PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

President’s column NO TO EU SOCIAL DUMPING Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress unanimously backed an RMT motion opposing European Union trade agreements which pose a major threat to jobs and workers’ rights and would displace local workers. Delegates agreed to fight a proposed EU/India trade deal which would hand big business the right to bring in temporary skilled Indian labour into the EU working on very low wages in their relentless drive for profits regardless of the consequences. The 2009 Lisbon Treaty handed the EU powers to negotiate ‘free trade’ deals under its own name, in particular removing national governments’ rights to veto such agreements. The proposed ‘EU-India Free Trade Agreement’ – now being negotiated in near-total secrecy and could be imposed as early as December – would also give UK and European banks rights to take over the huge Indian financial services market in return for letting transnational corporations (TNCs) control labour movement between India and the UK. This massive ideological shift dressed up as a ‘trade deal’, hands control of labour migration to TNCs, and is euphemistically described by the World Trade Organisation as ‘Mode 4 cross- border service supply’. The WTO neatly divides all trade in services into 4 ‘Modes’: • Mode 1- services sent (e.g. internet); • Mode 2- where the consumer crosses borders (e.g. tourism, or foreign students); • Mode 3 – where a company establishes itself across borders; • Mode 4 – where workers are brought across borders. The disastrous policy of ‘free movement’ of labour within the EU up to now has mainly affected lower- skilled workers. However, EU Mode 4 commitments will cover ‘skilled’ and ‘highly skilled’ workers including archictects, teachers, lecturers, veterinary surgeons, IT specialists and crucially for RMT members railway signalling and electrification engineers. The downward pressure on UK wages that resulted from EU ‘free movement’ is due to be felt all the way up the skills ladder, where wage differentials are considerably larger. The only ‘safeguard’ for workers in the EU-India FTA is the minimum wage. However, most wage levels in the UK labour market are maintained essentially by limited labour supply. For skilled work this is ominous and the UK already has a very high graduate unemployment rate. Yet, the most shocking aspect of the EU-India FTA is the secrecy with which it has been negotiated – the people who will suffer its effects, have not been told the truth about any of this. In the UK there is now tremendous pressure on public services for budget cuts involving widespread job losses because labour costs are a major part of public services. Cost-cutting is used to force ‘outsourcing’ of work to sub- contractors and up to now that has meant ‘offshoring’ jobs to low-wage economies such as India, as happened this year to National Express Call Centre workers at Baron House in Newcastle. ‘Mode 4’ allows a shift to ‘onshore outsourcing’, to reduce labour costs. Work may be carried out by the same workers with a loss of security and benefits, or cheaper migrant workers. The end result is the same: a lower proportion of the service cost is spent on wages and a greater proportion on bonuses, dividends and profits. Public services are part of ‘public procurement’, which is how governments at all levels spend public money. The pressure to liberalise public services (open them up to private competition) and public procurement overall is not just a UK phenomenon. EU rules and directives also demand the liberalisation of ‘procurement’ within the member states. When we hear media reports of politicians promising investment in major infrastructure projects to stimulate growth in the UK economy, including High-speed Rail 2 and Great Western electrification, it is essential that this public investment is not allowed to be used to pump-prime profits of private firms while dumping workers’ pay and conditions using ‘Mode 4’. Alex Gordon RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: october 2011 :: RMTnews 25 Blumenfeld wrote three other novels – Phineas Kahn (1937), Doctor Of The Lost (1938) and They Won’t Let You Live (1939) – and all were well regarded, but it is Jew Boy which brought him to public attention and made his name. He also drew praise for his plays. As well as a drama about the Aldgate-born boxer Daniel Mendoza, Blumenfeld scripted The Battle of Cable Street, staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987, as well as writing in his early life one of the last Yiddish plays to be professionally performed in Europe, The Promised Land, premiered at the Grand Palais in Commercial Road. When he died in 2005 at the age of 97, he was Britain’s oldest working journalist, having written for Stage magazine for more than 40 years. The political and cultural milieu of the East End in which he had grown up – a world of theatres, public libraries, debating clubs, soapbox oratory and political demonstrations and confrontations with Mosley’s fascists – never left him, and he retained his left- wing political ideals to the end. This edition comes with an in-depth introduction by Ken Worpole, author of many books on architecture, landscape and social history. His 1984 book Dockers And Detectives (updated for a new edition in 2008) was one of the first to re-awaken interest in the work of Simon Blumenfeld and other Jewish writers from the pre-war East End. He is a Senior Professor in the Cities Institute at London Metropolitan University. Jew Boy is one of a series of eight classic hardback novels, available to RMT members for £5.99 each, plus £1.85 p&p per title. To take advantage of the RMT special offer go to www.london-books.co.uk/RMT offer.asp For postal sales write to: PO Box 52849 London SW11 1SE Email: info@london- books.co.uk