Frank Little

Councillor for East Central ward on Coedffranc Town Council Learn more

British conditions for workers in Britain

by franklittle on 9 February, 2009

Derek Simpson (general secretary of Unite) is correct: what British workers need is a level playing-field. The Lindsey and Pembroke situations should not be used as an excuse for xenophobia or narrow nationalism. As a Welsh electrician stated on Radio Wales’s “Eye on Wales” tonight, British workers have benefited from the opening of the labour market across Europe. (I should declare an interest here: many of my colleagues in the information technology field contract their services on the continent, and, if I were ten years younger, I would be competing for the same work.)

An EU directive, known as the Posted Workers Directive, is meant to ensure that incomers do not compete unfairly with native labour. They must be employed under the same terms and conditions. Two European Court rulings, known as the Viking and Laval judgments,  have however introduced a loophole. Agreements between unions and management on working conditions, even if agreed nationally on both sides, are ineffective unless enshrined in law.

The answer, as Labour MEP Richard Corbett makes clear, is for our government to legislate in this area, and for the Prime Minister to press the case for consistency with the European Council of Ministers. The situation has been known about since June of last year, but this New Labour government has done nothing. This is not the first time that Gordon Brown’s detachment from the European Union has worked against British interests.

Tony Blair, when he was PM, boasted that  the United Kingdom had the most repressive trade union legislation in the developed world and practically nothing has changed since Gordon Brown came to power. It is hypocritical of Peter Hain to cry “foul” over the importing of contract Italian labour, when he had the power, as secretary of state for work and pensions, to propose legal measures which would have prevented it.

   1 Comment

One Response

  1. Josephine White says:

    You wrote: “An EU directive, known as the Posted Workers Directive, is meant to ensure that incomers do not compete unfairly with native labour. They must be employed under the same terms and conditions.”

    I think you’re wrong there .. the directive states that foreign workers must be paid the national minimum rate, not the ‘going rate’ for the job.

Leave a Reply

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>