EUROPEAN REVIEW

ISSUE 38 - Page 2

FRANCO-GERMAN AEROSPACE COMPANY EADS, has announced a plan involving substantial job cuts across several EU countries. Long seen as a flagship European company capable of competing with American rival Boeing in an advanced manufacturing sector, the company garnered ‘good news’ headlines only last year with the maiden flight of its new A380 Airbus ‘superjumbo’ aircraft. However delays to the delivery of this model due to wiring problems are largely to blame for the current crisis.
Workers, unions and politicians all reacted angrily to the announcement.

There was also criticism of the structure of management at EADS which, until recently, had two chief executives, one representing French and the other German, shareholders. EMF General Secretary Peter Scherrer wanted it transformed into a truly European company in law: ‘EADS is a very European Company. Its highly-skilled workforce is its greatest assets. I am therefore astonished that it does not give seats on its Board to worker representatives in order to give them a say in decision-making within the company’.

HAVING EFFECTIVELY RESTRICTED THE BAD EFFECTS of the recent Services directive the European trade union movement now wants to turn the tables and use EU legislation to good effect. In order to prevent further attacks on the public sector they are asking the Commission to bring forward a law which would define public services and exempt them from privatisation and EU competition policy. This would  allow Member State governments to invest properly in them to ensure high quality and therefore combat poverty as poverty campaigners confirm that ‘affordable public services … are an essential resource in combating poverty and social exclusion’. To kick-start the process the European Trade Union Confederation have drawn up a petition; according to the Socialist group leader in the European Parliament ‘We must convince the Commission, as ETUC asks in its petition, to put on the drawing board Community legislation that guarantees the legality of public services’. All national union confederations are asked to publicise it and, at the time of writing, nearly 80,000 people had signed, half of them online.

BRITISH TRADE UNIONISTS may have a greater interest than usual in an agreement secured by metalworkers’ union OZ KOVO in Slovakia. This is because it concerns the new Peugeot car plant whose opening coincided with the closure of a similar factory at Ryton near Coventry. The new 207 model will be manufactured under ‘union partnership’ arrangements to ensure information and consultation procedures are followed. The company commits itself to non-discrimination, annualisation of working time, extra pension and other benefits and good working conditions with high standards of safety.

AS NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN employers and unions in Denmark get under way, the chair of the blue-collar trade union federation (LO), Hans Jensen, has indicated his intention to raise the ‘free rider’ question. This concerns non-members who benefit from union collective agreements. With a decline of 15% in membership in the last ten years this has become more pressing as the Danish system allows such deals to regulate pay and conditions across a whole sector of employment regardless of the status of workers in individual companies. It is thought that any move to exclude non-members from benefits will be resisted by both the government and ‘non-mainstream’ unions.