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EUROPEAN REVIEW
ISSUE 38 - Page 10
Swedish course highlights
services/posted workers directives
Graham
Petersen is the co-ordinator of the Trade Union Studies
Centre at South Thames College and the secretary of South London Action
on Safety and Health (SLASH). He recently attended a European Trade
Union Institute workshop on the free movement of workers within the EU.
The
main aims of the workshop were to assess the impact of the key
directives covering the ‘free movement of workers’ in the context of
the current political climate within the European Union. In particular,
the Services Directive and the Posted Workers
directive were evaluated in relation to both sender and receiver
countries. This reflected current ETUC priorities in 5 areas: social
dialogue, information and consultation, more and better
jobs, recruiting and organising, and free movement of workers.
The workshop, organised by the Swedish union confederation LO in their
school near Stockholm, was attended by 17 delegates from 6 countries
with Spain’s CCOO union sending the most. Delegations from each country
were asked to produce an action plan on the final day. The 3
representatives from the UK, Susan Neal, Marion Maxwell and Graham
Petersen, stressed the importance of political campaigning, union
training courses and organisation in British circumstances to make the
EU directives work in the interests of employees. Firstly the
weaknesses of UK legislation must be addressed by the Trade Union
Freedom bill and the Temporary Agency Workers bill and the government
should effectively implement the Posted Workers directive. Meanwhile,
at EU level, they felt that more input from British unions into the
European Commission Green Paper ‘Modernising labour law to meet the
challenges of the 21st century’ (see issue 37)
was needed as well as a campaign for a positive European Directive on
‘Services of General Interest’ (see page xx). Secondly, normal UK
training for union reps. should include European issues alongside
specialist courses as the influence of the EU on the British labour
scene will continue to increase. Thirdly the British delegates
recommended organising company liaison bodies to make the Posted
Workers directive effective and a stepping up of existing migrant
worker projects organised at all levels from local to national.
Trans-national links such as a proposal to start contact between
Battersea and Wandsworth TUC and the Valencia branch of CCOO were also
desirable. In general it was felt that the UK had already gone a long
way down the road of ‘flexicurity’ which Swedish, Spanish and
Portuguese delegates feared would undermine their more regulated social
systems.
