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WITH THE REVIEW OF THE LISBON process (see below) concentrating on making Europe more competitive the suspicion has been growing in trade union circles that the famous 'European Social Model' which ensures good welfare provision, public health care and employment protection will be diminished. However the Commissioner for employment, social affairs and equal opportunities, Vladimir Špidla, has launched a new social agenda insisting that the two processes go hand in hand. He denied that the new strategy means 'jobs at all costs' or that the target of eradicating poverty had been forgotten, rather that employment creation and anti-discrimination measures go together while fostering people's confidence in the future was the best way to help them to manage change.
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The current EU Social Agenda expires this year. The Commission says that while significant progress was made between 2000 and 2004 the new programme must pursue an integrated European approach guaranteeing positive interplay between economic, social and employment policies; promote quality of employment, social policy and industrial relations, and modernise systems of social protection by adapting them to the current requirements of society. The concrete measures it recommends include |
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enabling workers to take pension and social security entitlements with them when they move to another Member State, using the European Youth Initiative to get more young people into jobs, setting up a gender institute to reduce discrimination against women, and reconciling the needs of different generations through a thorough analysis of population ageing. In the field of industrial relations and labour law the new agenda envisages a European framework for collective bargaining, a new health and safety strategy, amendments to the law to take account of new forms of work |
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New EU Employment Commissioner Vladimir Spidla |
such as short term contracts and a new social dialogue on restructuring. It would also simplify the law on the transfer of undertakings (TUPE) and information and consultation.
The Commissioner enthused 'This dynamic new agenda will help to provide what citizens most want: decent jobs and social justice'. However the employers' association UNICE had reservations, mainly based on a perceived conflict between the economic and social aims of the revamped Lisbon process. Secretary General Philippe de Buck: 'Enhancing growth and employment is now the main goal of the European Commission ... we will not accept any initiative coming from the social policy agenda that undermines growth and employment '. He singled out EU-level bargaining, and talks on restructuring and information and consultation as unnecessary while supporting TUPE reform only if it led to real simplification. Trade union reaction was more enthusiastic although the ETUC stressed that it should be more than a list of 'pious aspirations'. General Secretary John Monks commented 'This agenda is positive in so far as it places again on the agenda, managing restructuring and promoting European Works Councils the Social Agenda develops other measures we support, such as gender equality, anti-discrimination, solidarity between generations, and above all the European Initiative for Youth'.
The Commission has 5 years to convince the social partners to get behind the new objectives so that the Lisbon process both achieves something solid and retains the balance between economic growth and the European Social Model by 2010.
Bargaining round-up
IN A FORETASTE OF WHAT MIGHT happen as the low-wage economies of the new Member States compete with the established ones, a dispute has broken out in Sweden over a contract won by a Latvian construction company to build a school in Sweden. Laval and Partneri agreed to increase the wages of workers on the project to 105 Swedish Kronor (SEK) per hour but the building union Byggnads wants them to pay the normal Swedish rate of between SEK 130 to 145. As the union boycotted the site and the employer took measures to use non-union suppliers, both governments got involved. According to the Latvian Constructors Association they cannot win contracts in the EU free market without the advantage of lower labour costs while several Swedish firms operate in Latvia where they need only pay the very low Latvian minimum wage.
AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF AN agreement on stress (see our last issue) between the social partners at European level, it is up to unions and employers in individual countries to make it work. It is therefore encouraging that in one of the new EU members, Slovenia, the largest trade union confederation, ZSSS, has taken the initiative and invited the Economic and Social Council of Slovenia to negotiate a 'national collective agreement on stress-related risk assessment'. Lucka Bohm, responsible for health and safety in ZSSS, stated that although all Slovenian employers must carry out risk assessments including a psychological element, she didn't know of one single instance of the inclusion of stress. As this may be due to lack of know-how, stress management seminars have been held by works councils.
AS GENUINE NEGOTIATIONS GET off the ground in the former communist countries, the reformed trade unions seem more willing to threaten industrial action as part of the process. This has been the case in Estonia where talks on a new minimum wage lasted for almost a year and were punctuated by strike calls. After the involvement of a public conciliator, a deal was finally hammered out at the end of last year which raised the national minimum wage by about 8%. In separate negotiations a minimum wage for public employees with higher education was agreed..
IN BOTH THE CZECH REPUBLIC and Poland 'strike alerts' have been posted in the forestry and railway industries respectively. Polish railway workers withdrew their labour for one day in protest at restructuring and privatisation proposals as a warning of more action to come while Czech foresters gave notice that a strike was in the offing over the breaking off of negotiations by employers, setting up a strike committee.
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