26 September, 2011
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) held its first mass mobilisation since a new team took over the 82-member confederation last spring. The 17 September march and manifestation in Wroclaw, Poland, against austerity platforms delivered the obvious: jobs and wages are not the enemy of the economy, but the engine.
Some 40,000 trade unionists, representing national labour centres across Europe, manifested in the southwestern Polish city to meet head on the two-day meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN). They demanded that austerity measures not be part of any revamped European financial integration.
While Member State economic and finance ministers were in Poland to craft greater monetary discipline in crisis-time Europe, unionists and their leaders said better economic governance must come in improved employment opportunities and higher social standards.
The ETUC condemned the European Central Bank, the Commission, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for pressuring Member States “to adopt an overambitious pace of fiscal consolidation, to deregulate job and social protection systems, to weaken and decentralise wage formation and collective bargaining systems.”
ETUC General Secretary Bernadette Ségol said, “We’re here to tell our politicians that they shouldn’t be sawing through the branch they are sitting on.” She said salary cuts and social benefit reductions do not lead to growth and do not reduce debt.
“We believe there are other options,” said Ségol, “such as European (finance) obligations, taxing financial transactions, ending tax havens and tax evasion” and implementing a fair system of taxation. (See the ETUC statement to ECOFIN here.)
The Wroclaw manifestation was held jointly with ETUC’s two Polish national labour centres, Solidarność and the All Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ). The colourful march started at Olympic Stadium and passed in front of Centennial Hall conference centre – venue for ECOFIN – before ending up in Wroclaw’s old city. Throughout, the chants of jobs, workers’ rights, social rights, and solidarity were heard.
ETUC President Ignacio Fernández Toxo, the President of CC.OO of Spain, said neoliberal financial ideology has proven to be a failure and warned that current austerity agendas will not solve the crisis but only deepen it. ETUC Deputy General Secretary Jozef Niemiec, a former engineer from Krakow, Poland, and stalwart of NSZZ Solidarność, reiterated those comments, stating austerity measures “will only worsen the current economic and social situation.”
The ETUC rally was attended by trade unionists from Spain, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovenia, with the largest delegation hailing from Poland, which currently holds the presidency of Europe.