Contribution of the Workers Party of Ireland

Dear comrades,

The European Union is a capitalist union. It has championed deregulation, privatisation and the constant and steady erosion of workers’ rights.

Faced with rising unemployment, poverty, social problems and housing crises, the EU instead bailed out bankers and instigated austerity measures to make workers pay for the capitalist crisis.

In the anti-people capitalist EU, the future of workers, male and female, young and old, is continually undermined.The preservation of high rates of unemployment, the reduction in real terms of salaries and pensions, the abolition and restriction of labour and social security rights, the commercialization of health, education, welfare, the destruction of the environment and the abolition of democratic rights and freedoms are the consequence of the positions of the European Union.

We are clear that the European Union does not act in the interests of the peoples of Europe. It acts unequivocally in the interests of the monopolies and continues to strengthen its characteristics as an imperialist economic, political and military bloc resolutely opposed to the interests of the working class and peoples’ struggles.

The EU is an imperialist centre which, in common with the US and NATO, supports aggression, increased militarisation, intervention and war. The European Union’s so-called “Common Security and Defence Policy” is a dangerous instrument for war and intervention in the service of imperialism.

The question of war is, of course, inseparable from the question of workers’ rights. In situations of imperialist war, it is the working class which pays the price. History is rife with many examples and today the workers of Russia and Ukraine are paying the heavy price of imperialist war.

Ireland, while ostensibly a neutral country is in reality a part of this imperialist alliance. It became a party to the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy.

The involvement in Pesco and NATO’sso-calledPartnership for Peace undermines any pretence at neutrality and places Ireland at the service of imperialism.

Despite the genocidal warwaged by Israel against the Palestinian people, the European Union continues to engage in its biased and partisan relationship with Israel and ignores the longstanding Israeli violence and repression against the Palestinian people.

The violation of workers’ rights across Europe is increasing. This is in the context of how the European Union never tires of telling the people as to how the EU allegedly improves workers’ rights.

The European Union fails to protect trade union rights and, in fact, permits severe restrictions on the right to organise in trade unions. Trade unionists are faced with obstruction, victimisation and discrimination in their struggle to organise workers.

The rights of mobile workers in the European Union are denied. These workers are exploited and abused. The EU process of deregulation and the so-called flexibility of labour has led to low wages and precarious employment.

The posting of workers has become a transnational low skilled labour market. The demand for cheap labour within the European Union capitalist member states leads to the persistent violation of labour and social rights. Meanwhile, companies which have been accused of violating workers’ rights have received billions of euros in EU funding. These include Ryanair, Amazon and Ikea.

The European Union,through its actions and its legal and policy framework has obstructed the development of measures to protect and advance the balance between work and family life.

Ireland, which is an active EU member state, remains in violation of workers’ rights. For example, it has been criticised for failing to protect all its workers equally and appropriately and it has been noted that in the current cost of living and housing crisis, people working long hours at minimum or low wages with precarious job security, often lacking the right to strike or unable to access the protection of a trade union, are extraordinarily vulnerable to poverty, mental health problems and homelessness.

EU legislation does not cover minimum standards for key labour rights that should apply to all workers under international labour standards such as protection from unfair dismissal or payment of compensation and disability benefits in the event of accidents at work. There are also particular difficulties facing undocumented and migrant workers.

The EU proclaims that membership of the European Union involves acceptance of the so called “four freedoms” – of goods, capital, services and people. A number of cases in the Court of Justice of the European Union Have illustrated the true priorities of the European Union.

The Holship case clearly illustrates the ways in which the EU treaty can be relied upon by employers to undermine a long-standing collective agreement. This case exposed the rule of the CJEU in rendering the right of trade unions to take collective action subject to the requirements of the “four freedoms”. This case arose when the Danish company, Holship, challenged the right of Norwegian dock workers to conduct a boycott where the Danish company wished to act in violation of a collective agreement. The Norwegian court found the boycott illegal under EU law having regard to the four freedoms. The case was then referred to the EFTA Court which determined the case on the case law of the CJEU in the previous cases of Viking and Laval (which both concerned a boycott). Accordingly, the EFTA court determined that the collective agreement and boycott was a restriction on the “right to establishment”, in effect regarding trade union rights to be subordinate and subservient to the demands of the capitalist market.

The caselaw of the CJEU threatens fundamental principles of freedom of association for workers and their unions and the protection of terms and conditions through collective bargaining. In Ruffert the European Court stated that applying the minimum rate of pay within the meaning of the Posted Workers Directive may place a restriction on the free movement of services and held that a Member State was not entitled to impose on undertakings established in other Member States a rate of pay such as that provided for by the collective agreement  The Luxembourg case also demonstrated that even where a bourgeois state imposes a public policy to assist workers in relation to rest periods that may be contrary to the interests of the monopolies and EU law.

These decisions underline the reality of workers’ rights within the EU. The EU reality is that the freedom of capital will always triumph over labour. It enables employers to dismantle collective bargaining rights without consideration for standards long established, for example, by the International Labour Organisation.

These cases which record the tradition of European Court cases which prioritised employers’ free movement of services over workers’ rightstake place in the context of developments leading to the curtailment of collective bargaining and collective action. These cases had profound consequences across Europe. This involved the depression of wages, concerns about health and safety and loss of access to jobs. Member States were complicit in these measures so as to promote foreign direct investment leading to further exploitation of workers.

These cases demonstrate that the freedom of capital and its relentless pursuit of profit will always win out over the rights of workers under EU law. In the European Union workers rights are subordinate to the requirements of capitalist competition. This is the reality which exposes the European Union’s false proclamations of labour protection and workers’ rights.

In recent months the Workers Party of Ireland has actively campaigned against privatisation; the introduction of water and services charges; the reduction of welfare benefits; proposals to remove free travel for older people; attempts to make working people and their families pay to see a doctor; payment for prescription charges and payment for essential public services.

Our Party has opposed the attacks on education, public housing, publiclyfunded services, the arts, libraries, museums, leisure centres and parks which have become targets for the withdrawal of funding or the introduction of charges.

The Workers Party of Ireland took an active part in the recent trade union generalised days of strikes and industrial action in support of workers’ rights, pay and conditions and stood with workers, including teachers, doctors, nurses, health and social care workers, roads maintenance teams, transport staff and others. Our Party has also actively, and successfully, worked to support workers who have been victimised for asserting their rights.  

The EU is the project of capital. It exists to guarantee undistorted competition in the market which involves dismantling the state sector and promotes the privatisation of industries and services, including essential services such as health, education and water.

The EU serves the interests of the monopolies. It cannot be reformed.

The European elections will allow our parties to set out our positions:

• To oppose the European Union of capital, the monopolies and war;
• To fight for a Europe of peace, social justice, workers’ rights and socialism.

 

Workers Party of Ireland