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29 February, 2012
In calling attention to jobs creation as equivalent economic growth, working people across Europe today led by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) are in a Day of Action in opposition to the European Council’s adoption of a budget discipline treaty.
The decentralised mobilisations are occurring in scores of cities and worksites with a common theme pointed at EU governments and decision-makers: “Enough is enough! There are alternatives to austerity. Employment and social justice are the number one priorities.”
Today’s ETUC Day of Action is taking the form of demonstrations, work stoppages and information postings inside workplaces and government institutions stating that the European summit’s Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance is a straightjacket that will plunge the Eurozone into free-fall recession.
The actions include two demonstrations in Brussels, site of the European Council’s 1-2 March summit where the misguided treaty will intrinsically slash wages and social protections, restrict collective bargaining, and provide even more neo-liberal policies, hardly the remedies for economic growth to assure a sustainable future.
Union leaders, led by ETUC General Secretary Bernadette Ségol, meet with Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Parliament President Martin Schulz at the European Council Building, while a mass rally takes place outside. Meanwhile, members of all Belgian trade unions will protest today outside the Belgian National Bank.
A sampling of other actions today includes a mass demonstration organised by the Romanian national trade union centres between 14h and 16h at Victoria Square in Bucharest. In Rome, Italian labour federations CGIL, CISL and UIL will demonstrate at Pantheon Place at 16h, while Hungarian trade unions will hold a press conference and manifestation.
In Greece, trade unions will take a three-hour work stoppage from 12h to 5h, while even in Georgia trade unions will protest Trade Union Action Day with a rally at Parliament in Tbilisi against their government’s one-sided labour code and the economic harm it brings.
“In mobilising on the same day everywhere in Europe for the first time,” said Ségol, “European trade unions are reacting with anger and exasperation.”
In the UK, British trade unions used the day to gear up their defence of the National Health Service (NHS), which will happen across the UK massively on 7 March. Both the ETUC and Trades Union Congress (TUC) denounced austerity measures that always “fall hardest on the shoulders of the weakest” when public services are cut.