muckles:
Rjan:
muckles:
In fact in the case of the Viking line, the unions were able to stop anything in either Country, due to cross border Union cooperation, until the judgement from the ECJ, stated the fundamental EU freedoms of movement or establishment override workers right to industrial action.
Now while I accept it might not have been the spirit of the fundamental EU freedoms, but it has been a consequence.
But setting aside the particular legal strategy used in this case, I still haven’t understood why it is you think they couldn’t have done the same thing without EU free movement.
If a completely independent shipping line wants to set up in Estonia employing cheap Estonian labour and wants to dock in Finland, what are the Finns going to do to stop it.
Maybe the Viking line could have achieved the same result another way, but I assume they had been through the other options, before going for this one as it was a risky move and expensive as it wasn’t already tested in law, so there was no legal precedence.
It was no more risky than any of the alternatives. And the point is, if they could have achieved the same result another way, then they would have achieved it that other way if they were blocked from doing it the way they actually did. It’s like focussing on the fact that someone used a gun, when knowing about their particular character and determination, they would just as easily have used a knife to effect the same murder.
There are already other lower-wage countries that specialise in shipping elsewhere, such as Greece.
This isn’t about unilateral action taken by one country against another, the Finnish and Estonian unions worked together to stop it, if they hadn’t then the Viking line wouldn’t of had to go to court, they’d just have flagged their vessel out to Estonia.
So I suppose if Viking line was going under and a new line was started in Estonia, then in theory the Unions from both countries could have worked together to stop it or ensure that workers were employed under Finnish employment laws instead of Estonian, which would benefit both countries workers.
Agreed, but that requires some notion of solidarity amongst those workers, and allegiance to their interests as workers in a common industry, rather than citizens of separate competitor nations. If Finland and Estonia were not part of the EU, and were instead taking a very difficult and protectionist approach to trade with each other, it’s very unlikely that you’d have workers in one country demanding to be employed on the (superior) employment terms of another foreign competitor nation - instead, they’d likely be demanding the right to work, and the right to undercut, in a way that favours or improves their national industry’s share of the market. You see that here when the workers of one haulage firm cheer when they’ve won a contract by undercutting another haulage firm which paid better wages for the work.
I presume (correct me…) that the Estonian union’s stake in that dispute, was that they already had members who were employed on Finnish ships, or that the presence of Finnish ships on the sea paying good wages was also upholding the market rate for seafarers on Estonian ships (because of freedom of movement between the ships of each nation).
It’s a bit like when the bosses in Britain attack the public sector, because the unions tend to effective in upholding public sector pay, which in turn upholds wages in the private sector by threatening to drain the best workers out of the private sector if private sector bosses fail to pay comparable wages to the public sector (because workers are free to move and work in either sector).
If this is right, then in the absence of freedom of movement, it is likely that the Finns and the Estonians would have seen their interests as separate, if not in direct opposition to each other.
Rjan:
EU politics can be influenced and captured by the rich and powerful the same as national parliaments, but the higher-level political entities are much more resistant to certain strategies used by the rich.
As I keep saying my argument isn’t about leaving, I haven’t mentioned leaving.
My point is we can’t rely on our politicians to benevolently give or maintain our rights; we have to fight for them, regardless of who it is.
Please give an example of another higher level political entity?
Agreed about the (non-)benevolence of politicians. But certain social and economic patterns influence the ease with which workers perceive what their interests actually are, and their ability to effect those interests once they recognise them.
It’s easy for the more thoughtful members of two worker unions in two separate countries to perceive that they have a common interest against the bosses, but not so for the average worker when nationalist states criminalise that kind of international cooperation (as they eventually do, and must) and routinely indoctrinate workers into a culture of international competition, and when nationalist politicians on each side could go on the TV and condemn the unions for getting into bed with their economic opponents to undermine domestic interests (which, in a nationalist country, will be a credible accusation in terms of most workers’ prior understanding of international relations, past experience of what foreign national economic agendas are, and the existence of previous grudges with foreign nations for their having pursued their own competitive advantage at some other time). The whole point of nationalism (as a policy in a mature nation state, as opposed to a developing one) is to protect the interests of bosses from a united working class.
Other than the EU as a “higher” political entity, the USA is an example of a nation state more recently constituted out of many separate constituent states - hence it’s very name. Modern-day India is another formed from disparate political regions. The USSR was another, although that was not a democracy. Nor are many of the Gulf countries democracies (which are states which were formed by predominantly the British drawing lines on a map with a ruler).
Britain itself is an amalgam of it’s constituent regions, achieved originally through military pacification of Wales, the Scottish Highlands, and originally Ireland - although nowadays there is broad consent from Wales and Scotland for continued union, even if it originally came about by force.
And of course there are several non-state world organisations like the UN which have a more limited mandate (than a full state government has), and are designed to impose international law and regulate the conduct of individual nations, mostly in the military sphere.
Rjan:
muckles:
Lets take the very current example of Uber to show my point, that it’s up to the average worker to fight for their rights regardless of the political system.
In both cases, it was the workers who fought for their rights, not a gift to the workers from some benevolent political system.
At the end of the day I agree - there’s no political system, especially no democratic system, that is inherently kind to workers, regardless of the political views those workers hold and the actions they take.
So are you saying there is an undemocratic system that is kinder to the worker?
No, I suppose not. I was just emphasising that, in a democracy much more so than a dictatorship, the political views of workers do have an influence, and much more immediately - so I agree that workers need to be politically engaged and active.
Whereas a benevolent dictatorship (however it arises, and only for the currency of its benevolence), workers can hold absurd views and be protected from their effects by their lack of power - as, say, children are protected by the rule of their parents. The only problem with that, is that dictators are no more inherently kind to workers, than workers are to themselves if they are disengaged and passive in a democracy.
You also keep talking as if the only government we’ll ever see in this country is a right wing Tory one, or a pseudo Tory in the Case of Blair’s “New Labour” or “Tory Lite” as it should have been named. You seem to have given up and seem to hope that the EU will hand down workers rights, as some benevolent act.
Not really. I don’t see the value of the EU in terms of legal hand-me-downs, I see the value in the fact that it’s a larger political entity that covers more people and a larger area of the marketplace, and is therefore better able to regulate and impose upon the economy in a way that serves the common interest. That’s not to say larger political entities inherently do serve the common interest, but they are the only entities capable of doing so, and must therefore be harnessed.
The lack of a unified political entity is just as harmful in the end, as foreign nations learn the logic of competitive nationalism and optimise their conduct accordingly.
and wanted their Euro war debts paid back quick.
