“Stop worrying about the Maastricht convergence criteria: Agenda 2000 is far worse.” Reagan Scott, Transport and General Workers’ International Officer, gave this message to December’s Report Back of the European Appeal for Full Employment.
The Agenda takes the globalisers’ programme to the heart of the EU. Despite claims from the European office of the TUC, that “best practice” will set the level for Europe’s social and labour policy, supporters of globalisation in Brussels believe that international competitiveness demands a reduction in social security spending and an attack on workers’ rights. Tony Blair’s presidency of Europe could be the start of a step backwards. Euro MPs report pressure from Labour to obstruct social protection and anti-unemployment measures.
In France the governing Socialist Party is fighting the free market model. “Our opponent is globalisation” stated Socialist MP Christophe Cambadelis, during their recent conference. From the 35 hour week (not fully operative till the year 2000) to the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the public sector, the PS has a strategy to improve people’s working conditions. Young workers on state schemes are paid at the minimum wage and given full rights.
In contrast, Gordon Brown’s New Deal considers that the market alone produces jobs. A compulsory morality of work is to be imposed on the young, single mothers, the disabled, and the long-term unemployed. Yet the problem does not lie with the workless but with those who run the economy. An alternative would be to redistribute working time more equally, defend the public sector from privatisation, and set up imaginative forms of employment, such as the state funded “animateurs” who help humanise public services in France.
The TUC opposed the Job Seekers’ Allowance but now seems generally happy with the New Deal for the under 25s. Some organisations for the unemployed are co-operating in the “partnerships” formed to run the scheme, helping send the coerced youth to the “voluntary” sector. Rights and protection are largely absent from a system run at the top by businessmen. In France these guarantees are defended by a large independent unemployed movement. Over Christmas, across the country, they occupied the offices of the ASSEDIC (Employment Agency) to demand better benefits — although the Government has increased money for the over 55s. Modernisers, such as the trade union CFDT leader, Nicole Notat, who runs the main source of dole funds, admire Tony Blair’s measures. But they are a minority, discredited by the Socialists’ experiment with flexibility in the 1980s.
Given the events in France, it is important that the European left unites around full employment, and pushes the progressive aspects of the French Government’s policy elsewhere. The European Appeal for Full Employment, launched by British MEPs, Stan Newens, Hugh Kerr and Ken Coates, proposes a continent-wide reduction in the working week, social investment, and the organisation of the unemployed. It has broad support from the labour movement, crossing over the old barriers between socialists, Communists and ecologists. At the Report Back meeting Ken Coates explained that if all these currents could “stand together” we could “face down all the powers of Europe.” This message must be carried to every corner of the British left.