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After the crisis, a new beginning

JamieSW — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:19:17 +0000

Strange times bring strange bedfellows. On the same day that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were putting the finishing touches to their plan to bail out the banks with up to £500bn of public money, the international labour movement marked the first ever world day for decent work.

Events in more than 100 countries across five continents made it a genuinely global occasion, yet fears of imminent recession and accompanying job losses put any celebrations on ice. Instead the day was spent in sober reflection on the role decent work has to play in rebalancing the global economy and addressing the root causes of the crisis now threatening to spread across the world.

For with the ink barely dry on the government’s immediate rescue plans, attention is already turning to the underlying economic problems that have allowed the current financial crisis to develop. Even now, the recognition is growing that fundamental changes are needed to the global economic system far beyond the reach of recapitalisation packages or injections of liquidity, however large.

Increasingly, too, there is an understanding that rebalancing the relationship between capital and labour will be a central element in any long-term solution. Put simply, decent work forms an essential part of the macroeconomic restructuring needed to address the roots of the current malaise.

The basic definition of decent work is productive employment for women and men in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. The moral case for such rights has been clear ever since Engels wrote his classic account of the working class in England in 1844, and there is still much to do today to ensure that all workers in Britain enjoy decent pay and working conditions. While the minimum wage posted its latest rise this month, to £5.73 an hour, many employers still break the law by not paying it. Women migrant workers are those most at risk.

Yet many of the worst sweatshops relocated long ago to the low-cost labour markets of the developing world. The media has been filled with stories of workers producing goods for the British high street in abominable conditions in countries such as Bangladesh, China and India.

Consumers have expressed outrage at news of women being forced to work around the clock for a few pence an hour under the threat of constant abuse and humiliation. As long as there are no legal requirements that companies must guarantee all workers decent conditions and a living wage, such scandals will continue.

The UN has also stressed the importance of decent work for poverty reduction. Achieving full employment and decent work for all has been enshrined in the millennium development goals adopted by world leaders at the start of the century.

UN agencies confirm that productive employment is the link that can translate economic growth into long-term development, enabling people to work their way out of poverty rather than just deeper into debt. Without decent work opportunities for the many, growth simply concentrates the benefits of economic development in the hands of an elite few.

Yet decent work is no longer just a moral imperative. The financial crisis has underlined the systemic dangers to the wider economy of ignoring workers’ rights. For while the crisis may have manifested itself in the convulsions of the financial markets, its roots are to be found in the imbalance which has been allowed to grow between corporate power on the one hand and a disempowered labour movement on the other. “Light touch” globalisation has brought multinational corporations vast new freedoms as the regulations governing their operations are dismantled in country after country. By contrast, workers have found their rights, wages and working conditions increasingly undermined.

As a result of this imbalance, multinational companies have amassed huge profits in the globalised economy, notably through relocating to or sourcing from labour markets such as China where pay and conditions are kept low. Working people have been largely excluded from the feast, as shown by the decline in the share of national income enjoyed by wages and salaries over the past three decades. The UK and US credit bubbles were inflated to record levels in order to make up for this shortfall in working people’s pay packets, and it is the bursting of those bubbles that echoes all around us today.

By the same token, decent remuneration of workers is now necessary both to avoid driving us deeper into recession and to restore a broader macroeconomic balance. Darling’s suggestion just last month that public-sector wages must be kept low to stave off the threat of inflation now sounds as if it came from another world.

This rebalancing of relations between capital and labour is especially important now that recession is looming, not least because it is working people who will again be hit hardest by the economic downturn. As demand weakens and businesses find credit harder to come by, the pressure on jobs will build.

The first signs of this are already appearing in Britain, where official figures show the largest rise in unemployment in 16 years. The UK jobless total is forecast to pass the 2 million mark in the coming months for the first time in over a decade.

In many of the world’s poorest countries the impact will be even worse, and it will again be women workers who are most affected by the downturn. When the economies of south-east Asia collapsed under the financial crisis of 1997, the feminisation of employment which had been heralded as one of the achievements of the Asian economic miracle turned into a feminisation of unemployment almost overnight. Thousands of Thai and Indonesian women were forced into prostitution as a result of losing their jobs.

Today’s financial crisis opens up the debate over what sort of economic system we wish to create for the future. Now that the merits of free-market capitalism have been exposed as a dangerous mirage, the world has the opportunity to develop a fairer system of international economic governance and to redistribute the spoils of globalisation.

Preserving the current model, with all its failings and injustices, will simply perpetuate the imbalances which have led to today’s crisis. A global economy based on decent work and a living wage for all women and men offers a real chance for a new beginning.

John Hilary is executive director of War on Want.

Targeting temporary workers

Ellie Keen — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:36:03 +0000

The recent gains of employment rights for temporary workers, such as the enforcement of equal pay and sick leave, have been a great step forward for a much under-represented section of the working class.

We should be in no doubt, however, that the motivation for this compromise. Gordon Brown and his big business pals intend to strengthen their hand in continuing their opposition to the proposed European Union (EU) Agency Workers Directive, which proposes far more progress.

Temporary workers remain largely unorganised and unions remain weak on the issue. Employers can offer lower pay and conditions to these workers as well as using them as a leverage point to drive down permanent workers’ pay and conditions and to undermine militancy. As big businesses have recognised temporary workers as targets for exploitation, the number of agencies appearing on high streets has increased massively over the last few years.

Britain has over 1.4 million temporary or agency workers from both the public and private sectors. Agency workers are often some of the most vulnerable and young people.

The government, after negotiating and manoeuvring with the unions and the bosses’ CBI, have announced that agency workers – following a 12-week “qualifying period” – will be entitled to employment rights such as sick leave, paid holidays, and equal pay with the lowest scale permanent employees.

This is great news for these much beleaguered workers. However, this agreement has been long in the making, with all but three EU members taking this on years ago. The EU looks set to further extend employment rights for temporary workers – but Britain looks set to oppose this as well.

This continued opposition goes against the Warwick agreement of July 2004. In exchange for continued union support, Tony Blair agreed to reforms of labour legislation including a commitment to support the new EU agency workers directive.

The main problem with the new bill is the 12-week qualifying period. Temporary workers’ assignments are short, and many are unlikely to reach this.

Temporary workers need to be unionised. Unions find it difficult to engage with militant agency workers, being usually ill adjusted to working with this sector. The casualisation of workers does create difficulties here, so it is essential to begin to build networks.

Greater progress must come from grassroots self-organisation. Unions without this support and drive may only be able to secure superficial changes.

Tom Ramplin is an agency worker and activist

People Before Profit Charter strikes a chord across the picket lines

JamieSW — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:41:02 +0000

The cost of food, petrol and fuel is going through the roof, with gas bills predicted to hit £1,000 a year in coming years. Meanwhile workers are being told they have to swallow pay cuts in real terms.

Yet at the same time chief executives at the BBC and Network Rail are getting bonuses and pay rises of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

All this has underlined the urgency of the People Before Profit Charter, which lays out ten demands to defend workers’ living standards in the face of mounting economic crisis.

Magnificent

Hundreds of people have signed up to the charter since its recent launch, including many involved in last week’s magnificent strikes by local government and Argos workers

“I visited the picket line at Argos’s Bridgwater depot last week,” reports Simon from Bristol. “Some 37 pickets signed the charter.”

Many people reported great enthusiasm for the People Before Profit Charter from council workers’ picket lines on Wednesday and Thursday last week.

The week before some 17 striking workers at the British Museum signed up to the charter. Others signing it include Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the NUJ journalists’ union.

The People Before Profit Charter has been launched by trade unionists, housing campaigners, students and pensioners as a response to attempts by bosses and government ministers to make workers pay for their economic crisis.

The charter’s ten points put forward proposals on a number of issues that would improve the lives of millions of people.

These include decent pay rises, taxing corporations, improving workers’ rights, opposing privatisation, building council homes, opposing racism and war, improving pensions, abolishing tuition fees and increasing the minimum wage

Supporters of the charter are now calling on people to raise support for it in their local union branch, pensioners’ group, student union, housing group and other campaigns.

People should also continue to ask their workmates, neighbours and friends to sign up to the charter. The level of support already garnered shows how deep the anger and concerns of working people go.

The People Before Profit Charter can help to mobilise the growing resistance to the attacks on workers – and it can help provide a left wing answer to the current crisis and halt the right in its tracks. Put your name to it, if you haven’t already.

Sign up to these demands

Wage increases no lower than the rate of inflation as given by the Retail Price Index. No to the government’s 2 percent pay limit.
Increase tax on big companies. Introduce a windfall tax on corporation superprofits, especially those of the oil companies.
Repeal the Tory anti-union laws. Support the Trade Union Freedom Bill.
Unsold houses and flats should be taken over by local councils to ease the housing crisis. No house repossessions. For an emergency programme of council house building.
Stop the privatisation of public services. Free and equal health and education services available to all.
End the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and use the money to expand public services. Stop the erosion of civil liberties.
Abolish tax on fuel and energy for old people and the poor. Re-establish the link between wages and pensions.
No to racism. No to the British National Party. No scapegoating of immigrants.
Reintroduce grants and abolish tuition fees for students.
Increase the minimum wage to £8.00 an hour.

Many workers and trade unionists are now engaged in strikes and protests to defend their pay, jobs and services.

We pledge ourselves to support their action and to support the campaigns that are dedicated to protecting working people, including

Unite Against Fascism
Public Services not Private Profit
Defend Council Housing
Stop the War Coalition
Keep Our NHS Public

Recent signatories include:

Tony Benn, NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear, Jeremy Corbyn MP, POA general secretary Brian Caton, PCS vice president Sue Bond, CWU vice president Jane Loftus, Bfawu general secretary Joe Marino, John Pilger, chair of FBU South Wales brigade Cerith Griffiths, PCS DWP group executive member Helen Flanagan, vice chair of PCS Wales committee Marianne Owens, Unison Wales youth forum chair Chris Daw, PCS rep Cardiff magistrates court Liz Taylor, Unison rep in Vale of Glamorgan Karen Tyre, Lambeth Unison rep Jon Rogers, Stop the War Coalition national convenor Lindsey German, former leader of Lambeth council Ted Knight, Lambeth college UCU branch secretary Susan McDowell, Croydon Unison branch secretary Malcolm Campbell, Lambeth Unison convenor for finance and resources Chester Danners, Newham Unison branch secretary Irene Stacey, PCS Defra London branch organiser Niaz Faiz, Socialist Worker editor Chris Bambery, senior regional Unite industrial organiser Livie Reid, Argos Unite reps Nigel Jones and Joely Bendall, Unite convenor for Bristol council Steve Panes

All signatories are in a personal capacity

Pay - the Fightback

Ellie Keen — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:04:30 +0000

How much do you spend on your horse?

The fallout from the tremendous strikes and rallies on 24 April is continuing. Those who struck then are debating doing it again. Some of those who did not strike are discussing getting involved. And many others look on, wishing their own union leaders could be won to such action.

Gordon Brown’s oft repeated determination to hold pay rises for 6 million public sector workers at half the rate of inflation must have lost Labour piles of votes on 1 May. But Brown shows no signs of backing off. This confrontation is a central economic and political issue. It poses the fundamental question of 2008: will workers agree to let their living standards be cut in order to bail out the bosses, the bankers and capitalism?

Over 400,000 strikers on 24 April gave a resounding message that they won’t see their pay cut without a fight. The strikes reflected feeling over lack of staff, the penetration of private interests into the public sector and the oppressive power of management. But the main unifying issue was pay.

Now the chance exists to recreate that day on a higher level. Around 800,000 local government workers in Unison rejected their 2.45 percent offer and are now voting in a strike ballot. The initial indications are that the first strikes could be in early July. Teachers are discussing a further strike ballot in the autumn.

The 100,000 civil service workers who struck on 24 April could also strike again. July will see the 80,000 workers in the Department for Work and Pensions face the second year of an imposed deal which means 0 percent for 40 percent of the workforce.

At its conference the whole PCS civil service union backed a motion calling for a national strike ballot of 280,000 members over pay and other issues. Further education lecturers have agreed further strikes – in London on 9 June to coincide with the TUC lobby of parliament, and two days nationally in September. And at the CWU conference postal workers are to debate calling a national strike ballot over pensions. And there’s also a fight in the private sector – over pensions at Grangemouth and with Unite promising a real challenge over pay on the London buses.

But for the revolt to come to fruition it will require a political battle at every level. Unfortunately the left lost its move for another ballot for a strike this summer at the NUT executive. After the May elections one section of the trade union leaders will demand that there are no strikes in case the government is weakened and the Tories benefit.

In some unions, especially those affiliated to Labour, there is heavy pressure from the top to damp down any fight. But even here the feeling from below has forced strike ballots.

Those who continue to argue for surrender ignore the fact that workers should only be loyal to a government that is loyal to them, not one that cuts their wages and privatises services. If the left does not give a focus to the anger against Labour then it is precisely the right that gains. This is the lesson from the 1970s.

A union movement that is hobbled and demobilised will be one that is demoralised enough to let the Tories in. Over the next few weeks there needs to be intense rank and file pressure to compel union leaders to call ballots, to win those ballots and, as far as possible, to secure coordinated action between unions.

And inside the unions’ national and section executives the left needs to insist that the members’ interests come first, not the interests of Labour ministers or the career prospects of Gordon Brown.

Fixing the figures

Galloping inflation is the major factor driving the pressure for a fightback over pay. Britain’s rate of inflation rose to 3 percent in April, well above the pay increases offered to millions of workers in both the public and the private sectors. And the real rate of inflation for ordinary people is rising at least twice as fast as the official figures show.

The more accurate Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation rose to 4.2 percent in April, up from 3.8 percent in March. But official figures released on 13 May showed food up 7.2 percent, household energy up 8.3 percent and transport fuel up 18.7 percent.

More detailed analysis shows spaghetti up 59 percent and baguettes up 23 percent. A basket of typical food essentials was up 19.1 percent on a year earlier.

Worse is to come. Wholesale price inflation, which is an indicator of future price rises, was up 6.2 percent in April. Gas and electricity prices are set to go up a further 15 percent this year, another harsh blow for those who are already struggling with the average bill of more than £1,000. No wonder that on 14 May Bank of England governor Mervyn King said, “There will be a squeeze on living standards over the next couple of years.”

One traditional response when the figures look bad is to leave reality untouched, but to try to fix the figures. This is certainly happening. In the spring the Office for National Statistics added fees for stabling horses to the goods whose prices it measures to work out inflation.

Maybe there are millions of workers out there for whom this is a crucial component of their monthly budget. But I reckon it won’t be much consolation as your food bill goes through the roof to know that some chief executive’s dappled grey is still getting its board and lodging at a bargain price.

And while inflation rises, unemployment is also going up. One study in mid-May estimated that 1,200 people will lose their jobs every day over the next 18 months. Unemployment has been rising for the last three months and reached 1.6 million in March.

Meanwhile around 2.5 million credit card customers have had restrictions put on their accounts as part of the fallout from the “credit crunch”. While most banks continue to make record profits, they have cut customers’ spending limits, brought in annual fees and even closed accounts.

Those targeted are not those who use their cards indiscriminately. They are those who don’t bring enough profit. Many use their cards rarely and pay off the balance in full every month.

A uSwitch survey found that 51 percent of the targeted customers were using their cards regularly and making at least minimum repayments. A further 20 percent were using their card regularly and paying their bill in full. Just 16 percent had exceeded their credit limit in the last year or missed more than one monthly repayment.

Migrant Myths

Ellie Keen — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

After the Second World War there was a high demand in the UK for labour and, in order to boost the economy, the government set out to fill shortages with workers from other countries. These mainly came from the ‘Old Commonwealth’ (Australia, New Zealand and Canada), and then later the ‘New Commonwealth’ (Indian subcontinent, Africa, and Jamaica).

Before the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, Commonwealth and colonial citizens were allowed to enter the UK to provide necessary labour without any restrictions. However, this Act imposed controls, which mainly targeted black people.

In the 1970s because there was a lack of economic demand for labour, the 1971 Immigration Act was passed, tightening restrictions of migration into the UK.

In recent years there has been a large increase in the number of migrant workers coming to the UK. This has been spurred on by economic globalisation and the enlargement of the European Union.

The expansion of the European Union in May 2004 gave the citizens of new central and Eastern European member states – such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia – some rights within the territories of other member states, including the right to move and reside freely within the EU, the right to establish and provide services and the right to take up employment.

In 2005, the estimated number of people arriving to live in the United Kingdom for at least a year was 565,000. This is equivalent to an average of over 1,500 a day, but includes those not coming directly to work such as students. There are no figures available about how many migrant workers have come to Merseyside.

Despite the net increase in UK migration, only a quarter of those migrating from East and Central Europe intend to stay permanently. Overall, the point should be made that the effect of migration on both the host and home economies is positive.

While many migrant workers move into highly-skilled jobs, there are also a significant number who carry out low-paid, low-skilled jobs. The pay and conditions in these jobs has become the focus of much interest, especially in the wake of the shocking deaths of twenty-three migrant workers harvesting cockles at Morecambe Bay four years ago.

It is clear that a significant proportion of migrant workers, particularly those working in low paid, low skilled occupations, are being harshly exploited. Migrant workers are over-represented in industries and types of work where the safety incident risk is highest. They are also more likely to be injured at work than indigenous workers. Language difficulties prevent access to information, and also lead to communication problems, so many safety incidents occur because people cannot read warning signs or understand warning shouts from workmates. In addition – due to a lack of interpretation and translation facilities – they are not able to receive the relevant information documents in their own language, which would enable them to know their rights better.

Kathy Clarke, North West Organiser of migrant workers for the Unite union says.

“Employers take advantage of people’s vulnerability in the work force and do not take the necessary steps to ensure that migrant workers have access to training, language support, translated policies and procedures etc.”

Accommodation is another issue for migrant workers. Some employers create dependency, for example through providing accommodation as well as jobs and taking the rent out of wages. This deters workers from complaining, as this could mean losing their job and accommodation at the same time. In many cases there is a breach of legislation. Denise McDowell of ‘Migrant Workers Northwest’ says: “We see people who have had deductions taken from their wages that are illegal or they have not been paid for work that they have done.

Migrant workers are offered jobs that are often rejected by the indigenous worker. This can leave them in low paid and vulnerable positions. It is the migrants’ legal status and employer pressure that keeps them from organising or demanding better working conditions.

Most industrial safety incidents happen at the end of the working day, when fatigue reduces attentiveness, and because migrants work very long hours they are most at risk. Although risk assessments are an important part of the safety system of the workplace, few migrant workers report knowing of these having been done for their job, and it is quite clear that risk assessments are rare.

“It is commonplace for workplace injuries sustained by migrant workers to go unreported.” Says Kathy, ‘Many employment agencies charge migrant workers for safety boots, and other protective equipment, when direct workers have it provided at the employer’s cost.’

‘Undocumented workers are the most vulnerable because the employer knows that they have no rights and that they can be exploited by paying very low wages; below the legal minimum wage, and may work in very unsafe and dangerous situations’, says Denise. They fear dismissal or removal from the country. They are also afraid of using health services, and have even less information on their rights as workers and humans.

As economic pressures change in the UK, so do the types of jobs for which migration occurs. In 2005 the industry in which most work permits were issued was health and medical services (26.1%). This was followed by computer services and management and business administration (18.1% and 11.8% respectively). Migrants are therefore clearly responding to the particular needs that the UK economy presents to them more readily than those already in the UK. This effect has been amplified by the fact that the UK has seen a period of uninterrupted economic growth from the mid-1990s up to the time of writing.

New rules have been introduced under the Gangmaster (Licensing) Act 2004 to try and curb illegal practices of gangmasters and agencies, but the Act has been roundly criticised for failing to provide adequate protection for migrant workers. Not least of the criticisms is that the legislation doesn’t cover the majority of migrant workers. The Act provides hardly any protection to those most vulnerable workers, and as it only requires simple registration to make an illegal organisation into a legal one it is only a paper exercise. Clearly much greater levels of regulation and enforcement are required to protect those migrant workers who are most exploited in the UK labour market.

Unscrupulous employers use migrant labour to undercut the conditions of native workers. ‘The employer will often try to divide the workforce, playing one group against another. It is important that they are united as workers when it comes to tackling the employer on all issues that affect their working lives be it pay, health and safety etc’, says Kathy Clarke. The condition of migrant workers is not only their problem; one way or another it is the problem of all workers in the UK.

For further information contact:

Denise McDowell, Migrant Workers Northwest, www.migrantworkersnorthwest.org
Kathy Clarke, Unite (T&G) 0800 328 0606, www.tgwu.org.uk

Neoliberal Offensive

Ellie Keen — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

European TUC general secretary John Monks urges “European legislators,” in light of the most recent outrageous ruling by the European Court of Justice, to revise the posting of workers directive to clarify and safeguard its original meaning.

If he is referring to the European Parliament, then he is barking up the wrong tree.

Legislators are representatives who initiate laws and the European Parliament does not have this power.

Its role is to revise draft legislation proposed by the unelected and unaccountable EU commission and, once a directive is finalised and issued by the commission, it is up to the European Court of Justice to rule on disputes arising from its operation.

Unlike any other court, the European Court of Justice has a mandate to remove obstacles to the operation of a free market within the EU and to promote ever-closer union within the bloc.

And it has been single-minded in doing so in its judgements handed down in response to employers’ demands to prioritise their right to make profits over trade unionists’ right to defend their living standards.

The latest scandalous rejection of workers’ rights is in response to a complaint by the EU commission against Luxembourg for insisting that national legislation on maximum and minimum working periods, minimum paid holidays, minimum rates of pay, health and safety, non-discrimination and so on should apply to posted workers is unreasonable and an additional burden on foreign service providers.

The Luxembourg case follows hot on the heels of the Laval, Viking and Rüffert cases, which undermined individual states’ protective legislation in the name of free provision of cross-border services.

The Laval case involved a Latvian construction company working on a school in the Swedish town of Vaxholm, which refused to sign a collective agreement and provoked trade union action to isolate the site.

The European Court of Justice ruled that, important though the right to take industrial action is, it is trumped by the right to trade freely.

The Rüffert case involved a Polish firm winning a contract in Germany and refusing to comply with wage rates agreed between the Lower Saxony government and the German building workers’ union.

The European Court of Justice ruling was that freedom to trade took precedence over collectively agreements.

The Viking case was about the owners of Finnish-flagged ferry Rosella deciding to register it in Estonia, thereby annulling the collective agreement with the Finnish seafarers’ union.

Once again, the European Court of Justice ruled in favour of the employer.

Even to those slow on the uptake, it must dawn that there is a pattern developing here and it is a pattern that points to a race to the bottom – acceptance of the worst pay and conditions as the norm across the EU.

This fits in with the neoliberal policies adopted across the continent and backed by all governments, whether nominally conservative or social-democratic.

It dovetails completely with the attacks on the welfare state, pensions provisions, the 35-hour week and other progressive conditions.

Overturning this employer offensive will not be won through EU institutions but by campaigns in all member states demanding non-implementation of these vicious anti-working class rulings.

Lisbon Treaty — dumping social Europe

Ellie Keen — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:43:34 +0000

The Irish referendum on the European Union Lisbon Treaty will take place on June 12. The Dublin government, media and all the major political parties, with the exception of Sinn Fein, are calling for a “Yes” vote for “jobs, the economy and Ireland’s future in Europe”.

The Lisbon Treaty is virtually identical to the proposed EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, containing 96% of its articles. The treaty, if ratified, would consolidate and centralise the power of unelected EU institutions, further the militarisation of Europe in the framework of the NATO alliance and open the way for the accelerated privatisation of Europe’s public services.

The process of the drafting and ratification of the renamed constitution demonstrates its thoroughly undemocratic nature. The 500 million citizens of the EU have been excluded from having input into the content of the constitution, as well as being denied their right to approve or reject it through referenda.

Treaty’s fate in Irish hands

The southern Irish state is constitutionally bound to hold a referendum on the treaty — so those Irish people living in the 26 counties making up the Republic of Ireland are now in the ridiculous situation of having their vote count for all the people of Europe.

The treaty must be endorsed unanimously by all member states in order to come into effect in 2009. The EU’s other 26 member states plan to ratify the treaty by votes in their respective national parliaments.

On May 21, the executive council of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which represents more than 600,000 workers, voted to support the campaign for a “Yes” vote, claiming that the treaty will be a step forward for workers’ rights as the “Charter of Fundamental Rights” seemingly enshrines the right to strike.

However, some of the individual unions affiliated to the ICTU are calling for a “No” vote, including Unite, one of the ICTU’s largest affiliates. The Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union is recommending its 45,000 members vote no, and the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union — representing more than 200,000 workers — has yet to make a decision.

It is unclear which way the vote will go, as a recent poll found only 6% of respondents indicated they understood what the referendum was about, with 30% “vaguely aware” of its contents. Around 35% say will vote “Yes”, 18% “No” with 47% undecided.

The claim that the treaty provides new protection for workers’ rights is false. While article 28 states that workers may “take collective action to defend their interests, including strike action”, it immediately qualifies this “fundamental right” by explaining that “the limits for the exercise of collective action, including strike action, come under national laws and practices”.

The British Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution pamphlet, The Big EU Con Trick, quotes a British foreign office spokesperson as saying explicitly: “The Charter doesn’t create any new rights. We spent a very long time looking at this, in particular the disputed article. It does not create the right to strike.”

Lisbon pits the “fundamental right” of workers to take collective action against the apparently more fundamental right of capital to unrestricted movement, unbound by national industrial laws and agreements.

Race to the bottom

Conflicts between employers and workers will be ruled on by a strengthened European Court of Justice. The European Trade Union Confederation has described several recent ECJ rulings as an “open invitation to social dumping”, launching a race to the bottom for workers’ wages, conditions and rights.

Some of the recent ECJ rulings on disputes include the case of the German company Objekt und Bauregie, which employed a Polish subcontractor to employ Polish building workers posted to Germany, on less than half the minimum wage agreed by German trade unions and employer associations.

On April 3, the ECJ ruled that O&B should not be bound by the local law that states public building contractors must abide by the existing collective agreements. The court found that while member states may impose minimum pay on foreign companies posting workers in their state, the Lower Saxony law restricted the “freedom to provide services”.

In essence, this ruling outlaws a minimum wage and base conditions being included in public tender contracts.

In 2004, Latvian firm Laval posted Latvian construction workers to Sweden and refused to acknowledge the existing collective agreement with the Swedish Building Workers’ Union. Laval claimed that it was not obliged to pay the rates collectively agreed on in the building sector.

The union took collective action and Laval claimed to the ECJ that it was being discriminated against on the grounds of nationality, with the Swedish union infringing upon its right to provide services. The court found that while “service providers” from another EU state are obliged to abide by the host agreement, collective action must be “proportional”.

This means that the ECJ believes workers have the right to take industrial action only when the minimum wage or conditions of the host country, or the minimum working conditions set out in the EU’s Posting of Workers Directive, are being breached by the employer.

In order to cut costs, the Finnish shipping company, Viking Line, attempted to re-flag its ships as Estonian and operate out of Estonia. When two Finnish maritime unions organised a blockade of Viking Line, it took its case to the ECJ.

Again, the claim was that the company’s right to freedom of movement was being restricted by the industrial action of the workers. And again, in December, the court ruled that the unions had restricted Viking Line’s right of establishment.

‘Rights’ of capital

Three things are clear from these cases and from the text of the Lisbon Treaty. Firstly, the universal right to take collective industrial action is not guaranteed as it is subject to member states’ national laws.

Secondly, the right to take collective action to prevent the exploitation of posted workers by foreign service-providers is subject to the company’s right to freedom of movement and establishment under the EU Services Directive — a right that the ECJ has consistently upheld as being superior to workers’ rights.

Thirdly, the collective action of workers and unions taken against foreign service-providers is only deemed legitimate if it is in defence of the most basic minimum conditions agreed on by EU bodies or set in law by the host country. What happens if workers want to take collective action in order to improve their conditions?

These ECJ rulings, combined with the provisions for privatisation and the removal of “distortions” from the market contained in Lisbon, are a recipe for the “equalisation” downwards of the conditions for working people of Europe — while the corporations that played a key role in drafting the treaty increase their profit-making capacity.

The result will be the growing severe exploitation of eastern European workers, increased job displacement, de-unionisation and falling conditions in the West — with public services fought for and won through generations of struggle being put up for sale across the continent. It’s in the interests of all the working people of Europe for the “No” vote to win in the Irish referendum.

Migrants: Britain's hidden labour army

Ellie Keen — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:54:51 +0000

Xiao Fan came to say goodbye. He had decided to return home, to Tianjin in north China. “I can’t live a life like this any longer, hiding myself in the kitchen every day, fearing the next immigration raid. When it’s so hard to earn even a pittance, it leaves you no dignity. What is the point? I’ve had enough.”

He looked at a photo of his son, which he showed me. “When I left home, he was only eight. Now he’s taller than me!” Seven years in Britain have earned him an apartment in his city, which he couldn’t have afforded without coming to work in the dark kitchens here. He has also been able to help his sister with her medical treatment. Healthcare is not for everyone in China today. “I’ve done it for my family. I have no regrets.”

When I waved Xiao Fan farewell at the station and saw how relaxed he finally was, I remember that morning when he called me four years ago. I could hear anxiety in his voice. It was the morning after the sea swept away 23 young lives at Morecambe Bay. “Ah Hui is dead. He’s dead. I can’t believe it. He’s dead.” Ah Hui was his colleague. They spent day and night working together in the dingy kitchen of a south London Chinese takeaway before Ah Hui decided to move to a job at Morecambe Bay to improve his income.

“I didn’t know lives could be lost so easily working in this country,” Xiao Fan said. Xiao Fan imagined himself having the same destiny as Ah Hui – he knew that he too could have been there that night. For me, like Xiao Fan, the tragedies at Morecambe Bay and Dover were not only saddening stories on the TV screen. It was what happened all around me, and it had a personal impact. I saw people losing their friends and colleagues; losing their parents and their only breadwinners. While multinational corporations globalise their exploitation of workers, workers are pushed to risk their lives crossing borders and trying to earn a living for their families. The death of workers for corporate profits is a direct testimony to the barbarism of the system under which we live.

These tragedies motivated me to begin a fact finding journey. I set out to listen to the stories of Chinese migrants and document their working lives. In doing so, I followed many people’s lives, some of them from when they arrived in Britain to when they decided to return home.

I knew that gaining access to a workplace could be very difficult, especially when workers have so much to fear: the possibility of their identity being revealed, of losing their job or being arrested and deported.

The lack of access, in the case of mainstream journalists, can lead them to reinforce prejudices. A team of cockle pickers once told me that a journalist from a local newspaper in Liverpool knocked on their door soon after the Morecambe Bay tragedy. He wanted hot news, but he didn’t know how to interact with them. He left without talking. The next day, the cockle pickers were shocked to hear that their house had been named “House of Horror” in the newspaper headline.

On one occasion I was setting up interviews with the help of a Chinese chef. He said to me, “How can you really know about their lives if you don’t live it yourself? It’s not something you can understand in an interview or two.”

The idea of actually spending a few days with my interviewees also came up in the process. Some people challenged me about the idea of undercover work and subterfuge. But didn’t veteran undercover reporter Gunter Wallraff say that sometimes we need to use deception to expose social deception?

Over the following two years I went undercover in a variety of workplaces – in a food processing factory in Suffolk; a book packaging factory in Birmingham; on a leek farm in Northamptonshire; as a domestic worker in a private household in London; as a dim sum trolley pusher in London’s Chinatown; and as a receptionist in a brothel in Burnley. Living and working alongside the workers, I was then able to make realistic observations about their working life and see the structure and patterns of recruitment and the below-minimum working conditions in the informal economy. It allowed me to witness evidence of systematic abuse of these migrant workers’ rights.

It is precisely the systematic nature of the exploitation that makes it so horrific. Britain maintains the illegality of this hidden workforce, and in doing so benefits from the misery of the informal economy. By denying people’s right to work and keeping them underground, Britain gives the green light to corporate manslaughter, slave wages and forced labour. Zhang Guo-Hua wouldn’t have been worked to death if he had been given the right to work. Lin Yun and Ah Hua wouldn’t have been physically attacked if they were allowed to enter Britain in a legitimate way. Xiao Fen wouldn’t have ended up working in the sex trade if she was permitted to work and not paid a third less than the national minimum wage working in a restaurant kitchen.

In 21st century Britain workers are not entitled to basic protection and cannot be guaranteed minimum standards of working conditions because they are without documents. Currently, there are between 700,000 and 1 million people in Britain who are leading this ghost-like existence. Within the European Union there are 5.5 million undocumented people filling labour shortages without any entitlement to rights.

I wanted to demonstrate what this means through telling the workers’ own stories. They are speaking for themselves. My book, Chinese Whispers, is narrated from their voices. It is them talking about their struggle: their once in a lifetime decision to migrate for work; their journey in Britain; moved on from job to job to fill the need for temporary seasonal labour; the way they cope with daily exploitation, institutional racism, social exclusion and marginalisation in a country that needs them but doesn’t recognise their rights.

Having documented their struggle, I argue that we need to move beyond the current migration debate about numbers and their effects. It’s time to ask: what is Britain doing for the undocumented as workers and as human beings? What should Britain do in order to protect and uphold the rights of workers, regardless of their immigration status?

We need to ask these questions: When immigration controls are weakening the labour movement and dividing Britain’s workforce, what are our unions doing? What do they say and do about immigration controls? Are they taking part in the fight against the recent immigration raids that are putting undocumented workers out of work and making them homeless and destitute? Are our unions doing next to nothing?

We need to argue for the regularisation of workers’ status. But we need to do it critically. What kind of programme are we backing? We should be very suspicious of regularisation programmes whose criteria exclude certain groups of undocumented migrants. We need to question programmes that give employers more power to determine workers’ status and their future working life.

Fundamentally, we need to argue that the right to work across borders is a human right not to be bargained with or compromised.

Chinese Whispers is out this month and published by Fig Tree. It is available from Bookmarks.

Global Unions get Organised Worldwide

Ellie Keen — Sun, 04 May 2008 12:17:15 +0000

In recent weeks there have been demonstrations outside numerous Marks & Spencer stores, demanding that the supermarket giant stop the discrimination against (mostly migrant) agency workers in it British food supply chains. The demonstrations were organised by Unite as part of its campaign for minimum standards in the meat industry. We are challenging M&S to live up to its promise of “all products being sourced and manufactured to our high quality and ethical standards”.

There was something spectacularly different, however, about these demonstrations. In addition to stores in this country, solidarity demonstrations were also staged outside M&S stores in Manila, Hong Kong, Moscow, Zagreb, Cebu, Geneva, Phuket, Seoul, Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest and Istanbul.

The action was organised in support of the Unite campaign by the International Union of Foodworkers and its affiliated unions around the world. The IUF is one of 10 global union federations – internationals of unions representing workers in different sectors – which are gaining importance as unions struggle to respond to the challenges of the global economy.

Why would a Russian or Filipino trade unionist be prepared to protest outside a store in their own country – and risk arrest or harassment from security goons – in support of agency workers in the British meat industry?

Apart from the pleasing post-globalisation twist in the tale, involving workers in “developing countries” to take solidarity action in support of workers in the North, the worldwide action over M&S illustrates some important new trends in the international trade union movement.

The nature of work is changing throughout the world, with the growth of part-time, temporary, vulnerable and insecure employment. The scale of international labour migration is unprecedented. The majority of workers in the world are without properly protected and decently paid work. Unions throughout the world increasingly recognise the acute need to tackle the problem. In particular, they are targeting the increase of agency and contract labour used to create an unjust, divisive and discriminatory two-tier workforce in many industries.

Unions – along with many others – recognise that global retail corporations are the most important factor driving down standards and livelihoods. In effect, these companies control the working lives of millions of people throughout their supply chains.

Yet the giant corporations running the retail sector are vulnerable. Like other transnational companies, they are increasingly dependent on long supply lines and cheap transport costs, driven by “just-in-time” tight schedules, with little or no slack in the system. As demonstrated by the dock workers’ dispute along the west coast of the United Sates in 2002, it is no exaggeration to suggest that a strategically-placed picket line in the transport system can bring large parts of the world economy to a grinding halt within a matter of days.

Moreover, companies such as M&S are vulnerable to their own marketing pitch. When targeted by Unite, M&S managers ask why and complain bitterly that their competitors are guilty of far worse practices. M&S has introduced its “Plan A”. This is “our five-year, 100-point ‘eco’ plan to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing our business and our world”. Plan A includes this commitment: “By being a fair partner, we’ll help to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in our worldwide supply chain and local communities.”

Unite deputy general secretary Jack Dromey’s response is: “Prove it. Sign an agreement to ensure that there is no discrimination against agency workers or a divisive two-tier workforce in your supply chains. It is wrong to exploit newly-arrived migrant agency workers and wrong to undercut the workers who have been here for generations.”

Unions throughout the world recognise the importance of this campaign, not just for British workers, but for workers throughout the global supply chains of the big retail companies. They must be forced to take a real responsibility for advancing and safeguarding the rights and conditions of their employees.

The international action over M&S illustrates important shifts in strategy by the international trade union movement. Unions have had a rough time over the past two or three decades and there are few in the world which have not experienced a dramatic loss of membership and power. Debates continue nationally and internationally on how to reverse the trend. There are still fierce disagreements, but at least everyone is agreed on one simple over-riding principle: unions must invest in basic organising.

There is a new organising agenda, which is not simply about the recruitment of new members, but building sufficient organisational strength to challenge corporate power. Some describe this new emphasis as an “organising model” versus a “servicing model” for trade union growth. In other words, there is a rejection of membership growth based on union services and marketing (union credit cards, discounts on products) in favour of a more aggressive, targeted and well-resourced drive for better conditions for workers in specific sectors and companies.

For some unions, including the T&G section of Unite, the organising model was adapted from American experience, in particular the experience of the Service Employees’ International Union, led by the charismatic but controversial Andy Stern. The United Sates has one of the toughest environments for trade unionism in the world and union membership has suffered badly in recent years. The SEIU has bucked the trend and managed to increase membership dramatically over the past decade. It has been particularly successful in organising what some had considered “unorganisable”: low-paid, often isolated cleaners, caretakers (janitors) and care-home workers. The SEIU’s “Justice for Janitors” campaign in Los Angeles inspired Ken Loach’s film Bread and Roses.

This new approach, now adapted and adopted by other unions around the world, is characterised by major financial investment in highly professional organisation departments involving detailed planning and research, along with tightly-monitored membership targets and campaign priorities. Organising drives are backed up by new corporate campaign methods, borrowing much from techniques developed by campaign and lobbying groups outside the labour movement.

More national unions are investing and reorganising themselves around a new organising agenda, but in the modern global economy, organisation cannot be restricted by national borders. The SEIU has its own global organising programme and is co-operating with others, such as Unite, to form the Global Organising Alliance to strengthen transnational organising campaigns.

Inevitably, such initiatives make new demands on the organisational capacity of the international trade union organisations – most notably on the global union federations. To a greater or lesser extent, these are grasping the organising agenda and responding to the challenge of developing truly global union organisation with strategic organising objectives and a new relationship between themselves and individual unions – and between those unions themselves.

The workers outside M&S stores in Thailand, Croatia, Hungary and elsewhere were not just demonstrating in solidarity with meat workers in Britain. They were demonstrating that they are members of a global union federation beginning to build an organising capacity across the world.

Dave Spooner is the international programmes co-ordinator at the organising department of Unite.