The general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) David Begg has urged workers who have concerns about the European project to put them aside and to vote Yes in the Lisbon Treaty referendum.
Mr Begg said today it would, in his view, be “a serious error of judgment” to miss the opportunity to give legal effect to the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Lisbon ballot.
The Ictu leader said the charter gives legal status under the treaty to a range of individual and collective rights, including the right of workers to negotiate collective agreements and take strike action.
“It would, in my view, be a serious error of judgement to miss the opportunity to give legal effect to the Charter.
“It would also be illogical to oppose something important to us, even if less than perfect, while we are desperately trying to achieve the same thing in domestic law through negotiations and against implacable opposition. We have to be very hard headed and pragmatic about this,” Mr Begg told the Impact trade union conference in Kilkenny.
“Many people within the trade union movement are disenchanted with the European project,” Mr Begg said.
“They regard the concept of Social Europe as having been put on the back boiler at best, or sacrificed on the alter of the neo-liberalism at worst.
“The experience of the efforts by the [European] Commission to introduce the Services Directive in its original form has left a bad taste. These fears are not irrational for the present Commission is probably the most neo-liberal ever.”
But he said the Commission is “not all of Europe” and its “neo-liberal orientation notwithstanding” it was more progressive on social policy than our own Government.
This was evidenced by efforts to resolve the impasse in relation to temporary employment agencies.
The Irish Alliance for Europe welcomed Mr Begg’s call for a Yes vote in the June 12th referendum.
Chairman Ruairí Quinn said Mr Begg was a “highly respected leader of the trade union movement”.
“His views as expressed today on the Charter of Fundamental rights very much echo my own, which I outlined in detail yesterday in my keynote address to The Forum on Europe.”
Mr Quinn said he was hopeful the trade union movement as a whole would advocate a Yes vote, which he said was “clearly in the best interests of the working men and women of Ireland”.
