Unity!@Unite

H Passenger TransportIt has long been the policy of the union toseek a return to public ownership of thebus and tram industry. How ironic it isthen that the German state owns a majorBritish privatised transport operator, inArriva, as does France’s RATP!

We have fought to reverse the damageever since privatisation and deregulationwas forced on the sector under Thatcherbut the EU has been extending to the restof Europe that very same damage underthe name of competition and would seekto prevent any restoration of public

ownership. Transport services aredescribed as Services of General EconomicInterest by the EU and therefore subjectto competition rules which require themto be opened to tendering by the privatesector. This was legally confirmed by theEU Court of Justice in the 2004 Altmarkcase. EU law now stands in the way of anyattempt to take transport back into thepublic sector.

It took 13 years to squeeze legislation outof New Labour that could give somecontrol at local level to councillors overthe massive subsidies and chaotic

networks the big bus company bosses haveenforced. Now, one council body — theTyne & Wear Integrated TransportAuthority (ITA) has resolved to consult onthe possibility of introducing a QualityContract scheme covering bothcommercial and secured bus serviceslocally. Will the big boys try to get Europeon their side and stop local democraticcontrol in the name of free trade? Taxi drivers have been luckier in fending offEuropean deregulation in the past — theeurocrats like their taxi rides fromairports! But hints at ‘opening’ up thetrade emerge annually and Brussels doesnothing to help.

H Road Transport, CommercialLogistics & Retail DistributionUnite has a proud history of representingdrivers and warehouse staff. But the sectorhas been torn apart by the contractculture and Europe’s TUPE rules haven'tbeen much help. Job security is poor, longhours endemic and terms and conditionsare always at risk.

The industry is dominated by thetransnationals. Despite spending decadesof argument in European level councils,things get worse. European rules haven'thelped — drivers’ hours rules were bad tostart with and the Working Time Directivewas thoroughly meddled with. This isincreasingly used to make 48 hours aminimum. The Directive now specifies thatmuch longer hours can be required forparticular weeks as long the average is 48over a four-month period (Directive2002/15/EC).

The so-called ‘Swedish derogation’ in theAgency Workers Regulations (AWR) hasbeen a disaster. This was supposed to givethe same basic pay and conditions asstandard employees. But the Swedishgovernment sought exemptions that makea nonsense of the equal pay provision.

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Unity!@UNITENovember 2013 Sector Conferences

How the EuropeanUnion destroys jobs

How the European Union destroys jobs

H Civil Air TransportUnite is by far the biggest union within civil aviation and needsto use its weight with effect. Massive competition betweenairlines and airports has been artificially created by policy andthis has resulted in low-cost airlines now having almost half ofthe traffic across the EU. Civil aviation workers of all kinds haveseen their terms and conditions massively lowered.

The European Commission — the unelected arm of EUgovernments — has spent most of the last 25 years trying toslowly ‘liberalise’ the aviation market. This means deregulationand privatisation! The aim is a so-called ‘Single European Sky’.By its nature the aviation industry is particularly vulnerable toairlines using ‘posted workers’, recruited in one country onlower wages and conditions and being employed in another toundermine collectively bargained conditions. In this employershave been aided by the EU Court of Justice decision in the Lavalcase which ruled that any industrial action to enforce localwages was a ‘restriction of the freedom of provision of serviceswhere it makes the exercise of that right less attractive’. Thislegal judgement has been actively used by employers in Britain.

Aviation workers of all kinds have resisted encroachments;baggage handlers, air traffic control or cabin crew workers havetaken many different types of action against policies thatjeopardises jobs but not profits. The latest madcap scheme fromEurope is the ‘unbundling’ of support services, which threatenssafety in the sky.

H Docks, Rail Ferries & WaterwaysShip owners would dearly love to see loading and unloading tobecome the work of seafarers and then to employ the cheapestavailable labour, globally. The European Union has several timestried to introduce port services legislation which would create arace to the bottom. Only a big fight by dockers across Europehas seen past ‘liberalisations’ withdrawn.

The new deep-sea container port in the Thames Estuary — theLondon Gateway — has refused to recognise Unite. The port’sowners, DP World, can fail to allow basic labour rights. The EU’sso-called Charter of Rights provides a right to belong to a tradeunion but provides no right for that union to be recognised bythe employer! Moreover, a whole series of judgements by theEU’s own Court of Justice has made clear that the right to tradeis a fundamental freedom over-riding all union rights andfreedoms.

In Scotland the public sector ferry system has been broken up inline with EU competition regulations, infrastructure separatedfrom operations, goods separated from passenger services andservice levels reduced as private companies are introduced.

H Food, Drink & TobaccoMany will not often think of this sector as manufacturing onebut it now our largest. Unite’s members are employed by mosthousehold names. There are also hotel, catering, retail, leisureand supermarket workers.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the mostcontroversial European Union policies. It has been controversialnot only because of its huge cost but also because it is an unfair

way of protecting European agriculture from food imports fromnon-EU global trade. If surplus food is produced then the EUcan store it, creating the EU ‘food mountains’, or evendestroying it. But such exports are generally dumped on poorcountries, especially in Africa.

After recent meat scandals, most people would now agree thatthe quality of European food supply chains leaves much to bedesired. The EU has presided over a massive rise in profits andprices and deterioration in quality. Our food and drinkindustries have one of the lowest levels of research anddevelopment in Europe. As a result weak firms are being boughtup by overseas firms and often closed once the market hasbeen absorbed. Meat products and milk production have seenthis very recently. To survive these industries require significantstate investment and in some cases public ownership. Yet EUmembership makes such intervention illegal under state aidrules.

H IT & CommunicationsMembers in software development, design, desk support,servicing and IT systems development will note that EuropeanCommission’s own statement that one of its ‘principal missions’ isto promote the ‘competitiveness of the ICT industries'. Thisimplies an escalation of the strategy of off-shoring andoutsourcing. One particular focus for the EU has been to buildcapacity in partnership with India which produces about 300,000computer science graduates a year.

At the same time the EU India Free Trade Agreement will includeMode 4 clauses by which firms can bring skilled IT workers fromIndia at minimum rates of pay to work in Britain. Trade unionswould be legally barred from using industrial action to securelocal wages and conditions for these workers

H Rural & AgriculturalOur members in poultry, horticulture, forestry, farms,and theorganic sector have been covered in well-rotted farmyard manureand spent mushroom compost for far too long! At long last, theEU recently said it was to have a major reform of its CommonAgricultural Policy, which would shift us away from intensivefarming to more sustainable practices. This has got nowhere fastand was always more hype than hypo-allergenic horticulture.

Over-production; the creation of ‘mountains’ and ‘lakes’ ofsurplus food and drink; the destruction of crops as a means ofmaintaining high prices — these are all unsustainable methods.Europe’s food prices some of the highest in the world.

The diversification of the rural economy and ensuring a readyresponse to consumer demands for affordable, nutritous, and safefood, should not be inconsistent with high standards of animalwelfare and environmental protection. Nor should unregulatedwages and conditions, health and safety, and an absence of unionrights be a price anyone should want to afford; not in a SocialistBritain outside of CAP.

Wage levels are now far below those that have been collectivelybargained due to the loss of the Wages Council and now the use ofworkers brought in from elsewhere under the posted workersdirective.

Unity!@Unite

H Metals & FoundryWorkers in the steelmaking industry, foundries and castings,aluminium and precious metals will all know how massive hasbeen the job losses in recent years.

In recent years, Spain has taken over Britain in castingsproduction. The European Commission is currently assessingthe cost basis for the steel sector, with a view to diminishingthe ‘overall regulatory burden’. It is expected to adopt newinitiatives that will have a major influence on the‘competitiveness’ of the industry by the use of a system of‘competitiveness proofing’. Undoubtedly, the drift of this reviewwill be to lower standards in favour of exporting even morejobs to low wage economies.

H Graphical, Paper & MediaOur members in packing, papermaking, printing and distributionhave all faced a great deal of technological innovation and largescale mergers in recent years. Employees have been hard hit bydrastic cost-limiting policies and increased work pressure. TheEU’s obsession with building a single market across the entirecontinent and beyond has seen massive subsidies go to EastEuropean printers for the purchase of new technology printing.The effect has been to push prices down, especially in bulk runssuch as calendars and catalogues, whilst imports of finishedprinted goods into the UK have risen massively.

H Chemicals, Pharma, Process & TextilesUnite’s membership in all grades in chemicals, oil, life sciences,glass, rubber, ceramics and textiles is significant. But all thesesegments of industry once employed many, many more thanthey now do.

We have seen major restructuring, closures, relocation, newmaterials, and much of the sector is vulnerable to theinvestment whims of non-British firms. The oil refining sector inthe EU is going through a crisis of over-capacity.

Ineos is an example of a company under largely foreignownership that is trying to use the threat of closure for forcecuts in wages, conditions and trade union rights. It controls asignificant segment of national refining capacity. Yet long-termpublic ownership would be outlawed under EU competition andstate-aid rules.

H Servicing & General IndustriesSurprising many who thought the EU strategy to be all aboutprivatisation, the adoption of a Services Directive shows that itis hand in glove with World Trade Organisation. Their aim isnow to remove legal and administrative barriers to trade in theservices sector by obliging states such as the UK to simplifyprocedures and formalities that service providers have tocomply with.

Specifically, there is an obligation to encourage access to allservice markets. Unite’s members employed in servicing andgeneral industries are specifically in the firing line of thisstrategy, especially those in call centres, security and cleaningstaff, building services of all kinds, home entertainment andwhite goods.

Previously TUPE provided some limited protection for existingworkers. The Interim Judgement by the EU Court of Justice inJuly 2013 in the Parkwood case now allows a private contractorto derecognise the union and thereby escape responsibility forimplementing collectively bargained conditions in the sector.

H Electrical, Engineering & ElectronicsThe sector covers members working in the production of allelectrical and associated products, who will surely be interestedin the Electra Report on opening European electricalengineering markets. Our union does not seem to have a viewon this.

Some of Europe’s biggest employers are demanding that the EUtell India (which is seen as a priority country due to its size andpotential) to open up to electrical goods sales. Perhaps it is notintended to send an invading British army but the imperialdesigns are all too clear. EU manufacturers also want what theythink are ‘very rigid labour laws’ repealed. They mean a law thathas been in existence ever since Independence, giving Indianworkers decent rights. They also want to build an extendedEuro-Mediterranean market, in Syria and Libya perhaps?Followed by Egypt? All such states should be forced toharmonise their electrical standards with the EU’s, it is said.

Finally, the simplifying of the procedures for the founding ofsmall electrical manufacturing companies (the European PrivateCompany Statute) is proposed on the basis of creating lower‘costs of failure for entrepreneurs’. No doubt, such firms willoperate to undermine established union-organised firms.

Britain’s electrical engineering industry needs a new relationshipwith the emerging markets of the globe. A healthy relationshipwith countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China, coupledwith a massive training programme of unemployed youth couldplace us in pole position.

H Aerospace & ShipbuildingThe Aerospace and Shipbuilding sector is involved in both civiland military aircraft design, manufacture, maintenance, repairand overhaul. It also organises workers involved in the UKspace industry, shipbuilding, marine and ship repair and defenceequipment manufacturing.

But it is the UK’s aerospace manufacturing sector whichdominates — the second biggest in the world with 17% of theglobal market. Yet a skills deficit exists due to the last oftraining of young people in skilled apprenticeships in the past.

Britain’s shipbuilding industry now relies almost totally ondefence spending in the UK – spending that will be radically cutover the next decade. The industry’s survival depends on beingable to move into non-defence markets such as the verylucrative building of cruise ships and ferries. Yet this will onlybe feasible with state subsidies that enable the re-tooling of theindustry, subsidies which are banned EU competition law

In building a global agenda, A&S needs to go beyond both thenarrow chasing of markets within the EU. Linking up with northAmerica as an alternative only compounds the problem — it isour skills across the world that would be welcomed.

How the European Union destroys jobs

H Vehicle Building & AutomotiveThe repair, design, and manufacture of motor vehicles of allkinds is a critical part of what remains of Britain’s manufacturingeconomy. Despite the virtual collapse of the domestic andnationally owned volume car production, the UK sells much ofSouth America, Russia, China, India, and South Africa. More than75% of vehicles manufactured in the UK are exported and theproportion going to Europe has been dropping fast each year.Now only half of our exports go to the EU — the world wantstruly British cars! But much of our domestic production isowned and controlled by non-British firms, American, European,and Asian, which use our island as an assembly hub. But over ahundred low volume specialist car manufacturers operate acrossthe UK, ranging from global brands to niche players.

The 20 largest specialist firms produce around 25,000 cars peryear by employing 10,000 people. The best British skill is surelynot in robotic assembly but in specialist design and craftproduction. As for components, 80% of all vehicle assemblyoperations could already come from UK suppliers, employingaround 82,000 people.

A massively high volume of cars, previously made in Britain, arenow produced in cheap labour countries. the only way toreverse this is to impose an import levy but such an act wouldbe unlawful under EU rules.

H Motor ComponentsCurrently, about four-fifths of all components required forvehicle assembly operations can be procured from UK suppliersand this is a significant employment base for our members. Buthow safe is this whilst we are in the EU? Already, we have seen asharp downturn in the components sector and EU trade policy,which favours German manufacturers and insists on openmarkets, holds back the potential of what could be a thrivingsector.

H Finance & LegalThe financial services sector must be reformed in a way thatmeets the needs of all in our society and helps the growth ofthe real economy. This should include stronger regulation, taxeson speculative trading, fair pay and performance systems for all,and an end to outsourcing and offshoring.

The financial crisis of 2008 provided an opportunity for thegovernment to acquire a major sector of the industry for publicownership at a very cheap price — ensuring that banking creditcould be directed into the productive economy to create realjobs and services. Instead EU state aid regulations are obligingthe government to reprivatise all the banks bailed out at taxpayers expense — with the jobs and conditions of ordinary bankworkers being massacred along the way.

Britain’s financial services would have been even worse off if wehad been in the Euro and the coalition government claims tohave negotiated a UK opt-out of a new system on banking. Asmore and more of the countries outside the new EU bankingunion prepare to join the Euro, they will not stay outside thebanking union for long. Decisions of the European BankingAuthority and those bodies involved with insurance and financial

services are going to be more and more decisive. Our parliament should be able to change UK-based rules onfinance but it is the 27 governments and the European Parliamentand the unelected Commission that have the task. The danger isthat the EU would love to transfer London’s global financialbusiness to the Euro zone, or even out of the EU altogether.Currently, even British rights to carry out various transactions inEuros are already under challenge. Whilst the manner in whichgovernments have mismanaged the City of London in pastdecades makes it virtually certain that sooner or later hostilelegislation will come from the EU.

H MOD & Government DepartmentsMembers in the Ministry of Defence, the Prisons, Royal Mint, andthe Civil Service should be worried, as should all public sectoremployees, about their future. The contracting of provisions tothe private sector has meant and will continue to mean aninevitable downwards spiral in terms and conditions.

EU policy on merging state approached to prisons rests on badlyfunded infrastructures and massively rising prison populations. EUfree market policy rests on an acceptance of the criminalisation ofwide sections of the population amidst the restructuring ofeconomies.

H Energy & UtilitiesEnergy consumption in Europe has declined during the financialcrisis, while coal and gas-fired power plants have also been hit bya combination of relatively high commodity prices and lowelectricity tariffs. Any transformation towards a low-carbonrenewable energy economy would inevitably affect the utilitiesability to attract capital unless labour costs are lowered andconsumer prices are raised. Countries such as Saudi Arabia andJapan have recently announced massive investment into orgenerous support mechanisms for renewable energy.

With members in every form of power generation, distribution,and retail operations, as well as the UK water industry, Unite’smembers need to be clearer that some big issues are going onaround their heads. Europe’s giant utilities are seeking movementby the EUs political leaders. They claim that there isn’t asufficiently attractive ‘market environment’ for investment in newenergy infrastructures. Containing the related costs whilstkeeping the profits is what they mean. That would entail an

Public services Capitalist instability means cuts

Britain, along with 16 other member states, falls within the European Union’s deficit management programme, and itis therefore important to be aware that expenditure acrossthe whole spectrum of our public services – central and localgovernment, health, police and prisons – must be regulated tobring Britain within the Stability and Growth Pact’s limit of 60per cent of GDP for long-term debt. Thus Osborne’s radical cuts are designed to meet thesearbitrary EU targets that have nothing to do with prudenteconomic management and everything to do with erodingcollective bargaining across the EU in line with the ‘structuralreform’ and ‘flexicurity’ targets of the EU 2020 programme.

Unity!@Unite

attack on terms and conditions across the continent.The EU’s 2009 Third Energy Package stands directly in the way oftaking the industry back into public ownership. It requires furtherfragmentation (such as the separation of generation, grid andsupply) and unbundling to facilitate greater private ownership –steps that have already largely wrecked Britain’s energy industry.

H Community, Youth Work & Not for ProfitYouth and community service workers still within localgovernment and those working for charities, campaigning andadvice bodies, youth clubs and housing associations, have an uphilltask in defending the services they provide from cuts. Winninglong-term sustainable funding in the sector with quality pay,pensions, and terms and conditions is not made easier by thethrust of EU policy.

H ConstructionBritain needs many more big construction projects but the freeflow of labour across the borders of the 27-country bloc, despiteBritain’s high unemployment, makes our construction industrymuch more likely to be reliant on lower cost workers.

When Poland and seven other countries joined the EuropeanUnion in 2004, the scale of migration did not see the impositionof work restrictions. For many employers, the advantages of aPan-European workforce outweigh the acute shortage of all sortsof building and construction skills our nation faces.

Places to study engineering at the country’s universities areunfilled, yet construction booms in the United States, the MiddleEast, Asia,and Latin America are pulling experienced engineersaway from Europe.

H EducationIntroducing more competition in services industries, includingcross-border delivery, is actively being sought. This would lock-inprivatisation as standard and weaken key regulations. If there’s anyobvious lesson from another service sector — the financialindustry — it’s that we need more not less oversight. Rules thatcould potentially have an impact on education, and other publicservices, whether they are explicitly included or not could wellend up being introduced will nilly.

The EU officially favours ‘services domestic deregulation’. That is

to say to ease all rules and measures that governments requirewhen providing a service, such as environmental and health andsafety regulations, to certification and licensing requirements, toapply to any sub-sector, such as education.

The degree of monetisation and marketisation we have alreadyseen in Grovesque education would be as nothing if such‘liberalisation’ ensues. Already in place is the EU ServicesDirective, which requires all EU nations to establish web portalsso anyone who provides a service will have a ‘point of singlecontact’ where they can find out what legal requirements theywould need to meet to operate in the country in question.

H HealthUnite organises every occupational and professional group acrossthe Health sector, including Ambulance Staff, AppliedPsychologists, Arts Therapists, Blood and Transplant workers,Chaplains, Dental Professionals, Health Visitors, Sexual Healthworkers, Healthcare specialists, Mental Health Nurses, NurseryNurses, Pharmacists, Physicists, Psychotherapists, School Nurses,and speech and language specialists.

Since the government has been able to build on past mistakestake the NHS to the brink of death, every single one of theseneeds to fear for the future, unless they hit hard and win masssupport.

Billions of pounds have been wasted on so-called reorganisationof the health service in England. Whilst Trusts have been forcedto make £20 billion pounds of so-called ‘efficiency saving’.

Repeated government denials about NHS privatisation don’t standup to scrutiny.  Eroding nationally negotiated pay and terms andconditions is the first step in what is clearly a plan. The WorldHealth Organization has defined privatisation in healthcare as ‘aprocess in which non-governmental actors become increasinglyinvolved in the financing and/or provision of healthcare services’— just what is happening in Britain.

The strategy is to lay the basis for a strong Anglo-Americanprivate health sector in readiness for the establishment of a singlemarket for healthcare in the EU. Legal judgements, including theECJ ruling on patient mobility, have forced countries to pay fortreatment in other states, the thin end of a very big wedge forintroducing full-blown market mechanisms into healthcareprovision.

H Local AuthoritiesThe level and character of funds from the EU, collected frommember states, that are given to local councils is currently beingsignificantly reviewed. Up to now, the majority of such funding hasgone to the more disadvantaged areas of the EU, but the role forlocal economic development is increasingly critical. The nature ofthe policy is such that most of Britain is now classed as not beingdisadvantaged. If such funds exist, they should be controlled bylocally accountable politicians.

The extension of so-called ‘public-private’ partnerships to allthings will increasingly see firms from elsewhere in the EU assumeresponsibility for providing refuse, leisure, housing, and other localauthority requirements. H

Public services Capitalist instability means cuts

Britain, along with 16 other member states, falls within the European Union’s deficit management programme, and itis therefore important to be aware that expenditure acrossthe whole spectrum of our public services – central and localgovernment, health, police and prisons – must be regulated tobring Britain within the Stability and Growth Pact’s limit of 60per cent of GDP for long-term debt. Thus Osborne’s radical cuts are designed to meet thesearbitrary EU targets that have nothing to do with prudenteconomic management and everything to do with erodingcollective bargaining across the EU in line with the ‘structuralreform’ and ‘flexicurity’ targets of the EU 2020 programme.

How the European Union destroys jobs

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Progressive, effective andmembership driven

UNITE HAS rightly become regardedas peerless in taking on employersand governments in seeking a betterlife for its members. Whilst itsleadership, in the form of theExecutive Council, Deputy andGeneral Secretary has beenprincipled and courageous.

To stay fresh it must be flooded withdemocratic spirit, zealous inorganising both new groups ofworkers and existing trades unionists.Members expect it will beunquestionably incorruptible at alllevels. Throughout, its administrationand bureaucracy needs to be lean andhungry, determined to serve theneeds of its membership at all times.

Unite’s size dictates the need toabsolutely vigilant in maintainingunion democracy. Its future can bemagnificent if it attends to anincreasing problem of too manystructures with too little resourcesbehind them and, it sometimes

seems, local enthusiasm. The focus of authority must never

rest with full-time officialdom butwith the lay member executive,district and regional structures, andindustrial sector frameworks.

The Communist Party’s conceptionof union democracy at all levels isunambiguously based upon theelection of rank-and-filerepresentatives who determinepolicies. Full time officials must workstrictly to the needs and interests ofordinary workers — not their ownpolitics or agenda. Many are asking ifenough been done to ensure this.Certainly, consensus needs to be notjust about making a new union butabout mobilising in defence of it.

But `the union’ is all too often anoutside agency, something membersbring in when they are desperate.Unite needs to build a greater senseof ownership in our union.

Each county, town, and city needsstronger lay democratic mechanisms.Not to diminish the role of ourexisting workplace organisations. Yet

the nature of employment hasbecome fragmented and workplaceshave become atomised. Local districtsneed their own significant funds.

The role of local officials is notsimply to service the needs of themembership. Emphatically, they needto be seen as organisers in their ownright. Their prime function is to buildself-reliant union bodies. Local FTOsshould be purveyors of Unite policyand strategy and developers of rankand file leadership.

Flattening the pyramid by boostingeven more the local leadership ofactivists will mean a better andhealthier democracy. Unite officesshould be where they are needed forthe members they cater for. Theyshould be open and friendly places, inpositions of easy access to members,e.g. in shopping centres and HighStreets.

If you are interested in contactingCommunist Party members in Unite,email: IST@communist-party.org.uk

The kind of union we want!

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