Strasbourg, 11/03/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 11 March, the GUE/NGL group at the EP took note of the victims of the Unilever restructuring plan and asked for the 1994 directive on European work committees to be revised. Declaring a profit of €4bn for 2007, the Anglo-Dutch food group is getting rid of 12,000 jobs and closing 50-60 sites in Europe.
After meeting a union delegation from the Unilever group, the GUE/NGL and parliamentarians from other EP groups took the following provisions, explained Francis Wurtz from France, who is president of the GUE: a declaration by several parliamentarians will be signed on the “stakes involved in this fight”; a demand will be made for a debate to be held at the plenary session on Unilever; a demand has been made to “pose the problem involving the necessary revision” of the 1994 directive.
During a press conference, Wurtz explained that they had described this directive when it was adopted, as being 'an empty shell'. His group believes that the directive should be revised in a way that provides strategic information to groups and delegations at the European Works Committees so that they can “suspend the application of the plan”. Resources, including financial, should be given that facilitate a secondary analysis and opportunity for submitting counter proposals.
Ralph Blindauer the lawyer for Miko (ice-cream), a subsidiary 100% owned by Unilever and which is feeling the full force of the restructuring said, “if we had a European directive that had power to suspend a reorganising plan or redundancies until they had discussed alternatives, with a real interlocutor, we would have other instruments for negotiating”. He regretted that to get decision-makers to the negotiating table they were obliged to use the balance of forces rather than the law. The lawyer concluded that they were at the EP to say how Unilever is involved in an illegal agreement and how the company is retrograde and anti-citizen. (L.C.)