50,000 protest new work rules at EU Parliament

Some 50,000 trade unionists, mostly from Germany and France, demonstrated on Feb. 14 before the European Parlia ment in Strasbourg, France, to protest plans to pass the “Bolkestein initiative.” They believe this new directive would lead to exporting service jobs to the countries with the lowest wages, benefits and worker-protection laws and compromise vital services.

Labor protest in Strasbourg, France, Feb. 11.

The initiative, also called the “directive on services in the internal market,” is named after the neoliberal Dutch-origin former Commissioner Frits Bolkestein, who proposed it. The initiative of the European Commission is aimed at creating a single market for services within the European Union (EU), similar to the single market for goods already present. This would eliminate labor laws in individual countries regarding service workers.

In some Western European countries organized labor has won significant wages, protection and benefits for service workers, especially compared with the new EU members from Eastern Europe. These workers fear, with good reason, that the European capitalists will use the new initiative to tear down the existing laws protecting workers.

The directive can also be an attack on the services themselves, as such services include education, health care, and providing water, energy and transportation. Even those workers who demanded only amendments to the Bolkestein initiative wanted these categories omitted from the new rules.

Workers and union organizers said they were encouraged that twice as many demonstrators demanding that the Bolkestein initiative be withdrawn appeared Feb. 14 as were expected (L’Humanite, Feb. 15). The European Parliament passed the initiative on Feb. 16 by a vote of 394-215, but with amendments that made it a less frontal attack on workers’ gains.

The struggle is expected to continue in the individual countries. In the vote, communist and “green” representatives all voted against the directive, along with some socialists.