European Review Issue 39 page 2

IN FEBRUARY AMERICAN CAR PART MANUFACTURER, Delphi, formerly part of General Motors, announced the closure of its Cadiz factory in southern Spain. The company is thought to be have lost $4.6 billion in the first nine months of last year after filing for bankruptcy in 2005. Apparently the Spanish plant was chosen as its products were not central to the portfolio which the firm is to concentrate on as part of its survival plan. 1.600 jobs will be lost directly with another 4,000 affected in the region which has a 14% unemployment rate. Delphi supplies about 60 factories in the EU and its European Works Council fears a ‘progressive dismantling’ of its European operation with up to 20 of its own sites closing worldwide. Delphi has benefiitted from subsidies totalling about €60 million on its Cadiz factory alone since 1986 with similar arrangements in other EU countries. A plan was agreed with local authorities in 2005 in which the company pledged to keep the factory open until at least 2010.

TWO NEWS ITEMS FROM the Czech Republic (see also page 4) point to the growing strength of trade unions in that country whose economy is currently growing at a healthy 6.1% a year. The car manufacturer Škoda is the largest private employer and the greatest exporter and is owned by the German multinational Volkswagen. As Škoda alone racked up profits of €400 million last year, they felt that a claim of 24% over 2 years was justified. After failing to agree on a lesser figure, a day of short strikes was enough to close a deal worth 12.7% running until the end of 2008. Despite the Czech President, in an intervention condemned by the ČMKOS union federation, urging the company not to ‘raise wages too much’, Škoda HR director Martin Jahn said ‘We consider this compromise … will bring solid remuneration to our employees while allowing the company to expand further in the Czech Republic’.
POLISH DOCTORS CONTINUE THE THEME of greater militancy in Eastern Europe. Medics in about a third of the country’s public hospitals have gone on strike with their trade union demanding a 100% pay increase. GPs currently earn about €350 a month with specialists on up to €800. A 30% pay award last year has done little to stem the tide of emigration which has seen an estimated 5% of doctors leaving to work abroad since Poland joined the EU in 2004. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said the doctors' demands would cost an estimated 11 billion zlotys (€2.9 billion) and would ‘break public finances‘. This has led some doctors to advocate charges for some services in Poland’s free health care system.
ON MAY 30th PORTUGAL”S CGTP union federation organised a general strike to protest about the plan by the centre-left government to introduce ‘flexicurity’ and measures which they say have increased unemployment to more than 8% and cut the public sector. The last general strike in the country was held in 2002 to oppose the then centre-right government’s Labour Code. Portugal’s problems are not helped by having the lowest growth rate in the EU at 1.3% which has allowed new entrants such as the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Malta to overtake it in living standards. The government say that their actions have already stimulated higher growth. Public services were severely disrupted although the private sector remained largely unaffected.

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Reaction in the Cadiz area grew progressively from a protest in early March which attracted about 75,000 people to a general strike in mid-April in which an estimated 300,000 took part. Road were blocked with burning tyres and a march was held to the regional capital Seville, eighty miles away. In May a petition containing over a quarter of a million signatures was handed in at the Prime Minister’s residence in Madrid while a protest was held outside the US embassy. On the 21st. a European Action and Solidarity Day was organised by the European		Metalworkers’ Federation (EMF) in support of demands for no compulsory redundancies, no more plant closures in Europe, a socially responsible solution to the problem, no more building of factories in low-wage countries and a complete information and consultation procedure with unions before any further decisions are taken. At the time of writing it seems that the factory will close although the regional government of Andalusia has promised that new employers will be found for all redundant workers.
	Delphi workers march on Seville