves the smooth working of the EU. If one member state court refused to enforce EU law, if one member state parliament refused to write an EU directive into national law, or if one government defied the EU rules in a determined way, the Union would be faced with a political crisis. Obviously some such challenges could be overcome by putting pressure on the country concerned, but this would be more difficult if the issue mobilised public opinion against the EU, if the country concerned was a large one, or if more than one country was involved. And the working of EU rules, both as regards open markets and competition and as regards interest rates and often tight constraints on public spending, is often so harsh as to make this kind of revolt always possible, and in the long run probably unavoidable.

Indeed there are already cases where EU law has reached its limits and solutions have had to be sought in political compromise. Germany, for example, repeatedly violated the expenditure limits of the Stability Pact. In legal principle the Commission could have imposed a fine on the German government; in political practice this was and is inconceivable. Again, Sweden refuses to adopt the euro although, unlike Denmark, it does not have a legal opt-out permitting it to do so. But it is impossible to enforce Sweden’s Treaty obligations in this case because it is clear that the Swedes would throw out any government that proposed to take them into the monetary union. Here again the model of integration by law reaches a political limit.

It would be desirable if opposition to the present direction of European construction and the assertion of different priorities, were to take a rational and unified form – if social movements, progressive governments and European electors successfully contested the actual integration model and imposed a wider and more balanced one. In practice, however, effective challenges to the EU seem likely to take the more negative form of national revolts, with a populist character, involving right-wing as well as left-wing political forces. These revolts might be in many respects highly dysfunctional, but they would still be a consequence of the persistent imbalances in European construction, and of the persistent refusal of EU leaderships to make a necessary change in course.

It still seems possible, however, that a change in course can come about in a more constructive way than through a series of revolts in particular member states; that leaderships will respond to the drastic loss of legitimacy signalled by falling turnouts in European elections and repeated defeats in national referendums. But in any case the present path of the EU – reinforcing inequalities, rendering employment ever more precarious and undermining the provision of public goods and social services – is eroding the political basis for European integration, and seems only to lead to a dead end.

Notes

1. Governing in Europe. Effective and Democratic?, Oxford University Press 1999.

2. Philippe C. Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union and Why Bother Lanham 2000.

3. See for example the Commission’s own annual report, The Social Situation in the European Union.

4. Commission of the European Communities, Green Paper: Modernising Labour Law to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century, COM (2006) 708 final.

5. In spite of this virtually complete failure, the Commission, in its usual Brezhnevite way, reaffi rms the essence of the strategy. See Working Together for growth and Jobs – next steps in implementing the revised Lisbon strategy, SEC 2005.

6. For this reason it is somewhat harder to study, since the Reform Treaty merely lists amendments, and one has to compare the existing and amended articles to see what is meant. The consolidated text of the
EU Treaties as amended can be found at http://collections.europarchive.org/tna/20080205132101/www.fco.gov.uk/Fi….

7. For the role of law in European integration, see the writings of J.J. Weiler, especially The Constitution of Europe – do the New Clothes have an Emperor? Cambridge University Press 1998.

Participation nation

tim — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:13:40 +0000

Democracy, by Paul Ginsborg (Profile Books)

Paul Ginsborg’s prescriptions for the renewal of democracy are impressive, but disappointing in shirking some of the underlying factors behind the disaffection that plagues modern politics. There are two strands to Ginsborg’s analysis: he draws on case studies of participatory democracy that try to involve people in the decision making process, whilst embodying these in the context of the ideas of Marx and Mill.

Participatory democracy is given the heaviest emphasis: a transparent voting system and the fair election of politicians and representatives, elections being the only moment in the voting process when individuals are formally equal. At other times, there must be meetings of people to assess public opinion and translate it into workable measures: otherwise, the vote itself is meaningless. As the book develops, Ginsborg analyses how these participatory schemes might be applied in the workplace and other areas of public life, and he maintains a careful distinction between economic and political democracy while exploring how they might be fruitfully combined.

Marx and Mill provide more than an overview to the analysis, as Ginsborg considers how these two great thinkers might have viewed modern participatory democracy, often with entertaining results. The difference in their attitudes to ‘economic democracy’ is particularly clear, with Marx’s insistence on the need for proletarian revolution pitted against Mill’s more optimistic view of class as a movable obstacle. However, in the earlier parts of the book, it would be useful to have more discussion of the current political climate, to ascertain just why it’s so apolitical.

For example, a recurring theme is the idea that we have forfeited our rights to participate in democracy: by retreating into the private sphere, we have decreased the time we invest in the outside world. The tone is set by the words of Benjamin Constant, that on larger scales, democracy will take place on behalf of rather than by citizens, and men will instead be allowed ‘the enjoyment of security in private pleasures’. While this is undoubtedly true, it would be useful for Ginsborg to discuss the extent to which modern society is still built on this public-private divide. Ginsborg is right, for example, that families have the potential to produce active and dissenting citizens, but that ‘under consumer capitalism they are…overwhelmingly conformist and self-absorbed’.Ginsborg’s atomised conception of the family has rather Thatcherite overtones, but are we still in that same climate of neo-liberalism which compels individuals to devote all their energies to their own families in the private sphere? Some would argue the problem today is not the corrupting influence of the family, but its absence all together; people are increasingly individuals bereft of a network and a community to which they feel responsible. Indeed, Ginsborg’s proposed ‘system of connections’ implies communities deciding their priorities, but it is not clear whether this focus on inclusion would be provided by families or other institutions. Ambiguous points early in the book like this perhaps need more clarification.

In other places, Ginsborg discusses the limitations of the classical concept of parliament, where in the words of Mill ‘every person in the country may count upon finding someone who speaks his mind’, a view that as Ginsborg points out now looks rather naïve in the light of 150 years of analysis of socio-economic factors. However, in the same passage he talks of civil society as a project dating back to the Enlightenment period, and it would be useful if he could explain the distinction between the Millian view of parliament as the freest possible exchange of public opinion, and the Enlightenment view that citizens need a basic pre-definition of universal rights before the voting process begins. It is certainly pointless to put faith in any kind of parliamentary assembly if you do not have the faith that each individual will put their opinion under the scrutiny of others, and crucially, that they will allow others the free expression of their own views.

However, the problem with participatory schemes like electronic town meetings is that there is nothing in institutional terms to compel policy makers to respect the opinions of the temporary electorate. Clearly, such schemes fail because the views of the people are informed by different interests than those of the policy makers, and the former will always be subordinate to the latter. As a humble citizen participating in one of these schemes, you cannot have faith that every individual will respect your views, since those who make the final decisions are not accountable to you but instead to demands higher up, often set by even more unaccountable senior figures and private companies.

This is not true of all schemes; the case of Porto Alegre in Brazil is one which involves a new committee at each meeting, and allows people to elect their own representatives. This shows promise, but to have an impact on policy at anything but a local level remains rare. Perhaps there would be more progress if we could ensure citizens are empowered, reminded of their basic rights, or perhaps we need to redefine just what these rights are. However, there is little discussion at this level. Mill grasped that ideas had to be freely contended, but he did not envisage a scenario whereby decision makers and electorate sat in fundamentally different spheres. Unfortunately, this is the state we’re in (pardon the pun), and it can only be fully explained by taking economic conditions into account.

So, Ginsborg moves on to suggest how economic democracy might be achieved in spheres such as the workplace. As I noted earlier, the account of the distinctions between Marx and Mill in this chapter is one of the finest parts of the book. In particular, Marx’s essential point that, in becoming a producer of commodities, man loses control over the historical process, is brilliantly captured : ‘the worker was alienated…first from the product of his labour, which assumed the physiognomy of an alien object having control over him, rather than he having power over it’. Ginsborg brings to light several case studies of attempts to attain economic democracy in the workplace. The most interesting of these, worth mentioning, is a policy of collective investment funds which was considered in Sweden in the 1970s. this required company shares to be entrusted to regional management boards, based on how accountably they invested them in social priorities, with the aim of incentivising employees to work together for better working conditions. Schemes like this, it seems, would foster a culture in which worker had to negotiate rights themselves- of having direct control over the working environment, and is precisely the kind of outcome that schemes like the electronic town meeting have not so far attained. This is clearly not lost on Ginsborg: ‘In Millian terms, it leads to skilled and cultured representatives of the working classes, constantly present and active in the workplace’. However, this scheme had a limitation in Marxist terms: it does not allow workers control over the actual commodities being produced.

Indeed, having so well captured the point that control over nature, man’s ‘species-being’, is essential if man is to have any control over the course of his own history, Ginsborg unfortunately does not explore the possible relevance today. An underlying assumption throughout the book is one few would disagree with; the capitalism Marx documented in its infancy now continues to estrange us from political action. Although now, given the multiplicity of ways that we have control over our work, most of us cannot be considered the proletariat of the 19th century, talk of a revolution has lost much of its relevance. But even if we are not that proletariat, part of any agenda for the renewal of democracy should be to regain some control over the economic conditions that have forced us to take a passive role in it.

In the final chapter for example, Ginsborg gives a somewhat rose-tinted view of global civil society. Though the creation of social forums and think tanks on a global scale does open up ‘previously secretive and non-accountable spheres, and the diffusion on a mass scale of relevant information and documentation’, Ginsborg seems to see this as more of an opportunity than a problem: ‘the area of international governance is populated by the voices of diplomats, politicians and bureaucrats..but it is not an impenetrable or impregnable sphere’. The opportunities of global civil society are certainly there; there is hope that, particularly through the internet, citizens on a global scale are better able to mobilise themselves, set their own priorities. Politically minded citizens have been able to network and build think tanks, for example.

But in a global sphere which is dominated by public figures, can the interests of think tanks, and the criticisms it tires to affect, really penetrate the elite institutions of parliament and the EU? Or will they merely be used by self-interested politicians, and those with noble intentions becoming one of those self-interested politicians? Indeed, there is something profoundly Marxian about this idea; that criticisms of a political system can so easily become just another commodity. The media, as well as global democracy, is populated by politicians and often the views which sing their praises which ultimately find the greatest audience. In an indirect way at least, views are indeed affected by economic conditions, and global civil society today may well be a mouthpiece for the masses but it also pays lip service to the politicians and bureaucrats.

In summary, Paul Ginsborg gives much food for thought, but his proposals fall into two rigid categories; small-scale participative democracy in local, organised communities versus large scale global democracy in the form of movements and think tanks. The former allows communities to mobilise and establish some control over the process that represents them, but it is confined to small cross-sections of the electorate and crucially, their views have to penetrate the sphere of policy-making. These practices are atomised, and difficult to replicate in communities with different norms. Global civil society allows issues to be contested on a large scale, which represents a major leap forward. But these ideas are open to distortion by the media and public figures, undermining them before they reach their audiences. However, the book is not a comprehensive agenda and Ginsborg gives a creditable account of our options.

Labour proposes huge increase in state surveillance

tim — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:16:10 +0000

In a further escalation of the attack on democratic rights, the Labour government is proposing a huge increase in state surveillance. It is implementing new measures under the pretext of the “war on terror” to intrude ever deeper into the private lives of people who are viewed as potential criminals rather than citizens.

As things stand, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) introduced in 2004 allows hundreds of public bodies to monitor communications without a court warrant. The Commissioner for the Interception of Communications, Paul Kennedy, oversees 795 agencies and organisations permitted by RIPA to acquire communications data. These include 9 intelligence agencies, 52 police forces, 12 other law enforcement agencies, 139 prisons, 475 local authorities, and 108 other organisations such as the Post Office and the Food Standards Agency.

There were 519,000 requests for information in 2006/07, mainly from the police and security services—up from 440,000 the previous year. Official reports say law enforcement agencies were also authorised to “interfere with someone’s property” about 3,000 times in 2007/08, mount 355 “intrusive surveillance” operations (breaking in to someone’s property or planting a bug) and carry out 18,767 cases of “directed surveillance” (following someone and recording their activities).

Currently, telecommunications companies must store records of all phone calls for a year so that they can be examined. In 2005, Statewatch News Online revealed how T-mobile had “an automated e-mail system that allows law enforcement agencies to retrieve subscriber and billing details by consulting the system directly—all they need is a mobile phone number. This process requires no human intervention from T-mobile staff: the system automatically generates spreadsheets showing the subscriber and billing information and sends them to the law enforcement e-mail address.”

From next year, internet service providers will also be compelled to collect information about the web sites people visit and details of their emails. The Home Office said the new measures would force companies to store “a billion incidents of data exchange a day” and dismisses any concerns about these developments with the usual mantra, “we consider that these measures are a proportionate interference with individuals’ right to privacy to ensure protection of the public.”

There are plans to force all companies to hand over their data to one central “super” database so that government agencies will no longer need to submit requests to individual companies.

The government is also putting pressure on organisations besides the police and security services to make more use of spying powers. Kennedy complained, “I am concerned that so many authorities who applied for powers to be given to them, apparently do not use them and I do not know why this is … if this state of affairs continues unexplained, then consideration must be given to removing the powers from them.

“During the period covered by this report only 154 local authorities made use of their powers to acquire communications data. A total of 1,707 requests were made for communications data and the vast majority were for basic subscriber information. Very few local authorities have used their powers to acquire itemized call records in relation to the investigations, which they have conducted. Indeed our inspections have shown that generally the local authorities could make much more use of communications data as a powerful tool to investigate crime.”

UK Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, agreed saying, “The commissioners’ reports offer valuable oversight and provide reassurance that these powers are being used appropriately.” She added: “We need to ensure Ripa powers are used appropriately and are not undermined.”

Smith’s last remark is a reference to the recent furore over local authorities using phone and email records and carrying out video surveillance of people applying for schools for their children, housing benefit and other social services. The papers were also full of headlines about spying operations to detect dogs fouling the footpaths and people using refuse bins improperly.

Sir Christopher Rose, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, warned local authorities that they risked losing “the protection that RIPA affords.” He used the “lack of understanding of the legislation” shown by councils and their “serious misunderstanding of the concept of proportionality” to call on them to “invest in properly trained intelligence officers who could operate covertly.”

Rose added, “The government is reviewing those public authorities that have access to these powers to ensure that they have a continuing and justifiable requirement for them. On completion the government will list the authorities that can use each of the powers and the purposes for which they can use them, and set out revised codes of practice.”

Simon Milton, outgoing chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA), attempted to defend local authorities against these accusations saying, “Councils have been criticised for using the powers in relation to issues that can be portrayed as trivial or not considered a crime by the public. Yet councils are caught between the rock of public opinion and the hard place of being told they should actually be using some of these powers more widely.” He agreed, however, that, “... it is important that they use these powers carefully and appropriately and we will be working with [the Surveillance Commissioner] to help enable this.”

Last April, Milton was the driving force behind a proposal to use supermarkets to collect data on migrant workers. Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, told MPs, “The LGA has recently suggested that we look at footfall in supermarkets. They reckon Tesco has pretty good accurate information about the people who use their stores. I welcome that kind of imaginative thinking if it can help us to get a better and more accurate view at the local level of what the impact [of migration] is.”

Earlier this year popular opposition to Labour’s anti-terror legislation and its erosion of civil liberties allowed former Conservative Shadow Home Secretary David Davis to adopt the mantle of “defender of liberty” when he won the Haltemprice and Howden by-election. A similar thing has happened with these new proposals. Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers has warned about “the ceding of intrusive powers to local government and other bodies and giving them access to once sacrosanct personal data” and Dominic Grieve, the current Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, said, “Yet again the Government has proved itself unable to resist the temptation to take a power, quite properly designed to combat terrorism, to snoop on the lives of ordinary people in everyday circumstances.”

The new powers are linked to the enactment in British law of a European Union directive on data retention, which the Labour government was largely responsible for steamrolling through the European Union in 2005.

It claimed they were vital to defeat terrorism after the September 11, 2001 bombings in New York but, in fact, the EU was considering police-state measures well before then. In 1998, attempts were made in the Enfopol proposals to allow law enforcement agencies access to all communications, which were only withdrawn after widespread condemnation by civil liberties groups. This, after all, was not long after the enactment of limited reforms expressed in Human Rights Acts and Data Protection procedures.

However, following George Bush’s October 2001 letter to the EU, which demanded that countries “revise draft privacy directives that call for mandatory destruction to permit the retention of critical data for a reasonable period” the Belgian government back by the UK introduced proposals for mandatory data retention.

In October 2005, after months of secret meetings, the European Council with its UK Presidency published a draft directive. The UK Home Secretary, Charles Clark, warned the European Parliament that if it did not vote for the proposals “he would make sure [it] would no longer have a say on any justice and home affairs matters.”

Civil rights organisations put their faith in the European Parliament to block the proposals. One NGO asked, “... the European Parliament faces a crucial decision. Is this the type of society we would like to live in? A society where all our actions are recorded, all of our interactions may be mapped, treating the use of communications infrastructures as criminal activity.”

In the event, the draft was fast-tracked through the parliament with little debate and few amendments and became law after the vast majority of socialist and conservative MEPs voted for it.

As many lawyers and experts pointed out, any EU member state was, in effect, now free to retain “any type of data for any type of security purpose for any period at all.” They expressed concern that there would inevitably be demands for more draconian measures such as ID cards required to use internet cafes, the banning of all international email services such as Hotmail, and blocking the use of all non-European Internet Service Providers.

The unprecedented infringements of civil liberties that the Labour government and its European counterparts have implemented and are proposing are not motivated by the “war on terror”. As the political representatives of big business and the super-rich, they are conscious that they cannot secure a popular mandate for policies based on militarism, colonial conquest and the systematic destruction of the living standards of millions of people and are preparing other means for their enforcement.

European Parliament joins stampede away from democracy

Ellie Keen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:49:05 +0000

The European Parliament changed its rules this month.

Anyone still reading?

Surely the European Parliament doesn’t have any real power anyway?

Surely it’s just a talking shop where pompous windbags repeatedly stand up to demonstrate their “European” credentials while the rest of us get on with our lives?

Well, not quite.

Certainly the “pompous windbags” part is true, though it’s hardly fair to the minority of Euro-MPs who have tried to stand in the way as the European Union has trampled over our rights as citizens, workers, consumers, as human beings.

The part about it not having any real power is nonsense, however. Increasingly, the European Parliament has what is known in EU circles as “co-decision power”, which means just what the phrase says. In a growing number of legislative areas, including virtually all environmental issues and most social and labour matters, the assembly is an equal partner with the Council of Ministers, the body which directly represents the twenty-seven member states. Its powers have grown with each successive treaty since Maastricht, in 1992.

The “europhiles” would have us believe that this means that the EU’s famous “democratic deficit” is being closed, but this simply isn’t the case. The new powers granted to the European Parliament have not been at the expense of unelected centralised institutions but, on the contrary, they have been transferred from elected national parliaments and elected national governments.

When I first worked as an assistant to a Labour Euro-MP 23 years ago, corporate lobbyists were thin on the ground. Now, you can’t move for the representatives of major corporations who use (sometimes quite literally) foot in the door techniques to get the attention of MEPs whose votes now exercise a huge influence on Europe-wide legislation.

So the fact that the European Parliament has just voted to do away with its own democratic procedures should concern us.

This is especially the case when you consider the response to the Irish people’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. Just a few days later, the leaders of the 27 held a meeting on the implementation of this same treaty. Their response to the Irish vote? It didn’t even appear on the agenda!

The European Parliament’s rule change means that the two big political groups, the Tweedledum of the centre-right European People’s Party and the Tweedledee of Labour’s so-called Party of European Socialists, will now exercise complete control over business conducted in the assembly.

Firstly, twenty-five members from seven countries instead of twenty from six will be required to form a political group. Two existing groups, the euro-sceptic Independence/Democracy Group (ID) and the rightwing Union for a Europe of the Nations (UEN) would fail one or the other test.

The argument that the new rules will make it harder for fascists to form a group is a disgrace to anyone on the left that uses it. Fascists must be confronted politically in elected assembles as well as out on the streets, not by procedural trickery.

A further rule will exclude MEPs from forming groups unless they hold similar political opinions. The ID group would also fall foul of this, containing as it does MEPs from the right, as well as some who hold quite progressive opinions. They are bound together by a belief in the primacy of national sovereignty, but it is unclear under the new rules whether this will be enough.

Even the United Left Group could have problems with this rule. The full name of the group, which contains all MEPs to the left of social democratic and labour parties, is the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL).

Its long-winded title reflects genuine tensions within the group to do with historic splits which go back to the range of attitudes to the Soviet Union found on the European anti-capitalist left. But it isn’t all history, and quite serious differences remain.

The group is held together, however, by its commitment to burying those differences in order to combat neo-liberalism, but when it comes, for example, to reform of the EU’s agricultural policies, parties from north and south will often vote different ways.

Hence the “confederal”. The individual national parties retain their autonomy.

The Greens form a group with progressive regionalists, the Greens/EFA. The latter element, which includes Plaed Cymru and the Scottish Nationalists, organises as a group-within-a-group, as does the Nordic Green Left within the GUE/NGL. Once again, it is unclear whether this will continue to be acceptable.

This aspect of the new rules will also make life harder for MEPs who are expelled from their groups for not toeing the line. As things stand, other groups will often invite them to join. Admittedly, this is largely out of self-interest. In the European Parliament, bigger means better. More money, more speaking time, more kudos.

Yet there is another motive, which is a desire to see men and women who were, after all, elected by the people of their countries, allowed to continue to do their jobs. This is apparently of no concern to the two big groups.

In another change, a totally undemocratic “filter system”, purportedly designed to eliminate “silly, irrelevant or offensive questions” was also installed. Who will decide which questions fall into these categories? The holder of the European Parliament presidency, a job carved out between the two big groups, of course.

As the European Parliament acquires more and more power, it becomes ever more important to the antidemocratic forces now ruling Europe to keep it under control. The rule changes may not seem to be of that much importance when set against the blatant contempt for democracy shown in the EU establishment’s reaction to successive referendum defeats, but they are another small but significant indication that, unless we wake up to what is going on, democracy may turn out to have been a whim of the twentieth century.

Steve McGiffen is Spectrezine’s editor. From 1986 to 1999 he worked as an assistant to a Member of the European Parliament, and then spent five years as a member of the secretariat of the United European Left political group.

A New Form of Government?

Ellie Keen — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

European elite looking to a new form of government—a pre-democratic one

It is surely just a matter of time before neo-liberal logic demands that the spheres of politics and business also be synchronized. After all, doesn’t the whole notion of ‘political accountability’ rather smack of ‘restrictive practice’ when you think about it?

Britain, unlike, say, Ireland and most other countries, does not have a written constitution in which the relationship between the national and local government is codified. This, however, has not stopped us from developing a balancing act between Parliament and local councils that, while sort of muddling through, still seemed to work well enough for most of the people most of the time.

However, the instant local councils were stripped of their revenue raising abilities, the essential equilibrium was forfeited and power flooded toward the centre. Thereafter Government awarded councils an allowance and, to add insult to injury, liked to interfere in how it should be spent. Along with the loss of prestige suffered by the council as a whole, the stock of the individual councillor was further eroded when, on the grounds of efficiency, the cabinet system was introduced by New Labour.

Here was a move that knowingly increased the conflict between councillors elected to represent and vote on the interests of their constituents at ward level, and ministers and/or council officers making the real decisions at some other time and some other place. Rather odd in a democracy that the elected representative can be called junior to some anonymous factotum in the town hall, don’t you think?

Well, seemingly Hazel Blears’s forthcoming Local Government White Paper promises to resolve the inconsistency. Rumour has it that the status of local elections is to be reduced ‘to a largely consultative status with their remaining powers supplanted by forums, meetings and consultation sessions, subject to superior veto.’

Now such a stroke has been on the cards for quite a while. Local government by quango was something the IWCA anticipated a decade back: ‘Already almost 90% of local funding comes from central government. While the percentage may increase, the funds allocated may well be reduced. No proper funding, no proper services, no need for accountable local government. Local government by quango is a very real possibility in the near future.’ (Interview with IWCA spokesman, Red Action, Spring 1997)

No doubt this shedding of democracy will be promoted under the title of ‘empowering local communities’ or something equally Orwellian.

But if this does appear a rather radical departure even for New Labour, it is because many otherwise politically educated people simply do not get neo-liberalism. Uniformly, left liberal commentators, if they refer to it at all, do so in terms of economics only.

But neo-liberal philosophy has so much more to offer. Like its social democratic and Keynesian predecessors, it too looks at society in the totality, even though the kind of economic freedom available under neo-liberalism is of a very narrow kind and ultimately illusory if you’re working class.

Putting that rather major philosophical flaw to one side, neo-liberalism nonetheless demands that if the free will of the individual (the ‘choice’ agenda) is lauded in one sphere, beginning, say, with business, it must eventually be celebrated in every other sphere.

We have been hearing for over a decade now how people do not really care how or by whom the health service is provided so long as they receive effective treatment free at the point of delivery as always.

This is a fairly obvious strategm with the architects fully understanding that the means of delievery will in the long-run determine both the quality of the service provided and the price for providing it. Or putting it another way, the means will inevitably determine the end. One way or the other, long before they’re finished, ordinary people will be faced with a straight choice alright: pay for adequate treatment or make do with second best. This contributor to the Daily Telegraph online discussion ‘The NHS is foolish to demonise privitisation’ sums up the thinking behind the choice agenda rather nicely.

‘Even as an ex-doctor I find the concept of free healthcare a mistake when added to the free everything else that the lazy spineless underclasses aspire to. I packed up medicine largely as a result of having to deal with their minor moans and need for excuses.

‘Paying for health care concentrates the mind and the finances and makes peope very much more aware of the consequences of their failings. Cutting out the lager, reducing food intake, illegal drug bills, huge TVs, keeping themslves fit and so on, which are presently paid for by the taxpayer, would easily pay for the fairly small payments required for a family under 50.

‘The absence of free medical care requires a new mindset for most if the parameters are correctly assigned. Even in the USA there are measures to ensure that the VERY poor are not left to die at the roadside and those foolish enough not to have taken out insurance or saved for the eventuality will, quite rightly, pay for it with their possessions.’ (Posted by Meditek June 5 2008)

NHS dentistry is already a fair distance down this road. The latest reports show that dentists are being incentivised to take more private patients and to avoid taking on NHS patients whose treatment might prove costly. Legal aid is another area that has benefited from the same choice agenda.

Taken together with the ‘freeing up’ of the railways, gas, electricty water, housing and schools it is surely just a matter of time before neo-liberal logic will demand that the spheres of politics and business also be synchronized. After all, doesn’t the whole notion of ‘political accountability’ rather smack of ‘restrictive practice’ when you think about it? And so awfully last century to boot? How long before the cry is heard for politics also to be freed? After all, as long as the right decisions are arrived at, what does it matter who arrives at them?

We may be nearer than you think. Witness the European power elite visibly bristling with impatience after the Irish No vote on the Lisbon Treaty. Now try and convince yourself they are not actually hankering for the return to a more efficient form of government: a pre-democratic one. What’s significantly different between now and a decade ago it is that we are no longer the only ones saying so.

Wrting in The Guardian, Simon Jenkins argues that ‘Loathing of elections has led British democracy to atrophy: Unchecked by any formal constitution, power drifts to the centre, where the will of the people is treated with utter disdain.’

The Union Busters

tim — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:14:22 +0000

Union busting is as old as trade unions themselves. Ever since workers started to form their own organisations back in the 18th century to fight for decent working conditions, employers have tried to break them. In the old days workers would be beaten, imprisoned, and sometimes killed for participating in trade union activities. Better working conditions meant less profits for the boss, and a harsh hand was dealt to keep the rich ruling minority firmly in charge.

Nowadays, in developed countries like Britain and the USA, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this kind of oppression towards working people had become a thing of the past. After all, we live in a democracy. But the case studies below show quite the contrary. Although techniques have changed far from becoming a thing of the past, union busting has swelled to become a multi-million dollar industry.

After the 1935 US National Labor Relations Act established the right to join a union and bargain collectively, companies seeking to operate union free could no longer use the bare-knuckle tactics of old. They needed more subtle and sophisticated tactics to fight the trade unions. What they needed were private expert companies that they could hire to do their dirty work for them, companies specialising in union avoidance services. Until the 1970s, however, professional union avoidance consultants were small in number and were not yet part of mainstream industrial relations. Most employers kept quiet about the idea of hiring consultants. One consultant stated that employers “used to sneak to seminars about keeping your plant non-union. They were as nervous as whores in a church! The posture of major company managers was, ‘Let’s not make the union mad at us during their organising drive or they’ll take it out at the bargaining table.”

That mindset changed dramatically in the 1970s and ‘80s, a period of significant expansion for the union avoidance industry, when most employers shed their inhibitions about recruiting union busting consultants. The size of the consultant industry increased tenfold during the 1970s, as employers sought out firms that could help them defeat trade union formation and expansion. Union busting consultants organised thousands of anti-union campaigns, targeting areas of growing importance to unions like healthcare, and white-collar employees. Today, the monopolisation of big business has led to giant companies accumulating enormous profits, and with them, the resource for union busting has grown to unprecedented proportions.

Genesis of Union Busting

The Logan Report, produced earlier this year by the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), reveals some startling statistics. It is estimated that companies in the USA alone are spending a whopping $4 billion each year on union busting! If you take into account that this money is directed mainly at a small number of workers actively engaged in struggle at any one time, that works out at thousands of dollars per worker. Add to that a staggering 25,000 lawyers that are apparently committed to preventing trade unions developing across the USA, and you have what has been described as a genesis for union busting policy.

The Burke Group (TBG), based in California, is one of the worlds’ biggest union busting consultants. It advertises itself as a ‘management consulting firm specialising in union avoidance’. TBG has conducted over 800 union busting campaigns since its establishment in 1981, with clients such as Coca-Cola, Mazda, General Electric, Heinz, DuPont, and Lockheed Martin, with whom they boast a 95% success rate!

The tactic used by union busters like TBG is to get into the workplace and convince the workforce against voting in favour of union representation, or recognition. As trade unions benefit workers’ interests, the only way to achieve this is to lie. Workers are given company leaflets warning that if they join the union they are likely to be permanently on strike. They mislead workers into believing that the union will start harassing them in their homes, risk their job security, and cause them a loss of earnings and benefits. In other words they convince workers into believing exactly the opposite of what trade unions actually offer.

One textbook example of TBG’s union busting campaigns was for the Chinese Daily News (CDN), the largest Chinese language newspaper in North America. In October 2000, 152 mostly Taiwanese workers started a trade union organising campaign after management announced plans to cut pay, and force employees to sign a statement that they could be fired at any time. Within a month, 95 percent of the employees had signed union authorisation cards. In response, CDN hired TBG who immediately started an aggressive anti-union campaign. In March 2001, the workers stood solid and voted again for union recognition. The CDN management told the workers that it was prepared to spend $1 million on defeating the union. True to its word, by September 2005, after an intense five-year anti-union campaign, the union lost a rerun ballot. The head of the Newspapers Guild subsequently described the events as the “fiercest anti-union campaign I have ever been involved in.”

But isn’t this against the law I hear you ask? The simple answer is yes! The trouble is that legislation is so weak that it’s cheaper for the company to pay out damages to individual workers in court, than to give in to the trade unions. In 2007, the US Court of Appeals awarded CDN employees $2.5 million for numerous labour law violations committed by the company, but they will probably never gain union recognition.

Organisations like TBG have been so successful that, despite some 60 million Americans saying that they would like to join a trade union, national membership currently stands at only 7.5 percent of the US private sector workforce.

Bringing It Back Home

And if you thought this kind of thing could never happen here, think again! The Burke Group has been accused of bringing union busting tactics to Britain. In fact, a 2008 survey of trade union organising campaigns in Britain found that employers used anti-union consultants in about one fifth of the cases. TBG has attracted large companies operating here in Britain to its sinister services, including T-Mobile, Amazon.co.uk, Virgin Atlantic, Calor Gas, FlyBe, Cable & Wireless, and Kettle Chips. Many of TBG’s anti-union campaigns have had a devastating impact.

In the case of T-Mobile, George Rankin, an organising officer from the Communication Workers Union (CWU), has described some of the tactics that were used. He said that TBG sent a 7-minute video to the homes of five hundred and fifty T-Mobile workers in order to convince them against voting in favour of recognition of the CWU. TBG used scare tactics like those listed above. Workers were moved away from trade union influence by outsourcing their jobs to private companies. Trade union members were also intimidated and harassed. The union lost the vote for recognition by two to one. It’s a similar story with Cable & Wireless, and with Kettle Chips. The Graphical Print and Media Union involved in the Amazon case stated that “we had never faced this level of serious professional resistance before”, after the union also lost the vote for recognition.

But the FlyBe case is most revealing. In 2006, Europe’s largest regional low-cost carrier hired TBG when 400 cabin crew tried to join the Transport & General Union. However, midway through TBG’s union busting campaign, the union (now called Unite) persuaded FlyBe to drop TBG, and subsequently a huge shift by the workers in favour of union representation led to an election landslide, with 94% of the workers voting in favor of unionisation in an 89% turnout.

Fight Back

What does all this show? It shows that if the workers are left to organise they choose the trade unions. It shows that the only way for companies to avoid trade unions is to lie, to cheat, to manipulate, and to attack. It shows that the argument about capitalist society being governed by the natural forces of market trading is utter nonsense. Capitalist society is, in part, maintained by employers who squander billions of dollars to ensure that the rich stay rich, and the poor stay poor. These battles between trade unions and employers effectively mark out the boundary between the workers, and the business owners in society. It is a boundary between two classes. One side is fighting for decent working and living conditions, and the other side fighting to preserve exploitation and maintain its profits. For one side to gain the other must lose. True we live in a democracy, but it’s a parliamentary democracy, where legislation favours the interests of big business owners, not working people. The enormous resources currently being poured into blocking the unions in the workplace serves to exacerbate this problem. It means the discontent of the exploited workforce is trapped beneath the surface of society and will fester until it can find an avenue of expression.

The two trade union federations in the USA and Britain, the AFL-CIO and the TUC, have signed a joint agreement to work together to eliminate the intimidation of workers who want to improve the quality of their families’ lives by joining or forming a trade union. The two union federations agreed to share information about the activity of union busting firms, to develop a shared database of union busting activity, and create “Busting the Union-Busters” training materials. Both will jointly lobby governments and relevant international bodies to restrict the activities of the union busters. But, the only way to beat union busting once and for all is to unite the workforce, and join and organise in our trade unions, our own class organisations. A collective problem requires a collective solution. Ultimately we must build a new society based on the needs of the majority, not the needs of the rich minority. These are the foundations of a workers’ democracy, of a socialist society.

The End of Democracy

Ellie Keen — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:43:13 +0000

Over the last few years the political role of the European Court of Justice has become increasingly evident. It has, at the same time, become far more overtly conservative, leaning towards an extreme ‘free market’ philosophy which favours privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation. In favouring these policies, moreover, it has moved to weaken any opposition to them.

This is why the ECJ ruled recently that wages agreed under the tripartite system which prevails in much of the continent need not be respected by foreign firms. Under the system, known in the Netherlands as the Collective Labour Agreement and under similar names elsewhere, employers, unions and government meet once a year to agree rates for particular trades in particular sectors.

This system has its drawbacks, but it does prevent wage competition between workers and undercutting of one firm by another by means of wage reductions. It is part of the post-war settlement, a Cold War product designed to show that there were alternatives to Soviet-style socialism which could offer working people a decent life.

The system has stood more-or-less unchallenged, until now. Because, of course, if foreign firms may undercut their domestic rivals, and any firm may register in any member state – thus becoming a ‘foreign firm’ – then the days of the Collective Labour Agreement are numbered indeed. As for the kind of non-statutory wage agreements which characterise collective bargaining in Britain, these can be forgotten, at least as far as any legal protection goes.

As things stand, the minimum wage itself is not under immediate threat. Minimum rates for sectors and trades are now, however, enforceable, if at all, only by industrial muscle.

All of this would be bad enough if this attack on the rights of trade unionists, and of European Union member states, went no further than this particular issue, important though it is. In fact, however, the ECJ ruling forms part of a wider pattern of abuse which is affecting not only our rights as workers but every aspect of our lives.

This is the phenomenon which has been dubbed ‘depoliticisation’.

The word may be newly-coined and hard to fit into a line of poetry, but its meaning is simple enough. Decisions which have traditionally been taken, in democracies, by institutions answerable to an electorate, are now taken by unelected bodies deliberately constructed to be impervious to political pressure.

Last week, two labour lawyers writing in a Swedish newspaper lamented the way in which “the political role of the ECJ in the development of EU law has become increasingly apparent” and that “through the back door, the judges have gained political power that in practice supersedes that of policy makers.”

Here, the issue of concern was once again the rights of workers, and the institution involved was the ECJ.
It could easily, however, have been another area of concern – an environmental matter, say, or public ownership of essential services – and the ruling could have been one from the European Commission, or the World Trade Organisation – but the same phenomenon of depoliticisation would have been apparent.

Of course, ‘depoliticisation’ does not mean that these issues or these decisions have really been removed from politics. It is simply that this is what the ruling elite, through the ideas which they propagate through their media and by other means, would have us believe.
We cannot have essential service providers in secure public ownership, protected from market forces and under an obligation to provide a service to everyone, including those on low incomes. This is not because we voted for a right-wing government which does not favour such things, but because it would conflict with the freedom to establish a business, the obligation to tender out public procurement contracts, and so on, “freedoms” written into the EU treaty, into trade treaties and other agreements effectively beyond democartic control.
We cannot have an expansive monetary policy, not because we voted for a restrictive policy, but because the European Central Bank makes the rules, even for member states outside the euro-zone.

We cannot write to ask a government minister or our MEP to propose a particular change in European law unless there happens to be a relevant proposal before the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, because only the unelected European Commission has the right to propose new legislation.

We cannot refuse to have genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our country because an EU directive says that, except under extremely limited conditions, we have to have them.

And we cannot elect a government on the basis of manifesto commitments to defend public ownership, propose democratising changes in the way European laws are made or keep GMOs out of our farms and food shops, unless that government proposes to withdraw from the EU.

In fact, even that would not restore democracy, because this is not, in fact, a problem caused simply by EU membership.
The GMO example originates, in fact, in a ruling of the World Trade Organization, which put pressure on the EU to force member states to lift restrictions.

No doubt a truly politically independent Britain would suffer similar pressures.

Increasingly, the range of policies available to national governments, including elected national governments answerable to elected national parliaments, is restricted by their obligations under loan agreements, trade and investment treaties, and full-blown regional arrangements such as the EU or NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Swedish lawyers who complained of the ECJ’s growing political power called for the Court to be made more accountable, and for the appointments of judges to be subject to scrutiny by the European Parliament.

I would not oppose such measures, but they seem to me to miss the most important point.

Elections were once about, amongst other things, determining the mix of social ownership and private economic activity within the economy.
Now, however, the ‘market’ is not to be questioned.

It has been redefined as the equivalent of a basic human right.

Just as the European Court of Human Rights defends the rights of citizens of the Council of Europe’s member states not to be sentenced to death, not to be imprisoned without fair trial, and not to be discriminated against on grounds of their race or gender, so the EU’s European Court of Justice defends the ‘right’ to trade, to establish a business or corporation, to undercut a non-profit public service by paying lower wages or avoiding universal provision obligations.

In this way, decisions which should be in all of our hands are removed from the realm of political debate and thus removed from democracy entirely.

The EU Empire

Ellie Keen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:54:03 +0000

It will not surprise readers to learn that the European Parliament recently approved the Lisbon Treaty – the repackaged EU constitution already rejected by French and the Dutch voters.

What is perhaps shocking is the fact that MEPs also rejected a simple amendment asking that the European Parliament “undertake to respect the outcome of the referendum in Ireland” to be held in June. The amendment was rejected by 499 MEPs. Only 129 voted in favour and 33 abstained, meaning that the vast majority could not give a damn about what the Irish people say about the Lisbon Treaty.

Among those voting not to respect the referendum result in Ireland was Irish MEP Proinsias de Rossa, who revealed that his loyalties lay with the EU and not with the Irish people.

The hypocrisy of these latter-day empire loyalists was also revealed by European Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering, who declared solemnly that the vote “was an expression of the free will of the peoples you represent.”

As long, of course, as you don’t actually ask them.

You may not be surprised to learn that this is not the first time that EU institutions have given mendacity a bad name. Lisbon is a revamped version of the treaty which gave the EU its own constitution superior to the constitutions of its member states, but rejected in referendums in 2005. Instead of accepting that decision, EU politicians decided to impose the EU constitution indirectly rather than directly, by not calling it a constitution, and on no account to hold referendums on it for fear people would reject it again.

Former French president Valery Giscard D’Estaing even told us how it would be done.

“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly. All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”

However, the Irish constitution maintains that sovereignty rests with the Irish people and that only they can surrender sovereignty to the EU by referendum or not, as the case may be. Lisbon would make the EU constitution and laws superior to the Irish constitution and laws in all areas covered by the treaty, so the Dublin government must hold a referendum, much to the chagrin of the EU.

What is not commonly understood in this country – including the many MPs who recently opposed a referendum call on the constitution – is that, if the treaty is passed, EU institutions will have superior powers to the member states. The European Commission, which consists of nominated public servants, has the monopoly of proposing all EU laws. They are then imposed by the Council of Ministers mostly on the basis of qualified majority voting. The European Parliament, which is the only directly elected EU body, cannot propose any law. This so-called parliament can propose amendments to these laws, but cannot impose them unless the Commission and Council of Ministers agree.

The European Court of Justice interprets the treaties in specific court cases in a manner which tends to extend EU powers ever further over more than 500 million people. This unaccountable court has recently ruled in two cases that trade unions do not, after all, have a fundamental right to take strike action if it impedes business interests, which is the main point of organised labour.

Lisbon is also a clear power grab by the big states, as the constitution would bring in a new population-based voting system, giving larger members like France and Germany more power. It is also a self-amending treaty with escalator clauses to allow EU institutions to abolish further vetoes without recourse to asking member states.

Crucially, the treaty would further militarise the EU, something which would have a huge impact on Ireland, which has hitherto been a neutral state. When promoting the renamed EU constitution, European Commission president Jose Barroso said:

“Sometimes, I like to compare the EU as a creation to the organisation of empire. We have the dimensions of empire.”

And empires, of course, need armies. The common EU foreign and security policy contained in the Lisbon Treaty provides that “the union’s competence in matters of common foreign and security policy shall cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the union’s security, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy that might lead to a common defence.” The last phrase, a “common defence,” means a common EU army and military forces.

The driving force behind this constitution is the big corporations, organised in groups like the European Round Table of Industrialists. They are pushing the colonial and militarist agenda, along with privatisation and the removal of all forms of democracy from citizens.
The Irish people are at a crossroads. They can choose to remain a relatively young democratic nation or become a province of an empire once again.

Brian Denny is a spokesman for the UK group Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution and writes regularly for the Morning Star, where this article first appeared.

Wrong Man, Wrong Europe

Ellie Keen — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:45:54 +0000

Europeans are becoming accustomed to both insult and injury. For many excellent and well-examined reasons, in mid-2005 French and Dutch voters rejected the European Constitution. In France, it had been 13 years since anyone had asked its citizens what they thought about Europe, and they replied 55 per cent strong that it was going in an entirely wrong, neoliberal, inequitable direction. Yes, there were some far-right ‘No’ votes, but most came from pro-Europeans who refused to see Europe reduced to the status of a marketplace.

This expression of popular sovereignty was intolerable to the elites. They have now remedied the situation by forcing through the Lisbon Treaty, a carbon copy of the constitution, with only ‘cosmetic changes’ to ‘make it easier to swallow’, as former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing phrased it. He should know, having drafted the original document.

No official flag and no Beethoven hymn, but the rest is there. Don’t believe me – listen to Giscard, Angela Merkel, Karel De Gucht, Giuliano Amato, José-Luis Zapatero, Bertie Aherne and Jose-Manuel Barroso, European leaders who all heaved huge, public sighs of relief to that effect. As for the thoroughly undemocratic process that brought forth the Lisbon Treaty, Gunther Verheugen, vice-president of the European Commission, put it best after the French-Dutch votes : ‘We must not give in to blackmail’. They didn’t. One thinks of Bertolt Brecht, who in 1951 said of the East German regime :

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writer’s Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another ?

So the text of the treaty will be pushed through parliaments with no time for discussion and debate. Nicolas Sarkozy himself told right-wing Euro MPs that if there were referendums on the Lisbon Treaty, they would be lost ; if the French voted, they would again vote ‘No’. Under no circumstances should citizens be allowed referendums (and Ireland made a huge mistake in making them compulsory).

Don’t make the mistake of letting people actually read a clear text. The Lisbon Treaty is what you get, like it or not, although we can’t actually give you a copy of it – just five or six separate documents, protocols and declarations that you can spend the next few years collating and cross-referencing to your heart’s content. Oh yes – and we’ve got just the man to lead the new Europe that this treaty intends to force upon you : Tony Blair.

He’s perfect for the job. We can count on him to promote ‘a more assertive Union role in security and defence matters [which] will contribute to the vitality of a renewed Atlantic Alliance’. And he will make sure that Europe ‘respects the obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which remains the foundation of the collective defence of its members’, according to Protocol 4 of the treaty (which, like the other protocols and declarations has the same legal force as the treaty and supersedes national law).

We don’t know what Nato’s future policies will be and are signing on blindfolded. But we do know that the US will continue to lead it and that the US president will be its de facto commander in chief. Who better than Blair to polish the commander’s medals and shine his [or her] shoes ?

The EU is terrific on market-oriented policies as well, and that can only be to Blair’s satisfaction. In the 410 treaty articles, the ‘market’ rates 63 references and ‘competition’ is cited 25 times. ‘Social progress’ gets three mentions, ‘full employment’ one and ‘unemployment’ none, but you can’t have everything.

What you can have is a downgrading of social policy and of public services. Any upwards harmonisation of EU social [or fiscal] policy will require unanimity of the 27 members, so the pressure will be to reduce taxes and social services. As for public services, they are specifically made subject to competition. The treaty doesn’t affect ‘the competence of member states to provide, commission and organise non-economic services of general interest’ and that may sound reassuring. The problem is that ‘non-economic services’ are nowhere defined and in some interpretations they could be reduced to the police and the courts. The European Court of Justice has not shown undue affection for public services and the Commission can also make members stop subsidising them, so Blair should feel quite at home.

Among the many provisions of the constitution, the treaty has also retained the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a meek and mild compendium granting fewer rights than most national constitutions. However meagre, this was still too much for Blair, who demanded – and received – an exemption for the UK, enshrined in the lengthy and detailed Protocol 7. All one can deduce from this is that in our brave new Europe, the rules concerning market freedom and competition are compulsory, whereas anything smacking of even limited human and social rights is optional. Why should Blair’s attitude as president of Europe reflect any other view ?

If Europe still seems remote to you and not worth getting excited about, you should know that 80 per cent or more of the laws that will apply to you and your country will come not from the seat of your national government but from Brussels. Let us hope that the petition against Blair’s presidency blazes its way through the 27 member states or that Tony himself may decide to be content with the putative 500,000 quid he will receive annually as a part-time advisor to the JP Morgan Chase investment bank. If he jumps out of the British frying pan into the Brussels fire, 450 million European citizens risk being severely burned.

Susan George is board chair of the Transnational Institute and honorary president of Attac France. Her two new books are We the Peoples of Europe (Pluto) and Hijacking America : How the Religious and Secular Right Changed What Americans Think (Polity Press)

NUS governance review would cement Labour’s power

tim — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 23:03:44 +0000

That student politics can become polarised is no grand revelation; but visible to those of us who have been involved in the internal politics of the National Union of Students over the past 10 years is a fundamental rift within the political student community, of greater significance than much seen previously. In response to alleged “student apathy” within the governing bodies of Student Unions across the country, a proposed Governance Review aims (amongst many other things) to centralise authority towards the elected officers in regional SUs and towards the elected officials of the national organisation. This would be achieved most notably in the removal of compulsory elections for conference delegates (delegates would thence be selected by the SU officers) and the reduction of the conference’s powers, which would be transferred to other unelected bodies.

The proposals come from the National Executive Council and are backed by all the major members. From the NEC the concerns appear to be management related – in response to declining rates of participation in local SUs and elections. But mounting opposition to the Review has united the independent and left-of-Labour student organisations, who claim that the moves will serve to undermine their ability to significantly influence official NUS politics. With the majority of SUs around the country dominated by the monolithic Labour Students organisation, independently elected conference delegates are in many areas the only opportunity for alternative voices to make themselves heard at the conference. The planned reduction in size of the national conference, alongside an attack on its authority, would effectively shut independent and left groups out of the official decision-making process entirely, cementing the authority of Labour over NUS as a politically campaigning organisation.

The cause of non-Labour students is still far from lost. To pass constitutionally amending documents, the conference needs the support of two thirds of delegates. Due in part to marginally increased delegations from left-of-Labour organisations in recent years and the partial alliance founded by independents and student Islamic societies, non-Labour organisations have been able to carry the support of roughly a third of delegates in conferences past. The margin will be tight. But whatever the outcome, this year’s conference will mark a watershed in NUS history. Whether the NUS is to become the self-selecting and politically neutral organisation envisaged in the Governance Review, or whether non-Labour student organisations will be able to get their acts together to inflict one of the most significant defeats to the NEC in recent NUS history, is yet to be seen.