Brussels, 04-05 December 2006
To be checked against delivery
The ETUC subscribes to the Decent Work agenda set down by the ILO in 2000, the four strategic objectives of which (including gender mainstreaming throughout) are
- Creating jobs
- Guaranteeing rights at work
- Spreading social protection
- Promoting dialogue and conflict prevention.
It can make a major contribution to realising the UN Millennium Development Goals. The European Union, as a leading member of the world community, can make a real difference by implementing it - both at home and in promoting it in its multilateral and bilateral relations.
This Conference session is to discuss the promotion of decent work for all in the EU and in the world: mobilising internal and external policies. Other sessions will deal more specifically with development, trade, and other aspects. But they are of course very closely related, and indeed one of the points we make consistently is that the coherence between the various policy areas must be ensured.
We have recently made known our disquiet at the direction taken by the Commission in moving towards Free Trade Agreements, which appear to us to decouple trade from social and environmental considerations.
We note the conclusions on Decent Work of the Social Affairs Council last Friday. There is willingness to promote employment, social cohesion and decent work for all in all EU external policies, bilateral and regional relations and dialogues. But the real weight of the EU relies on trade, and we do not discern the same willingness to use that asset to promote the agenda. Our trade agreements must all be made vehicles to promote our values, be they bilateral or in the WTO context. The Economic Partnership Agreements currently being negotiated with ACP countries are of particular significance.
Europe's values are set down in particular in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is our point of reference. International instruments, particularly the ratification and scrupulous application of ILO Conventions, are an important complementary feature which should be embraced by all EU member states.
We welcome the Council's emphasis on the importance of involving the social partners, which is a central feature of the European social model. In this context, we reiterate our request that any moves towards FTAs, and notably those mooted with ASEAN, Korea and India that have been prioritised, be discussed in advance with the European trade union Movement.
We agree with the Council that Corporate Social Responsibility is complementary to legislation and collective bargaining and should take into account internationally agreed standards. It should not be left to business alone to take initiatives in this field, and action by the legislators is required.
As well as acting decisively on the world stage, the EU also need to promote decent work at home.
But the Lisbon Agenda Strategy for growth and employment relaunched in 2005 prioritises competitiveness over social cohesion and environmental improvement. It leaves it to national governments to implement reforms. The result is competition downwards in Europe, holding back wages, reducing labour rights, decreasing taxation on profits. In doing so, Europe is in danger of competing itself out of internal demand and into a precarious workforce. Europe is also missing out on the opportunity to provide a real and sustainable answer to global competition by working together by investing together in research, innovation, knowledge for everyone, decent jobs with fair working conditions and a dynamic economy. The support of the European trade union Movement for a process apparently being diverted from its agreed course can by no means be taken for granted.
The European Social Agenda, downgraded from a Social Policy Agenda, was published as a support to the new Lisbon objectives. Its strap line was “A social Europe in the global economy: jobs and opportunities for all”, but we missed a concrete reference to the quantitative and qualitative objectives that must underpin social policy.
We can't talk about the decent work agenda in a vacuum. Too often in the European institutional system, we have worthy declarations that do not correspond to the realities as seen by working people. This fosters disengagement, or worse hostility, towards European construction
A case in point is Volkswagen. We want specific action on this and have called for the European Globalisation Fund to be available in cases of restructuring within Europe. The fund should be used consistently with the Structural Fund programmes, with monitoring systems involving the social partners, to review economic and social changes at national, regional and local level and to anticipate future developments in the economy and the labour market.
More widely, there is an urgent need for an active and dynamic European industrial policy based on strong public and private investment, research and innovation. The benign neglect approach currently prevailing can only lead to employment disasters such as the one we are witnessing at VW Forest. The best labour market policy lies in good economic and industrial policies.
As a first step in promoting the decent work agenda worldwide, we need to set common employment standards across Europe, to stop companies setting workers in different countries in competition with one another.