European Court of Justice and the Viking and Laval Rulings

Enrico Tortolano says the case for Leave is stronger than it has ever been.

There is also the vital issue of EU case law. It is impossible to ignore this, not least because past ECJ rulings have inevitably become interwoven with British legislation and legal decisions. Britain’s courts have incorporated European Court of Justice (ECJ) decisions into their own jurisprudence and to attempt to unravel this will present a variety of problems. The ECJ Viking and Laval rulings illustrate how employers’ rights trump workers’ rights in the EU.

In December 2007 the ECJ judged in the Viking case that the International Transport Workers’ Federation and the Finnish Seafarers’ Union were in breach of Article 43 of the Treaty that gave businesses the right to freedom of establishment in any country of the EU.

The Laval case followed, it ruled that employers were not required to observe more than minimum terms and conditions in ‘posting’ workers from one member country of the EU to work in another where more beneficial collective agreements had been previously agreed between the trade unions and the employers.

In the Ruffert 2008 judgement, the ECJ ruled that contractors were not obliged to observe collective agreements unless it could be proven that they were ‘universally applicable’. It claimed that under Article 49 of the EU Treaty, higher rates of pay would mean ‘an additional economic burden that may prohibit, impede or render less attractive the provision of their services in the host member state’.

These cases make clear that the rights of workers enshrined in both the Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, are entirely subordinate to the economic freedom and interests of employers and multi-national companies. There is an urgent need to build solidarity amongst the workers of Europe.

The virulent attacks on the workers in Greece and Portugal by an unaccountable Troika of technocrats has shown the EU to be the antithesis of democracy: decision-making is centralised and decisions are in the hands of an unaccountable technocratic elite.

Even the former unelected head of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, outlined in 2007: “… Its (EU) core is undemocratic and distant, a threat to all those living in its shadow”.

SOURCE: http://tuaeu.co.uk/?page_id=846

THANKS TO IRISH COMRADES FOR PRODUCING  PAMPHLET BELOW ON EUROPEAN UNION AND WORKERS RIGHTS BELOW - PLEASE CIRCULATE

http://www.people.ie/trade/lux.pdf

SEE ALSO : http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/the-european-union-eu-is-not-member-of.html

Tata Steel Wales - Seize the Time to Occupy the Steel Works and Start the Process of Setting up a Welsh Steel Co-operative run by the workers

Tata Steel Wales - Seize the Time to Occupy the Steel Works and Start the Process of Setting up a Welsh Steel Co-operative run by the workers says Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr

John Boyd writes:

Steel plant workers in Port Talbot are being persuaded by Laurence Platt to occupy the plant to keep the furnaces, and blast furnaces from going out.

They should ensure order books don't go to steel plants within the EU.

What has to be made clear we had a steel industry until it came under the control of the European Coal and Steel Community with quotas and a EU Commissioner who was a steel baron.

The ECSC was the first EU treaty and has been folded into the Lisbon Treaty by which we are ruled.

We all need to support these workers and to obtain a massive vote to leave the EU to end the interference by the EU, control capital, our borders and carry out laws and policies in the interest of workers, jobs and rational development of Britain outside the EU.

Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr says that waiting for a top down solution will be fatal to Steel making in Wales.

Welsh Workers taking things into their own hands first by an occupation as a prelude to setting up Welsh Steel Co-operative is a route while having its risks is less risky than doing nothing and waiting for the industry in Wales to die before our eyes.

SEE ALSO: 

http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/the-tory-attempted-murder-of-welsh.html

http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/port-talbot-bail-it-out-by-david-powell.html


http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/what-people-in-wales-should-know-about.html

http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/indias-tata-steel-said-saturday-that.html

Nota Bene

Study : Steelworkers Co-operatives in USA.

http://newint.org/columns/essays/2010/09/01/modragon-co-op-united-steelworkers-union/

Also the phenomenon of fabricas recuperadas ("recovered factories") is not new

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management

The European Union (EU) is not a member of the Council of Europe and, accordingly, it is not bound by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.

The Neo Liberal European Court of Justice

Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr have found confusion among some people about the European Court of Human Rights established in 1959 which was established by the Council of Europe and the European Court of Justice established in 1952 to serve the emerging European Union then in its European Coal and Steel Community incarnation.

In particular we find some of the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights favourable to ordinary people but the European Court of Justice in the Viking and Laval Cases  in particular showed its anti working class prejudice like the other institutions of the Neo Liberal European Union from European Commission to European Central Bank

The European Union (EU) is not a member of the Council of Europe and, accordingly, it is not bound by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights hence some occasional good judgements from European Court of Human Rights

SEE ALSO: http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/sos-save-our-sovereignty-campaign-vote.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/six-things-you-should-know-4370967

India's Tata Steel said Saturday that Britain's Serious Fraud Office is investigating a lapse in procedures at its steel-making site in Yorkshire, as the group seeks to sell its UK operations.

Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr says the more light shone on Tata Steel the better - fraud in UK is now being exposed but we have exposed much worse here 

Tata Steel Welsh assets  should be put in the hands of a Welsh Workers Steel Co-operative and belong to the Welsh people - 200 years of building an Iron and  Steel Industry in Wales should not disappear because our Industry passed temporarily into the hands of a Indian Comprador Capitalists who have much Indian blood on their hands.

India's Tata Steel said Saturday that Britain's Serious Fraud Office is investigating a lapse in procedures at its steel-making site in Yorkshire, as the group seeks to sell its UK operations.

In a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Tata confirmed media reports of an SFO probe, saying it notified fraud investigators after discovering the problems in 2015.

"...During an internal audit conducted by the company, certain inappropriate testing and certification procedures at the South Yorkshire-based Speciality Steels business were identified," Tata said in the filing, signed by company secretary Parvatheesam Kanchinadham.

Tata did not specify the issues, but the UK's Daily Telegraph said police were probing allegations staff may have falsified certificates detailing the composition of its steel before sale.

Tata said that after discovering the problems it immediately stopped the improper practices, alerted more than 600 direct and indirect customers and notified bodies including the SFO, which has opened a criminal investigation.

"Since this initial notification Tata Steel has been cooperating fully with the Serious Fraud Office on their investigation," Tata said in the filing.

Tata will start the process of selling its British steel assets by Monday, the UK government's Business Secretary Sajid Javid said earlier this week after holding talks in Mumbai.

Javid has said his government will make every effort to secure a serious buyer for Tata's Port Talbot plant in Wales and other assets, with up to 15,000 jobs put at risk by the sale plans

Source AFP

SEE ALSO:

http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/what-people-in-wales-should-know-about.html

EU Membership Means No Re-Nationalisation

Public ownership of gas and electricity is destined to become a cherished aim of the Labour Party. For years under privatisation, the swindling of the consumer has gone hand-in-hand with outrageous profit-taking by the corporate giants, to the loss of the public purse.

Far from helping customers through keen competition, the main effect of energy privatisation has been – like austerity – a redistribution of wealth from the have-nots to the well-to-do.

What a pity, therefore, that Labour cannot renationalise it!

Britain is a member of the European Union (EU)  and as such bound by the EU Treaties.

Indeed, every British court is duty-bound to enforce every EU law in preference to any conflicting British statute. Under Article 106, the EU prohibits public monopolies exercising exclusive rights where this violates EU competition rules.

The EU’s Court of Justice has interpreted Article 106 as giving private companies the right to argue before the national courts that services should continue to be open to private-sector competition.

Nationalised services are prima facie suspect and must be analysed by the judiciary for their “necessity”.

Thus the EU has given companies a legal right to run to court to scupper programmes of public ownership.

The fact that EU law has this effect may seem astonishing. Many on the Left seem unaware of it.

Those fond of the EU tend to go into denial over it.

Despite Greece, there is a tendency to displace the EU’s neoliberalism onto the nascent Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: “EU good, TTIP bad”, so the chorus goes.

Yet the consensus that EU law really does preclude renationalisation is pretty overwhelming.

 Legal scholars regard the jurisprudence surrounding Article 106 as

“revolutionary”, since it reverses “the decades-old presumption…that Member States are free in principle to determine their preferred system of property ownership”. 

Even Polly Toynbee endlessly reiterated that EU competition law would make NHS privatisation irreversible, though curiously this didn’t dampen her pro-EU ardour in the long term.

Furthermore there is scant prospect of Article 106 ever being repealed.

To do so would require the common accord of all the governments of the EU Member States.

You’d only need a single neoliberal government to veto such a Treaty change.

For good measure, from the 1990s onwards there was a surge of EU liberalisation directives opening up gas, electricity, transport, telecommunications etc to private sector involvement.

Fat chance of a Labour Britain getting these repealed either: to do so would require a “qualified majority” of Member States.

Labour therefore faces a choice: dump the EU or dump renationalisation. Whatever choice it makes, the fact that EU membership outlaws renationalisation needs to be fully understood throughout the Party and labour movement.

Danny Nicol is Professor of Public Law at the University of Westminster and author of The Constitutional Protection of Capitalism

SOURCE:
http://www.leftfutures.org/2015/09/eu-membership-means-no-renationalisation/

Study :

The European Super State Project

http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-nature-of-european-union-and-its.html


Why the Crachach Love the European Union

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-european-union-green-nazi-tycoon.html

Public Banking for Wales

http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/european-union-membership-not-helpful.html

Trade Union Rights

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/letter-from-norwegian-workers-to.html?spref=fb

Euromania

http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/euromania-uncovering-eu-by-peter-vlemmix.html

The World of Imperialism

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/vi-lenin-on-slogan-for-united-states-of.html

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/usa-lenins-imperialism-brian-becker-and.html

What People in Wales should know about Tata Steel but you never hear on the BBC or the Corporate Media

Tata Steel and Salwa Judum 

 Only days after the Chhattisgarh government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tata Steel, a vigilante militia was established (known as the Salwa Judum). 

Organised by the state government and funded by Tata Steel the Salwa Judum initiated a ground clearance operation to eradicate the local forest peoples so Tata could set up its steel plant. 

The Salwa Judum burned, raped and murdered its way through 600 local villages forcing 50 000 people into police camps and displacing a further 350 000. 

To keep these displaced persons in check, the government then deployed 200 000 paramilitary troops to the region to make sure that it remained a stable climate for investment and economic growth.

To find our more about how to 
STOP THE WAR ON THE PEOPLE OF INDIA  VISIT ;
https://www.facebook.com/Stop-Indias-War-on-the-People-167572753339209/?fref=ts

Port Talbot: bail it out, by David Powell of New Economics Foundation

Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr welcomes this article by David Powell of the New Economics Foundation even if we are skeptical about the top down strategy proposed our views are contained in the article The Tory attempted murder of the Welsh Steel Industry.

The UK steel industry is again at crisis point with Indian company Tata set to sell its British steel businesses. Attention is focused on its iconic plant at Port Talbot in Wales where 5,500 people are employed – although it’s grim news too for the other plants across the country.

Steel workers are already reeling from huge job losses over the last few months. In October last year the liquidation of Thai company SSI’s UK arm led to the mothballing of its Redcar plant, taking with it 2,200 jobs.

Tata has already axed 1,000 members of its workforce earlier this year.

At the time of writing, the government was considering – or at least not ruling out – stepping in to bail out the Port Talbot plant. This is the minimum that it should do.

The big question is economic

Is the continuation of the plant viable and profitable? And how long would any bail out last until we know? UK steel has become unprofitable thanks to a glut of Chinese steel on the market, which has hugely depressed prices.

Currently, the main solution that has been proposed is for higher tariffs to be imposed on steel imports to the EU – as they have been in the US.

Until this is addressed, any new owner – whether private, cooperative or nationalised – risks perpetual buffeting by global forces. But the UK has been criticised for actually resisting attempts by the EU to crank up tariffs.

But whatever happens, the UK’s steel workers need the government to be as proactive in helping the steel industry as it was in bailing out the banks in 2008.

So how could a bail-out help?

Importantly, a bail-out would create much needed time to find a solution that works for the steel industry and our economy. And it would create time to find a new private owner – Tata’s plants in Scunthorpe and Lanarkshire are already reportedly attracting interest from new suitors.

More excitingly, it’s possible that a very different way of running the plant can be found – like a new cooperative model of ownership, as NEF set out in our 2013 report with the TUC outlining an industrial strategy for Wales.

But a bail-out also offers a chance to reorient how a troubled sector fundamentally works. Following the financial crisis in 2008, the nationalisation of RBS presented an important (but missed) opportunity to set the bank on a new path, and reform our broken banking sector. We proposed that breaking RBS up into local savings banks would help diversify our banking system and demonstrate that the finance sector could, and should, work in the public interest.

We need a proper plan for UK industry

The root causes of the UK steel crisis go back decades, during which successive government’s attention has focused on one sector: finance.  While the interests of the City have been prioritised and the freedom it demanded granted, the government has been forced to step-in to mop-up the crisis that resulted. And the dominance of finance has hurt other sectors, like steel – for example, the strong pound it has led to has hurt exports.

While the Chancellor was busy trying (and failing) to take the UK to court for capping bankers’ bonuses, areas like Port Talbot have been left to stand or fall on the decisions taken dispassionately in boardrooms on the other side of the world.

We need proper, sectoral and regional industrial strategies. This challenge is very real in areas beyond the steel sector – for example the need to wean high-carbon areas like Aberdeen from fossil fuel jobs to a sustainable, employment-rich future.

Vulnerable industries desperately need leadership and a hands-on approach from government – particularly if they need to transition fast to ultra-efficient processes or futureproof green energy industries.

The government has to help Port Talbot – now. But bailing out a proud and nationally important industry isn’t really a plan: it’s what you do when you’ve actively decided not to have a plan, until it’s virtually too late.

SEE ALSO : 

http://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/the-tory-attempted-murder-of-welsh.html