2008 STUC Fringe

Inverness

 

 

Chairing the meeting Jane Carolan, Unison National Policy Committee, stressed the rapid pace of change in the trade union attitudes to the EU.  As a result of the three recent legal judgements even the TUC now recognises that ‘Social Europe’ is dead.  The challenges arising from the new Lisbon Treaty were of fundamental importance for the future of the movement.

 

Ian Davidson MP warned that the movement was standing ‘at the edge of a precipice of privatisation’.  Current and imminent EU directives, the impact of European Court of Justice decisions and the imposition of the Lisbon Treaty would collectively pose the biggest challenge to the trade union movement for a generation.

 

‘The hoped for revolt against the Treaty in the Commons collapsed as a result of the Liberals reneging on their earlier commitment to demand a referendum.  This raised the ceiling on the number of pro-referendum votes needed from Labour MPs to well over a hundred – an impossibly high number.’

 

Opposition, he said, would continue in the House of Lords and in Ireland where the referendum would take place in June.   In this context campaigning by the trade union movement remained critical.

 

It was also important to remember that there were other battles to be fought.  He singled out the implications of the three ECJ legal judgements since December that now place the rights of competition and establishment ahead of the right to strike – and by doing so opened the movement to penal fines simply for defending existing rights of collective bargaining.

 

At the same time the ECJ had dealt a major blow at the ability of national governments to tax big business by enabling transnational firms to set profits against overseas losses.

 

He noted that the ECJ operated in a quite different way to our legal system.  Its judgements were based open the EU Treaties which meant that they had to be in conformity with the objective of ‘ever closer union’ and observe the commitment to maximising competition.

 

Mr Davidson also stressed the disastrous consequences of the Common Agricultural Policy both for food prices in the EU and for poverty in the Third World.  EU trade policy was requiring poor countries in Africa and Asia to open their markets to imports from the EU and to end subsidies to peasant producers.  The result was to drive small farmers off the land and create massive urban poverty. 

 

Mr Davidson attacked the spurious arguments used to assert that the Lisbon Treaty was different from the EU Constitution.

 

‘Power was still being drained away to the centre and subjected to the “Community Method”.  60 areas were being transferred to qualified majority voting including public health where the NHS was now mortally threatened. 

 

Eddie McGuire, Chair of the Musicians Union and Chair of SCAEF, welcomed the statement from the General Council on the EU Reform Treaty as acknowledging the widespread concern in the movement.

 

‘The Treaty changes the EU from an entity based on treaties between individual sovereign states to a multi-national state to which all citizens would now have to give their prime loyalty and whose law took full precedence over  national law.. 

 

In some respects, he said, the Lisbon Treaty was even worse than the original Constitution and drew attention to article 97b which obliges all members to support the euro.

 

“The trade union movement has traditionally campaigned politically to place restrictions on the unfettered power of capital.  Today this remains even more important in face of the merging economic crisis.  Yet such democratic ‘popular sovereignty’ is the direct target of the Lisbon Treaty.”

 

It represented an ‘alliance of capitalists in trouble’ and its commitment to militarisation and rising military expenditure was particularly worrying.

 

Jackson Cullinane, deputy general sectary Unite Scotland, endorsed the General Council’s commitment to continuing campaigning on the Lisbon Treaty whatever happened over the demand for a referendum.  The GC statement provided a long-term strategy highlighting key areas of concern.

 

“We need to scotch the suggestion that opposition to the Treaty is anti-European.  It is about the kind of Europe we want.  The opponents of the Treaty represent the real people of Europe, those fighting for decent conditions and good public services and against a Europe dominated by big business greed.”

 

“The ECJ judgements must be taken very seriously.  The most recent, that against the State of Lower Saxony, would make it illegal to oblige externally-based employers to pay anything but the minimum wage. 

 

This is why the trade union movement needs a long-term strategy on the EU – and particularly one designed to mobilise both its members and the general public to take this issue to the centre of the political agenda.” 

 

No2EU Scottish Meetings

 

Glasgow launch press conference launch

Thursday 7 May

 

 

Glasgow

Sunday 17 May

12.30 Glasgow Film Theatre

Showing of RMT film

Discussion led by candidates

 

Aberdeen

Tuesday 2 June

Trades Council Club

13 Adelphi

7.30 p.m.