Brussels, 07/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - Reacting to the debate that started last Friday at the European Council about a “so-called” Competitiveness Pact, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) “firmly states that it cannot tolerate that competitiveness is being abused as yet another excuse to intervene in collective bargaining systems across Europe.”
“This is not a pact for competitiveness. It is a perverse pact for lower living standards, more inequality and more precarious work. It is ignoring all the lessons of the recession so far that public deficits and debt are unavoidable, indeed desirable in a slump, to prevent things getting worse. Instead of writing a debt brake into national constitutions, countries would do better to write the autonomy of collective bargaining and social partners into their constitutions, as is the case in Germany. Europe is heading on a collision course with its social model and its core principle of the autonomy of collective bargaining”, explained John Monks, the ETUC general secretary.
In a press release, ETUC identifies the danger that cutting minimum wages and abolishing wage indexation systems in a few countries (see EUROPE 10309) would only be the start of a process of undermining wage formation systems and the bargaining position of workers and trade unions across the whole of Europe.. (G.B./transl.fl)