Flexicurity, False Promises, and the EU’s Renamed ConstitutionUKWatch.net - 18 Mar 2008A number of recent events have clarified the true nature of the European Union and probably shattered many illusions. At the end of last year, the European Commission adopted a draft health services directive designed to create a “market” in healthcare. This followed numerous judgements on the subject at the European Court of Justice. It constitutes a direct attack on the principles of the National Health Service. The directive was introduced after healthcare was removed from the services directive, which is designed to remove all barriers in service provision and speed up the creation of an internal market within the EU. Britain’s railways suffered a similar fate when they were privatised by the Tories according to EU Directive 91/440. This stipulated the separation of track and operations in order to create a “market”. In early December, the European Court of Justice ruled in the Viking and Vaxholm cases that taking strike action was not, after all, a fundamental right under EU rules. Also in December, the renamed EU constitution was rubber-stamped to great fanfare in Portugal with the new title of the “Lisbon treaty”. EU leaders also adopted the curious word “flexicurity” as a concept. Combined, these events represent the greatest threat to trade unionism, democracy and social progress since the Second World War. “Flexicurity” makes the false promise that, if workers embrace “flexibility”, job “security” will follow. Surely this is a contradiction in terms. The architects of “flexicurity” consist of the European Commission and corporate lobbyists such as the European Round Table of industrialists. The concept is designed to fatally undermine collective bargaining. It demands the abolition of “overtly protective terms and conditions” in contracts which supposedly “deter employers from hiring during economic upturns”. In plain language, this would mean an end to workers’ collective rights. According to the EU: “Stringent employment protection tends to reduce the dynamism of the labour market.” So, presumably, without unions there would be a permanent economic boom. Unite (1) joint general secretary Derek Simpson was right when he said that the concept of flexicurity “hides behind the language of equality to propose measures to force exploitation and insecurity on to every worker in Europe.” As the biggest trade union in Cyprus, PEO, recently declared, flexicurity represents “a very dangerous attempt to smash existing labour laws and gains”, increasing the trend towards “casual uninsured jobs”. PEO’s view is that: “The changes being sought are aimed in reality at easing labour protection rules, the abolition of full and steady employment as well as the marginalisation of collective agreements.” An EU green paper promoting flexicurity said that contractor obligations to monitor employment law among sub-contractors “may serve to restrain sub-contracting by foreign firms and present an obstacle to the free provision of services in the internal market”. It is no coincidence that both the Viking and Vaxholm judgements in the European Court of Justice attack trade union collective bargaining rights in Scandinavian countries, where they are enshrined both in law and in the constitution. This is the social model which is most at odds with the EU where the “smooth operation of the market” overrides any other rights or considerations. In the Viking and Vaxholm cases, Swedish and Finnish unions sought to prevent companies paying foreign labour up to 60 per cent lower wages. According to the European Court ruling, while there is a “fundamental” right to take collective industrial action, such action represents a restriction on the right of freedom of establishment where it makes the exercise of that right “less attractive”. But industrial action is, by its very nature, an obstacle to the activities of a company and free movement. However, the European Court has now declared in that EU rules on the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour gives private firms protection against collective action by trade unions. In other words, an employer’s right to “freedom of establishment” trumps the right to strike. Richard Arthur of Thompson’s, the trade union solicitors, described the European Court’s rulings as “absurd” and “ludicrous” ones which would run roughshod over universally recognised union rights. In fact, Arthur says this is worse than the anti-union laws Britain already has. “Tory anti-union legislation only restricted the right to strike by introducing stringent procedures in order to carry out industrial action. However, the European Court of Justice has now given itself the opportunity to scrutinise the legitimacy and the proportionality of any given dispute and the effect on the employer.” No one should be surprised. Many years ago, in another ruling, the European Court of Justice stated that: “It is well established in the case law of the court that restrictions may be imposed on the exercise of fundamental rights, in particular in the context of a common organisation of the market.” So the human right of withdrawing your labour must not interfere with the “common organisation of the market”. Such rulings are reminiscent of the infamous judgment in 1901 in favour of the Taff Vale Railway against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants for having the audacity to go on strike. The “crime” then was known as being “in restraint of trade”. Today, it is called “freedom of establishment”. Under the renamed EU constitution, currently being scrutinised in Parliament, an EU institution – the European Court of Justice – would gain huge new powers over member states. The constitution also gives the EU a permanent neo-liberal orientation, while Brussels will gain the power to privatise – the main reason for the “No” votes on the constitution in referendums in France and the Netherlands. This was also the reason why TUC delegates voted against the constitution in 2005 and why the TUC renewed its call for a referendum on in 2007. Under Article III-147 of the old constitution, the EU would be given powers to enforce privatisation in any area of economic activity. “A European framework law shall establish the measures in order to achieve the liberalisation of a specific service”. This provision remains under the reform treaty – which is basically the constitution with another name. That is why flexicurity, EU court judgments and EU rules on “free movement” – all enshrined in the renamed EU constitution – represent the most fundamental attacks on working people for a generation. If there is a European social model it is enshrined in flexicurity, European Court rulings and mass privatisation. It should be rejected along with the renamed constitution. Brian Denny is spokesman for Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution. This article first appeared in the British weekly Tribune. (1)Unite is a major UK trade union.
Amnesty International’s War PolicyUKWatch.net - 18 Mar 2008“It’s one thing to keep an eye on the human rights situation in North Korea, China, or Uzbekistan. But monitoring human rights in Britain or Germany would be laughable.” Ludmilla Alexeyeva, doyenne of the Russian human rights movement1 * Amnesty International has a principle known as WOOC, which stands for Work On Own Country. The principle says (roughly) that members of Amnesty International are not permitted, as members, to do campaigning work on cases in their own country2. The lobbying and campaigning that members do has to be directed (primarily) at governments other than one’s own. Thus, if you are a member of the UK Section of Amnesty, you are likely to be fighting for the rights of individuals living in Sudan, in Burma, in France or Bulgaria, rather than for victims of the British government located in the UK. If you are a member of the fledgling branches of the organisation in – for example – Russia, Argentina or Burkina Faso, then you are more likely to be fighting to repeal the death penalty in the US, than to be applying pressure on behalf of (respectively) Russian, Argentinian or Burkina Faso victims. The reasons for the rule are fairly sound: first, the organisation does not want to put members in danger, and criticising your own government can be a risky business. Second, the organisation can better ensure objectivity and impartiality, if people work on issues which do not directly concern them (or their nearest and dearest). Third, human rights violations are not supposed to be any more reprehensible or unacceptable just because they happen in another country than your own: fighting for rights in different parts of the globe is tied in with international solidarity and the universality of human rights. Those are all important principles. But in almost any part of the world other than the comfy regions of the global north, the strictures of WOOC can appear nonsensical – at least for an organisation concerned with urgent matters of life and death, concerned with challenging the power of government in the most effective way, and with working to achieve real change. WOOC is, after all, an upside down view of activism. You see this very clearly in Russia and the former Soviet Union, where real human rights activists are rarely members of Amnesty International, and members of Amnesty are rarely real human rights activists. It is probably the same in other regions, and is not all that surprising: real activists in Russia (for example) are keen to work on the problems created by their own government – the problems which they see all around them – and most of them simply laugh at the idea that rather than lobbying their local leaders, they should instead be sending letters or faxes off to the President of Chad or the Prime Minister of Great Britain. They laugh at the idea that letters addressed to President Putin (now Medvedev-Putin) from the citizens of Chad might alter his behaviour or policies; and they laugh at the idea that rather than protesting about torture in Russian gaols, racist attacks in Russian cities, continuing abuse in Chechnya or corruption in the legal system, they should be standing on the street collecting signatures to protest about the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. You can sort of see their point. The geography of human rights But exactly the same point ought to apply here in the UK, and it is strange in some ways that the so-called human rights activists3 in this comfy region, or in the United States of Europe and America do not see the problem. People in the UK – and not only, as the quote above illustrates – do not in general question Amnesty’s policy, because it is assumed that real human rights violations do not happen in the rich and established democracies (so-called): they happen in the third world (so-called). Here, they are assumed to be no more than a fringe phenomenon, a freak, not systematic and entrenched. That means that any British resident who wants to fight against human rights violations automatically assumes that his or her support is needed most urgently outside the borders of this country. That is a very natural assumption, but it all depends on what you understand by violations ‘happening’, and on how you think it might be most effective to concentrate energies in order that the ‘happening’ does not happen. If you believe that a violation of human rights ‘happens’ where the victim is located, then it is probably true to say that there are fewer violations of human rights in the so-called established democracies (the richer ones, in other words). But if you think that the importance of the happening lies not so much in who the victims are, nor in where they are located, but rather in the location of those responsible for the violation – then that claim collapses. In the UK, for example, real human rights violations can surely be said to ‘happen’ when we fabricate a war in distant lands and destroy a nation (or two). So one problem with WOOC is that it only makes a bare amount of sense to people who assume that their own government is not carrying out systematic human rights violations, of the very worst sort. It only makes sense, in other words, to do-gooders in the richer world, who want to save the world, and who see on their own doorstep neither the cause nor the consequences of the current unsafe, vile, violent world. Because there is a second problem with WOOC: if you did see the cause of the violence and vileness in other regions of the world on your own doorstep, and if you really were concerned to stop it, then you would behave like the real activists in other regions of the world, and you would stop fiddling about with Amnesty and WOOC. From an activist’s point of view, it is much more effective, where possible, for those closest to the cause of violations to try to address that cause directly. Power and influence dissipate with distance, and the further you are from a source of power, the harder it is to influence or deflect it. None of our business WOOC makes absolutely no sense in countries like the UK, where the danger involved in fighting for human rights is minimal. Unless, of course, you think – like Amnesty – that starting wars, fighting wars, failing to clean up after wars, bombing, killing, maiming, destroying physically and mentally those unwittingly caught up in wars, occupying their land, and making off with the proceeds of wars – that all of those are not human rights issues. What does Amnesty think about war? Amnesty International is independent of any government, political persuasion or religious creed. It neither supported nor opposed the war in Afghanistan in October 2001, and takes no position on the legitimacy of armed struggle against foreign or Afghan armed forces4. From All who are not friends, are enemies: Taleban abuses against civilians I wonder how it would be possible ‘neither to support nor oppose’ a war which was unnecessary, which has brought only misery to people in one of the poorest countries on this earth, which was predicted to do so, and which will continue to do so for decades to come – if you really were concerned about human rights. And I wonder how you can condemn the consequences – which are terrible, by any scale, and Amnesty condemns them – yet not condemn the actions of those who brought those consequences about deliberately, with foresight, and who have since failed to secure the most basic living conditions or security for the country they are occupying. Amnesty International can think what it likes, of course, and it can even savour its famed impartiality and objectivity at the expense of potential victims of war the world over, if it chooses. But it should be noted that it is doing so in this country (alone) at a cost of £22 million (about $44 million), taken from individual supporters who have trusted the organisation to tell them where the real human rights offenders are, and to use the funds effectively5. More seriously, for those who are the victims of British policy around the world, that £22 million, and the efforts of Amnesty UK’s 260,000-odd supporters – who now think that they have done their bit for human rights – are thereby stolen from the real human rights campaigns we should be fighting in this country. Instead of campaigning against the violations committed on their own doorstep, by their own government, against the weakest and defenceless of the world, Amnesty International advises that those wanting to ‘protect the human’ avert their gaze, adopt a position neither supporting nor opposing an unprovoked war of aggression, and direct their efforts overseas, to other people’s governments. How fitting, but how tragic, that a country which has, throughout its history, been better at repressing other people than its own, and which has with great efficiency exported its worst crimes overseas, should have given birth to a human rights organisation which serves that purpose perfectly. How inconvenient it would be, after all, to have Amnesty International’s 260,000-odd supporters banging on the door of 10 Downing Street. How much better that they bang on doors in other countries, and leave our warmongers in peace. ————————- Notes: 1. This comment was made when the Russian government announced that it was planning to set up an organisation to monitor human rights in the west (see here for details) 2. ‘The principle intended to establish an objective distance between the Amnesty activist and the human rights concern. Amnesty groups must not ask for, assess, or act upon information about individual cases in their own country.’ From AI UK’s site. The rule has been relaxed slightly since its earlier manifestations, but the principles remain. 3. Very much so-called. In the UK, real human rights activists probably call themselves activists, without the human-rights tag. The human rights armies (who use the tag) are very rarely activists. 4.Of course, they refused to condemn the Iraq war as well. For Irene Khan’s pathetic plea to the Security Council, urging them to ‘put the protection of human rights and humanitarian concerns for the life and safety of the Iraqi population at the forefront of your deliberations’ see this page (and my comments on it here) 5. A lot of the £22 million is spent on gimmicky campaigns, publicity and super-flash websites with interactive, cool ways of getting involved in human rights. A lot of it (of course) is spent on highly paid ‘experts’, managers, fundraising and publicity consultants – and plush offices for all these individuals. As one researcher said, quoted in Stephen Hopgood’s book Keepers of the Flame: ‘I mean, when the people that I work with, when they see this office, my God, it’s… we look like the UN, don’t we? You know. And I can remember being really embarrassed in a sense. When we moved from our shabby old place in Covent Garden and we came here. And that was the embarrassment. I mean, we are working with the poorest of the poor. And the, the most powerless people in the world. and they come here and course what do they think? You know. We are, we are a rich Western organisation.’
Reflections on the MarchUKWatch.net - 18 Mar 2008The power of anti-war movements As I stood by the side of the road in Whitehall, a woman came up and bought a copy of Peace News from me, saying: I’m buying this for sentimental reasons. I used to be a Peace News seller. (In fact, she used to sell Peace News in Charing Cross Road outside Foyles, when the regular seller was off sick.) I wonder how many of us on the march were also there for sentimental reasons. There were thousands of us to be sure. There was genuine anger over Palestine, many more young people than I was expecting, and some controversy over Iran (George Galloway was heckled over his recent remarks over gay rights in Iran) but otherwise, in my view, are somewhat flat tone to the demonstration. It is nothing in comparison to the agony of the people of Iraq, but I think it is worth saying that we, that is the anti-war movement, are still traumatised by the invasion of Iraq. The invasion, in the face of global opposition, was a huge blow to the confidence of what the New York Times called the world’s second superpower. It was a huge blow to democracy. (The blow to the stability and security of the people of Iraq hardly needs mentioning.) What is hidden from us, what is hidden from history, is the story of how we nearly derailed the war. When we go back and look at what happened in 2002 and 2003, what we see is that the North American anti-war movement was strong enough to force President Bush to need Tony Blair; the British anti-war movement was strong enough to force Tony Blair to need a UN Security Council resolution; and the global anti-war movement – particularly in Mexico and Chile – was strong enough to deny Washington and London the resolution that they could craved. The invasion was delayed for months. This delay nearly gave the UN weapons inspectors the time they needed to deal with Iraq’s weapons issues nonviolently (I wrote about this in my book Regime Unchanged). It gave the anti-war movement in Britain the chance to shake the government to its core. Just days before the invasion, the Ministry of Defence was having to draw up contingency plans for not taking part in the invasion, in case the government lost the vote in the House of Commons on the 18th of March. The Defence Secretary was phoning Donald Rumsfeld to warn him of this dire possibility. Tony Blair was telling his children he might be losing his job. The British government was no doubt frightened by the precedent in Turkey, where on the first of March the government had lost a vote on a resolution to allow the US to use Turkish land and air corridors for the invasion of Iraq. Democracy worked in Turkey, but unfortunately it didn’t work in Britain. The movement that was successful in Turkey was made up of people like us, those of us standing by the side of the road – and marching in it – in Whitehall yesterday. (For more on all of this see the latest JNV briefing.)
