AS UNEMPLOYMENT rises steeply in the UK it is probably not surprising that protests should have broken out about the hiring of Italian and Portuguese workers at a Total oil refinery in North Lincolnshire. A growing fear of job losses is the essential context to understand the spreading unofficial protests directed against EU laws on workers’ mobility. Sharp disagreements about whether that is a valid interpretation of a complex legal picture make it a difficult issue to resolve.
Matters are not helped by the commitment given after the last election by Gordon Brown, no less, that he would strive to defend British jobs for British workers. It is a highly ambiguous, indeed an opportunist slogan in the context of a single EU labour market, albeit one surrounded by clauses protecting workers’ rights. One of these, the 1996 posting of workers’ directive, was clarified by the European Commission in 2006 and 2007 and then affected by a judgment of the European Court of Justice in December of that year.
The court ruled against Swedish trade unionists who had staged strikes and pickets against Laval, a Latvian firm using Latvian workers for work in Sweden. In another ruling the court allowed a ferry company, Viking, to use lower-paid crews from Estonia rather than Finnish sailors.
According to trade unionists these judgments changed the balance of labour rights and the matter has remained contentious. But the British government denies they are relevant to this dispute. It is also well aware that any endorsement of these protests would jeopardise the position of some two million UK citizens working throughout the EU, who are protected by the same legislation. Legal clarification of the precise rights involved and whether the French company Total has correctly applied them should help abate these protests.
But given the growing fears of steeply rising unemployment that will not be sufficient to reassure the workers involved. They seek guarantees about their own jobs and have a particular animus against sub-contractors willing to use the ECJ rulings for their own advantage. Their protests are being supported by the British National Front and right-wing Eurosceptic parties, although that too is opportunist.
It will probably take a combination of assurances from the company, government pledges on labour rights and trade union commitments to strengthen them to defuse these protests.