The Crisis: the Response of the European Trade Unions

Bernadette Ségol

The unanimous political response to the crisis across Europe today is that of austerity and budgetary discipline. Cutting pay and social welfare, attacking bargaining mechanisms and making employment contracts ultra-flexible: that is the current paradigm, the Berlin/Brussels consensus, offered as the only way forward.

This solution is not working and will not work. It stifles growth and blocks the way to job creation. We can no longer ignore its disastrous social consequences and the rise of nationalism in many European countries bringing into question our essential values based on solidarity.

We need to change the narrative.

A Tide of Inequality: What can Taxes and Transfers achieve?

Malte Luebker [1]

Inequality is a top issue in the public agenda, partly as a result of the financial crisis that helped draw attention to this topic. As banks relied on the support of taxpayers and millions of workers had lost their jobs, people began to see the compensation of bank CEOs – with an average 2010 pay package of $9.7 million in Europe and the US[2] – as obscene.

Those at the top of society have long captured the gains from economic growth. From 1970 to 2008, the annual incomes of the top 1% of US taxpayers rose threefold in real terms from $380,000 to $1,140,000. By contrast, the incomes of the bottom 90% remained where they were in 1970 – at $31,500 per year (in real 2008 dollars).[3]

Minimum Wages in Europe: a Strategy against Wage-Dumping Policies?

Lars Vande Keybus

In numerous countries such as Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, and others, the European Commission (EC) - in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) - has imposed a dramatic policy mix that consists of blind austerity, privatisation and wage cuts. Following the adoption of the notorious ‘six-pack’ in December 2011, it is clear that such policies will become a general rule all over Europe. The ‘six-pack’ sets up a structure in which the EC is granted a role as budgetary supervisor and punisher. The commission has the opportunity to almost automatically punish European Union (EU) members who do not follow recommendations to correct

EU ‘Austerity’ Deal won’t work – Irish Workers face a grim Future

Frank Connolly

The EU summit on Friday 9 December, during which 26 out of 27 member countries agreed on a new intergovernmental treaty including a “fiscal compact” to enforce budgetary discipline on states which breach the 3% deficit (of GDP) limit, will not provide the growth strategy that is necessary to help deeply indebted euro zone countries out of recession.

The fiscal compact proposals will not solve the problems of the euro for the peoples of Europe but will instead “institutionalise austerity” by enforcing an annual structural deficit that does not exceed 0.5% of GDP. A strategy for growth and for a rapid job generating recovery is completely missing. Without such a strategy there is no relief in sight for the stressed countries.

Nor did this summit, dominated by German and French political and financial considerations, include any suggestion of debt restructuring, or euro bonds or any kind of fiscal transfer mechanism to direct resources from prosperous regions to

Global Labour Online Campaigns: The next 10 Years

Eric Lee

In November 2011, the military dictatorship in Fiji jailed two of the country’s most prominent trade union leaders. Following the launch of an online campaign sponsored by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and run on the LabourStart website, some 4,000 messages of protest were sent in less than 24 hours. The government relented, the union leaders were freed, and the campaign suspended. A month earlier, Suzuki workers locked out in India waged a successful online campaign through the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) and LabourStart. Almost 7,000 messages flooded the company’s inboxes, and after only a few days, a compromise was reached.