Norwegian trade unions launched a general strike on Wednesday against the government's planned implementation of the EU Temporary and Agency Workers Directive into national law and the social dumping that it would spark.The fact that nationwide strike action is taking place against a directive that allegedly makes up a large part of the "social Europe" agenda tells us a lot about what this agenda actually delivers.
Norwegians have twice rejected European Union membership in referendums, but the country joined the European Economic Area (EEA) in 1994 and is a member of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) along with Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Oslo's EEA membership means it must effectively follow EU rules on the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour in return for access to the EU's single market.
However a recent opinion poll suggested that 76 per cent of Norwegians wanted their country to remain outside the EU.
Mass trade union rallies took place in around 40 cities including Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Kristiansand, Stavanger, Haugesund, Tromsø, Gjøvik, Raufoss, Fredrikstad, Arendal, Porsgrunn and Sarpsborg.
Unions argue that the implementation of the EU Temporary and Agency Workers Directive will undermine Norwegian labour laws and introduce the large-scale use of temporary and agency workers, forcing out permanent workers and weakening workers' rights and collective agreements.
The directive also gives final authority over Norwegian employment legislation to the EFTA Court, a supranational judicial body responsible for the three EFTA/EEA members Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
This court is very similar to the EU's European Court of Justice (ECJ) which has already made some draconian judgements striking down trade union collective bargaining rights in nearby Sweden and Finland in the Laval and Viking cases.
The EU court ruled that under the EU treaties business rights to "establishment" overrule basic trade union rights, rulings that have not gone unnoticed in Norway.
The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) is demanding that the government reject the directive and introduce laws to ensure that wages and working conditions for those who are hired are the same as the permanent employees.
The Working Environment Act, brought in in 1994, currently lays down that permanent employment is the main rule in Norway, with strict exemptions for the use of contract labour and temporary employment.
Backing the action, International Transport Workers Federation general secretary David Cockroft said Norway's legislation on contract labour and temporary employment was some of the best there is.
"The directive doesn't just risk taking a good law and making it mediocre - it could also strip the rights currently enjoyed by workers and open the floodgates to their replacement by precariously employed temporary and agency staff who will themselves get inferior employment protection," he said.
ITF president Paddy Crumlin said Norwegian unions and workers were stepping up to defend legislation that "does the job it's meant to."
Norway has low unemployment compared with many other European countries and much less use of temporary labour. The growth of temporary and agency workers is uneven across Europe but is inextricably linked to how deregulated the economy is in line with neoliberal EU rules covering the single market.
According to figures released in 2007 the number of temporary and agency workers in Germany was just 8,172. In the UK it was nearly 1.2 million. That number has probably expanded across the EU since then and pressure is being applied to ensure the number of temps grows in Norway.
A recent government-commissioned report by Professor Fredrik Sejersted of the University of Oslo found that Norway has embraced 75 per cent of the EU's regulations over the years and more than 6,000 EU laws have been included in Norwegian law. "We are almost as deeply integrated as the UK," he says.
His report Outside and Inside finds deep implications for Norway's society, economy and democracy and expresses concern at the political consequences of adopting EU policies "without voting rights."
Sejersted calls this a "great democratic deficit," suggesting that as Norway's integration with the EU has intensified, media, public and political understanding has shrunk massively.
"There are few areas of Norwegian democracy today where so many know so little about so much as is the case with Norwegian European policy," he says.
Europhiles of all political hues will no doubt attack Norwegian workers for resisting this silent neoliberal drift as being "selfish," "protectionist" or even "racist" for not allowing the wholesale deregulation of the legal framework covering work practices.
But this strike reveals the deep rift between the democratic demands of Norwegian voters and the machinations of the Norwegian political class and its collusion with the EU to implement a neoliberal economic and social agenda without a mandate to do so.
There are many sectors which got effected
ReplyDeleteLike, Public transport, newspapers, the construction industry, hotels and road freight are among the sectors affected, and some supermarkets are reported to be running short of food as people lay on emergency supplies.
Temporary Employment Contract