Werner Rügemer, Köln/Cologne/Germany
The EU is critisized for many things, but one area is completely underrepresented: labor rights and working conditions for employees and workers.
Bureaucracy for private capital interests
Since the end of World War II Western Europe has been a joint creation of the victorious USA and western european corporations, banks and newly founded „christian“, „conservative“, „liberal“ and then also increasingly social democratic parties.
The institutional consolidation was characterized by the military and economic dual grab: first by the US Marshall-Plan together with NATO, later by the parallel „eastward expansion“ of the EU under direction of the NATO: All east european states had to become members of NATO – and only after they could become also member of the EU: Working conditions were secondary, even tertiary.
Since its early stages from the beginning on in the 1950s – the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), then the European Community (EC) and the European Economic Community (EEC) – the EU has been and continues to be designed primarily as a bureaucracy to promote the interests of private capitalists. The European Parliament has no right of initiative, the European Commisson is dominating with its „High Commissioners“ and their 32.000 employees who are high paid and exempt from criminal liability. Trade unions are represented in Brussels with small offices, but they have no influence compared to the much more numerous and financially powerful lobby organizations of private Investors like BlackRock, large corporations and banks, globally active law firms and Rating agencies.
Additionally this ever-expanding capital bureaucracy – European Commission, European Parliament, Courts, EUROPOL, FRONTEX, EUROSTAT, surveillance agencies and about 40 others, also the NATO headquarter – are centered within Luxembourg and Belgium, two small, weak and monarchist states which are acting also as global financial havens, open to private capital.
Deeply below human rights standards
So the labour rights within the EU are deeply below the standards of Universal Human Rights and below the about 190 conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO). In particular, collective labour rights such as for unions and employee representation are not promoted.
Thus through several dozens directives the EU has imposed low standards on member states in all important areas, such as for temporary work, seasonal work, minium wages, health and safety at the work place, equal pay for men and women, and the protection of whistleblowers. Some directives were quite well, but the member states are allowed to tone them down – and they do!
There are 11 authorities for labor rights and employment Services, for example European Labor Authority ELA, European Employment Policy Observatory EEPO – however, violations of even the most low-threshold EU directives and their national implementations are almost never sanctioned-
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have made some good judgements, such as that on-call time counts as working time and that companies must document all working hours in a legally compliant manner – but most states do not comply with these judgements. Incidentally, Germany the supposedly model European is leader in this area.
Thus, not only the EU member states in eastern Europe, but also associate and candidate states have become a vast resource for low wage labor for Western subcontracting services (automotive, pharmaceutical, retail, digital services) and growing, often illegal, migrant work (truck drivers, construction workers, doctors, nurses, home care workers for the elderly, prostitutes).
Finally: When the EU grants subsidies to member states, for example for setting up companies or their branches or for agricultural businesses, no binding conditions are ever imposed with regard to working conditions. The same applies to international trade agreements and global supply chains.
Let’s make workers rights an european topic!
What is concealed not only by the EU parliament, by the European Commission and by the mainstream media, but also by traditional and established unions represented in Brussels: In all 28 member states of the EU, in western as well as in the eastern states – also in England before and after Brexit – and also in associated states like North Macedonia and Switzerland many spontaneous as well as organized defensive struggles are taking place: For the first time in this book they are documented together with examples from 12 states.
The book also serves as a call to finally make this essential human rights issue a matter of public debate and to incorporate it into the necessary restructuring of a democratic Europe.
Werner Rügemer: Imperium EU – Labor Injustice, Crisis, New Resistances. 286 pages, Hamburg 2021, hardcover, softcover, e-Book. The original edition is in german: Imperium EU – ArbeitsUnrecht, Krise, Neue Gegenwehr, Köln 2020.