Brussels, 27/02/2008 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament employment and social affairs committee met in Brussels on Tuesday 26 February to discuss the Court of Justice rulings in the Viking and Laval cases. These rulings, which set limits on the right to collective action, provoked lively debate among MEPs and trade union and employers' representatives, with, at the heart of the issue, the concertina-ing of social and economic Europe.
The Court's rulings in the Laval (C-341/05) and Viking (C-348/05) cases could provide “a licence for social dumping”, in the opinion of John Monks, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). He said that these rulings gave priority to freedom of movement over the “fundamental right” of recourse to collective action. MEP Valdis Dambrovskis (EPP-ED, Latvia) felt, however, there had to be protection “for a company which posts workers (Ed: in another member state) against arbitrary and unjustified demands of trade unions”. The Court rulings were an attempt to find a balance between these priorities, he argued. In the two rulings, the Court set out the limits on the right to collective action that trade unions could take to obtain a level of remuneration for workers posted from one country to another (see EUROPE 9568 and 9562). However, it did not make a general principle of it, pointed out the expert Jonas Malmberg of the University of Uppsala, Sweden. “(The) Laval (judgment) does not generally prevent trade union action against foreign service providers, but limits the demands trade unions can put forward,” he said. The Court stated that collective action could be justified to safeguard working conditions, but added that, in the cases in point, action seemed to have gone beyond the minimum required to achieve the objective. It should be noted that it is only an issue in member states where two conditions are met: there is no minimum wage, and collective agreements on wages are not binding in law. It is only then that it is up to trade unions to have respected conditions that have no legal status. Only Sweden, and, to a lesser extent, Denmark are affected, therefore. In Sweden, there is already intense discussion between the parliament and shareholders, both social and industrial. (C.D.)