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What the EU gives, the EU can take away    » Permalink  |  TrackBack (0)

This won't go down well with many of my comrades on the left, but, here goes.

One of the arguments about the European Union that is often used on the left is that it has delivered social legislation which has mitigated against some of the worst excesses of the monetarist and neo-con agenda. As Will Straw demonstrates here, there are some important rights enshrined within European Social and employment legislation:

• A minimum of 26 weeks maternity leave for women, and two weeks for men

• The Temporary Agency Workers directive which will ensure that 1.3 million workers for these agencies will be given pay and paid holidays comparable to the equivalent full-time employee doing the same job.

• The Transfer of Undertakings/Protection of Employment (TUPE) Directive, which ensures that workers retain basic employment, pension and seniority rights if their company is taken over

• Equality between men and women in the labour market and at work

• Social security and social protection for workers

• Protection of workers where their employment contract is terminated

And this is undeniably true. In fact it is the very thing which gets up the noses of those on the right. They don't mind a free market - in trade and capital at least, although many seem less keen if you suggest a free market in labour - but they don't want all that quasi-socialist regulation and employment legislation. They don't want all that stuff like working time directives, equal rights guff and health and safety regulations, they are all 'burdens on business'. Of course to Jacques Delors and the architects of the Social Chapter this wasn't about protecting workers at all, it was about ensuring that all the members of the capitalist club had a level playing field.

But as I am in favour of many of the rights enshrined within the legislation, you may well ask what my problem is here. Well, let me explain.

The European Union, in my humble opinion, has no real democratic legitimacy. I don't get to vote for the people who pass these directives which then become enshrined in British law. And if the European Union can 'give' me rights, in the same way a right-dominated European Union could take them away from me. If a European Commission became dominated by right-wing states who decided that the most profitable route for the Union was to 'level down' workers rights, then by implication, in the same way the Tories are forced to accept reforms they don't like, a future Labour Government would be forced to remove workers rights in Britain too.

Will Straw, in the post above, actually makes the case that certain employment and social legislation would not have happened in the UK without the 'generosity' of our European benefactors, and that it is wrong for a sovereign elected British Parliament to try to opt out of them.

Well, if we were part of a fully democratic European Union, where we had properly elected MEPs who could introduce legislation in a proper Parliamentary way, with a Parliament with sovereignty over its economic and fiscal policies... maybe. In other words a fully integrated democratic European state, with powers transferred from our Parliament and the Crown and agreed in referendums of the peoples in all the nation state members comprising the Union.

But failing that, no. And if that means we have to fight through trade unions and political parties for our own social and employment legislation, so be it.

Posted by bobpiper on November 2, 2009, 11:41 AM   |  view comments (2) or add another