David Cameron was not the only one to visit Brussels this week for last minute talks with Europe’s leaders ahead of the European Council meeting. Trades Union Congress general secretary Frances O’Grady was also in town on Wednesday, seeing European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, social affairs commissioner Marianne Thyssen and trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom. Our colleagues in the European trade union movement were also in contact with governments across the European Union.
Our message to the commission and the rest of the EU was that David Cameron’s agenda for the summit was not ours, and not that of millions of British voters who will have their say in the forthcoming referendum.
On the day that Bombardier announced over a thousand job cuts in Northern Ireland, O’Grady told the European Commission that British workers’ votes will depend on a positive vision of jobs, investment and rights at work. Essentially, the debate is still where it was when Jacques Delors addressed the TUC in 1988 and admitted that no one would ever fall in love with the single market.
The debate about British membership of the EU is focusing too much on the business case for staying in, even though businesses do not get a vote. Working people obviously have some interests in common with business – we all want growth, greater spending on infrastructure and more training.
However, getting British workers to vote to stay in the EU will require a focus on their rights at work. As Conservative member of parliament Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted on TV this week, leaving the EU would risk lots of those rights that we all rely on – like paid holidays and breaks, parental leave, health and safety, and equal treatment for part-time workers.
Earlier in his renegotiation campaign, David Cameron was seriously considering adopting the agenda of self-interested voices in the business community – and eurosceptics like Rees-Mogg – to use the renegotiation to water down those rights, with working time and agency worker rights first in the firing line. Trade union campaigning here at home, and lobbying in national capitals across the EU, took that off the agenda, but we are still vigilant in case he uses the competitiveness agenda to resurrect such attacks on what some people call red tape and we call vital workplace rights.
We are unconvinced that cutting benefit entitlements for eastern Europeans will actually raise wages or deliver jobs to people in Britain. We are not against introducing more of a contributory principle to the benefits system, because that is a crucial element of what working people think of as fairness in welfare. But our polling and union experiences in workplaces and communities shows that people know the problems associated with migration can only genuinely be addressed by an end to cuts to public services and tougher rules, properly enforced, against the exploitation that leads to undercutting.
Cameron’s renegotiation package could also do more to reform the EU so that it is fit for the 21st century. People are worried about the control they have over the European commission and the European Central Bank – they do want more democracy. The Greek experience over the last few years, and Ireland’s before that, was that democracy came second to free market ideology, with devastating effects on poverty and social solidarity.
Whether that is what the prime minister is concerned about is another matter, although he did have the chutzpah to complain about the EU imposing austerity on member states in his original Bloomberg speech announcing his renegotiation plans. We were more concerned that his approach to how the EU handled differences between eurozone and non-eurozone countries was a search for a veto to defend the interests of the City of London.
The prime minister will no doubt claim victory as he heads home from Brussels this weekend. If jobs, investment and rights for working people don’t play a bigger part in the referendum campaign, he may find it harder to win over the British public than his fellow European leaders.
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Owen Tudor is head of European Union and international relations at the Trades Union Congress
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