RMT WINS PENSIONS VICTORY

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: february 2012 :: RMTnews 13 F ollowing a general strike in Norway, the country’s TUC (LO) voted unanimously against government plans to implement the EU Temporary and Agency Workers Directive which would spark widespread social dumping in the country. Norwegians trade unionists argue that the directive is being used to deregulate the labour market in order to allow the displacement of local workers on permanent contracts with foreign agency workers. The implementation of the directive will undermine Norwegian Labour laws and introduce the large scale use of temporary and agency workers, forcing out permanent workers, weaken workers' rights and collective agreements. The directive also gives final authority over Norwegian employment legislation to the Court of Justice of the European Free Trade Association States (EFTA Court), a supranational judicial body responsible for the three EFTA/EEA members Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. This court is very similar to the EU’s European Court of Justice (ECJ) which has already made some draconian judgments striking down trade union collective bargaining rights in nearby Sweden and Finland in the Laval and Viking cases. The EU court ruled that under the EU treaties business rights to ‘establishment’ overrule basic trade union rights, rulings that have not gone unnoticed in Norway. Backing the action, International Transport Workers’ Federation general secretary David Cockroft said that Norway’s legislation on contract labour and temporary employment was some of the best there is. “The directive doesn’t just risk taking a good law and making it mediocre, it could also strip the rights currently enjoyed by workers and open the floodgates to their replacement by precariously employed temporary and agency staff – who will themselves get inferior employment protection,” he said. R MT has won a pensions victory over the Chamber of Shipping by securing the right of seafarers and offshore workers to be included in the National Employers Saving Trust (NEST) established by the last Labour government in the Pensions Act 2008. The exclusion of RMT members from the 2008 Act was uncovered by union officials and the Parliamentary group of MPs secured a meeting with the LibDem Pensions Minister in the Coalition government Steve Webb in November 2010. Following that meeting, the union provided some information to the civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions and in July 2011 the Minister wrote to Parliamentary group convenor John McDonnell with a commitment to amend the Pensions Act 2008 to automatically enroll seafarers and offshore workers on NEST, and, crucially that “the location of the employer would not be a key determining factor in deciding whether an individual is ordinarily working in GB, nor would their nationality or place of residence, or indeed the country of registration of the ship”. Towards the end of last year, the Chamber of Shipping made another attempt to de-rail automatic enrolment for seafarers by releasing media stories that seafarers and offshore workers who did not have a UK bank account or were not paid in sterling would create too many problems for shipping companies to be able to comply with NEST. RMT national officer Steve Todd and John McDonnell met with the Minister to discuss the Chamber’s latest effort to use jurisdiction arguments to allow shipping companies to squirm out of their legal responsibilities to provide basic protections for their employees. During the meeting RMT proved that the Chamber’s objections to automatic enrolment were baseless, as savings contributions to NEST would be paid by the employer, not by the individual employee and shipping companies were well versed in the use of UK bank accounts and the conversion of other currencies into sterling. The Minister accepted these arguments and confirmed that the government will extend automatic enrolment on NEST to seafarers and offshore workers. The Minister is in the process of drawing up the regulations to amend the Pensions Act 2008 in order to make this happen and the Parliamentary group will be closely monitoring this process. The government has asked RMT shipping and offshore members to tell their union if their employer is ducking their legal responsibility to automatically include their staff on approved savings schemes such as NEST. Steve Todd said that it was a significant victory that established a precedent that will assist in other shipping sector campaigns where the Chamber is using spurious or exaggerated jurisdiction arguments, most notably in the campaign to ensure that the National Minimum Wage is paid to workers on all vessels working in UK territorial waters, an injustice that stains the reputation of the shipping industry. “We will continue to work to ensure that all seafarers and offshore workers will have a statutory savings scheme to support them in their retirement years, and step in to expose where wealthy shipping companies are attempting to prop up their profits by side stepping the legal responsibility to provide and contribute to an approved employee savings scheme. “The shipping industry may well have financial and political clout but RMT will always stand up and fight the aggressive lobbying of the Chamber where it infringes on our members’ rights and entitlements,” he said. RMT WINS PENSIONS VICTORY NORWEGIANS STRIKE AGAINST SOCIAL DUMPING Banner: No to social dumping