Our relationship with Europe has long been fractious and antagonistic. But the rise of UKIP has shaken up British politics and intensified the debate. With the Tories having been forced to offer an in/out referendum, our future in the EU looks more uncertain than ever before.
Those who would defend the UK’s place within the EU tend to focus on the importance of access to the single market for jobs and investment. Three million jobs, so the argument goes, are linked to our membership of the EU. Much less is said about the role the EU has played in developing, extending and protecting rights at work in the UK. Research released today by the IPA aims to shed light on this important but often neglected area.
Many of the rights that working people take for granted originated not in the UK, but in Brussels. Take the Working Time Directive for example, which guarantees employees a minimum of 28 days paid holiday a year. Before this, there was no legal requirement for employers to offer paid leave and one in four British employees had just fifteen days a year or fewer. EU Directives have strengthened rights for working parents, extended protection against discrimination, and guaranteed rights for a-typical workers – the part-time, temporary and agency employees who are in fact increasingly typical in our modern labour market. Rights for information and consultation at work were introduced in response to EU legislation. These rights have sadly been little-used, but they must be more so if we are serious about deepening workplace democracy.
The EU has given working people real, tangible rights. It has made the workplace a fairer place. Millions of British employees have reason to be grateful for the difference it has made.
By having these rights underpinned by EU Directives, they have been protected from the Coalition’s deregulatory drive, most evident in the Beecroft Report and the assault on employment tribunals. By repatriating employment protection or withdrawing from the EU altogether, many of our rights at work would be vulnerable.
But what impact does this have on our economy? In a recent speech in which he flirted with the possibility of a future outside the EU, Boris Johnson decried the ‘back-breaking’ weight of EU regulations that is ‘helping to fur the arteries to the point of sclerosis.’ According to this argument, the ill-fitting and excessive employment regulation that is foisted on our labour market by Brussels without our say or consent, undermines growth, productivity and job-creation. This, of course, is complete nonsense. According both to the OECD and the World Economic Forum, the UK labour market remains one of the least regulated in the developed world. The dynamic and successful economies of Germany and Scandinavia have far stricter employment regulation. And although some employers grumble about employment regulation, the vast majority see it as a price worth paying for access to the single market.
This argument goes to the heart of what our vision for the European Union should be. For those on the right – if they believe in the EU at all – it must simply be a free-market zone that allows employers to trade across borders but offers little for working people. But for the left, the EU must offer more. By setting common minimum standards across the single market, the EU helps ensure that competition does not take place at the expense of working people. This was a key part of Jacques Delors’ vision for a Social Europe, where ‘close co-operation and solidarity as well as competition are the conditions for our common success.’
The debate on our place in the EU will intensify in the run up to May next year. We must remember that the EU has delivered substantial benefits and important rights for working people in the UK. These are rights that need to be defended. The vision for Social Europe must not be forgotten.
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Nita Clarke is director of the IPA