London, 12/05/2008
To be checked against delivery
Opening Remarks
I welcome this seminar. At times, I have wondered if the UK recognised that there is a social Europe in any way that we in the trade union world could identify with.
The dominant UK message has been that Europe needs more flexible labour markets to bring unemployment down, that the emphasis must be on de-regulation and competitiveness rather than on any new social regulation, and that clearing obstacles to the single market is, and must remain, Europe’s central task.
It’s good that Roger Liddle is with us. He wrote that line up with skill and fluency during his years at No. 10 and it was pursued with fervour and, I acknowledge, success by British diplomats in Brussels and elsewhere. Roger’s views have changed to a degree in recent years and I now almost regard him as my Prodigal Son. We shall hear from him shortly.
It is illuminating – and from my viewpoint, dispiriting how little the change of Government in 1997 has made in this particular area of policy. I am not saying that there were no differences between the Conservatives and Labour and of course Labour ended the opt out from the Social Chapter in 1997. But, de facto, the opt out was replaced by a commitment to the CBI not to support specific measures to which the CBI were hostile – and with one exception – information and consultation, that commitment has been kept.
Equally, it is interesting to note the continuity in the French Government position, regardless of who is in power. They are always the most active supporters of the ETUC and a “more” Social Europe.
Jacques Delors was from that French school. He “sold” a pro Europe line to the British Labour Movement in 1988 following his speech at the TUC on the grounds that a single market needed to be complemented by social measure to present a race to the bottom. So there shouldn’t be free competition across the single market on the basis of health and safety standards, including working hours; that there should be robust anti-discrimination measures on a range of issues; that what were then regarded as atypical workers much more typical today - should receive equal treatment to regular workers as far as possible; that there should be a Europe-wide commitment to information and consultation with workers’ representation before major changes and including establishing European Works Councils in multinational companies. Those messages were enthusiastically embraced by Labour in order to dump anti-Europeanism. But, in truth, they were dumped when that was achieved.
Tony Blair gave a rather brilliant speech to the European Parliament on Social Europe in connection with the most recent UK Presidency but apart from that and the decision to abstain on the information and consultation directive in 2001 and so let it through, that is all that was happened.
For me a personal low point was when a UK government instructed barrister turned up in the Laval case at the European Court of Justice to argue that the right to strike is not a fundamental right. Is that what a Labour Government is for? I cheered up a little when that point was lost before the Court.
So you haven’t appointed a neutral chair of this afternoon’s seminar. I am in the tricky position of having to argue the case for Social Europe while ensuring that opposing views are properly heard and considered. I will do my best.
Contribution to the Panel
I take now a different starting point from my opening remarks.
The EU is not popular. There has always been a nationalist opposition to Europe, which, incidentally, is mysteriously quiet when it comes to foreign takeovers of key British companies. Why is it that rather marginal changes in the respective competences of member states and the EU stir the blood of eurosceptics. But when iconic British companies like BAA, ICI, British Oxygen, Pilkington and many others pass into foreign ownership, there is not a squeak from the nationalists and little Britons. Britishness increasingly means working for foreigners. It doesn’t bother me too much but I cannot fathom why it seems of so little interest to the Right.
But Europe is not just unpopular on the Right. There has always been a strand of Left opinion which sees Europe as a grand market place in which social standards will be lowered in the most advanced member states by cheaper competition. Jacques Delors set out to neutralise that with the Social Europe concept but as the number of specific measures has almost dried up, making the case convincingly for Social Europe has become more difficult. Believe me, I am doing it several times a week to increasingly sceptical audiences. Recent cases in the European Court of Justice have increased the degree of European scepticism. The judgments in the Viking, Laval and Rüffert cases are conveying the impression that market freedoms are swamping fundamental rights.
So now industrial action must be appropriate and proportionate. It is no longer a question of union autonomy but of what a court might think is appropriate and proportionate. And unions facing overseas companies bringing in posted workers – there are over one million posted workers in Europe – would be acting unlawfully if they try to win equal pay with the locals for the posted workers.
[The London Olympics example.]
Some are arguing that these amount to a new Taff Vale. Remember – the Labour Party was founded to put that judgment right.
So now we have the position that not only have there been few new pro worker measures for a long time, but there is also anti worker measures coming through from the ECJ.
In these circumstances, keeping unions on a pro-European track is becoming much harder.
All this is against the background of what is happening in, what I will call for want of a better phrase, world capitalism. Larry Summers put it well in last week’s FT, “Companies come to have less of a stake in the quality of their workforce and infrastructure of their home country when they can produce anywhere.” He went on “businesses can use the threat of relocating as a lever to extract concessions regarding tax policy, regulations and specific subsidies. Inevitably the cost of these concessions is borne by labour”.
Rising inequality, greater insecurity, and loss of pensions are all part of this. The US, as always, is very interesting. The Democratic candidates have turned anti NAFTA and are heading in a protectionist direction. They are both arguing that greater global integration should not become an excuse for eroding labour rights.
The ETUC is not protectionist. We support free movement of labour in the EU. We do not like the continuation of transitional measures to reduce immigration and migration. We support free trade and the single market subject to there being a social dimension. But if there is no social dimension, don’t hold your breath that these conditions can be maintained.
So what do we want?
First some specific measures including
- a directive on temporary agency workers
- a revised directive on European Works Councils
- a social protection clause and a revised Posted Workers Directive.
Achieving these would involve negotiating several UK U-turns!
More generally, to use an old image, we want the UK to leave the breakvan and get in the cab in Europe. No-one here makes a positive case for greater EU integration and co-operation on issues of company tax, banking regulation and the speculative excesses of financial markets which are very much in view at the moment. So WPP might go to Dublin along with others? The UK Government is being blackmailed into taking part in a race to the bottom. There should be a whole new series of “Shameless” to cover the behaviour of WPP and the others. If these issues cannot be handled nationally, then the EU, one third of the world’s economy, should come into play.
These are dangerous times and an over insistence on Britishness in these areas frankly looks passé. It is time for a new pro-European campaign to be launched based on popular themes and not on freeing up the entrepreneur at the expense of the rest of us. Look carefully at the US. If you do not want to go the way being urged by the Democratic aspirants for the White House, the old Delors message of a balance between market Europe and Social Europe is as relevant today as it was 20 years on.