- Conference
- 2009 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 23 February 2009
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference believes that Social Europe, a series of European directives developed over the past 20 years covering amongst other things employment law, health and safety measures and equality is under sustained attack.
Conference notes that recent rulings by the European Court of Justice, most notably the Laval, Viking, Rueffert and Luxembourg cases, have clearly established that the Internal Market principals of free movement and competition take precedence over long established social and employment rights.
Conference further notes that the so called policy of ‘flexicurity’ is now the official policy of the European Union. However, conference believes that rather than seeking to achieve a balance between flexibility and employment security, flexicurity as envisaged by the European Commission is solely about fundamentally shifting the balance of power in the employment relationship in favour of the employer and entrenching flexible and deregulated labour markets.
However, conference believes that determined campaigning by the European trade union movement, as shown in the recent victories on Temporary Agency Workers and the revision of the Working Time Directive, can halt and reverse this attack on established rights.
Conference therefore urges the National Executive Council to:
1)To continue to oppose any attack on or reduction in any already
established rights stemming from European directives;
2)To continue to work through the TUC, the European Federation of Public
Service Unions and the ETUC to support effective campaigns to defend
workplace rights;
3)Call upon UNISON Labour Link to continue to campaign within the Labour
party for policies in line with UNISON policy in opposition to the Lisbon treaty and neo-liberal policies.
4)Continue to oppose all employment legislation from Europe which allows the exploitation of foreign workers in Britain under rules demanding the “free movement of capital goods, services and labour” within the EU. Successive Directives and European Court of Justice decisions like Viking, Laval, Ruffert Luxembourg and have also been used to attack trade union collective bargaining, the right to strike and workers’ pay and conditions.