EUROPEAN REVIEW

ISSUE 35 - Page 3

FOLLOWING THE WATERING-DOWN OF THE controversial Services Directive during its passage through the European Parliament, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) want to make sure that as wide a range as possible of ‘services of general interest’ are exempted and that their legal status is guaranteed. Member States meeting in the Council of Ministers accepted most of the Parliament’s proposals and adopted a statement on ‘Common Values and Principles in European Union Health Systems’ as they excluded them from the new law. Social housing, childcare and assistance for people in need were also left out. The statement stresses the ‘overarching values of universality, access to good quality care, equity, and solidarity’ which are shared by all the health care systems in EU countries but unions and socialist members of the parliament aim to see this approach extended to other services.
‘All EU citizens must have the right to high-quality schools and hospitals, a healthy water supply, safe transport and social services’ said PES leader, Martin Schulz as he introduced a draft directive which would define the nature of public services. The criteria would include ‘universal provision, high quality at affordable prices, openness and transparency’ and the new law would overrule the Services Directive. However, only the European Commission can formally initiate legislation so the ETUC has vowed to add to the pressure on them. It recently updated an agreement made with the public sector employers CEEP which calls on the Commission to ensure legal certainty so that long-term funding of public services can be obtained. Good governance and social dialogue should be the watchwords, involving workers, trade unions and consumers in consultation while ‘the general interest should take precedence over market laws’.
To clarify the legal position of Services of General Interest (SGIs), Services of General Economic Interest (SGEIs) and Social Services of General Interest (SSGIs) the ETUC is pressing for a new framework directive to replace the case law and individual initiatives which it says is all that exists in the ‘absence of clearer and more detailed rules from political players’. They want to see a delay while the Commission considers this before the European Parliament gives the Services Directive a second reading. It is uncertain whether they will take action though, as Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir ·pidla is of the opinion that EU Member States must decide what kind of law they want.
Swedish unions show the way to recruit young people
SWEDEN HAS THE HIGHEST density of trade union members in the workforce of any EU Member State. However the Swedish unions have not been content to rest on their laurels. Faced with a fall in the membership rate from 85% in 1993 to a still respectable 78% by 2002, they reacted by setting up specific programmes to recruit young people, the age group where the decline was sharpest.
The involvement of unions in paying unemployment benefit and the lack of division by religious or political affiliation has traditionally led to a high proportion of workers belonging to the blue-collar (LO), white-collar (TCO) or professional (SACO) confederations of the trade union movement in Sweden. The TCO’s remedy for the weakening of this tradition among young people was to set up TRIA, a structure aimed at recruiting, and retaining, students. It has a target of enrolling 26,000 by 2007 but, by facilitating contacts with young workers, holding seminars on social issues and starting a 24-hour telephone help desk TRIA hopes that at least half the students will join the TCO once they start their working lives.
LO have been targeting even younger people. In 2005 they launched a project to visit all secondary schools by 2008, informing future workers both about their rights and trade union activities. LO also contacts school-age seasonal workers in the school holidays and funds an information desk which has received thousands of telephone enquiries and emails.  Permanent employees under 30 have been catered for by SIF, a union affiliated to TCO whose ‘local trade union power’ project has visited 4,800 workplaces and increased its membership by 50,000. It particularly aims at the burgeoning IT sector.
Just as young people gain an insight into the rôle of trade unions in society so these programmes enable unions to zero in on the concerns of young workers thereby  strengthening and renewing the movement.