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23 May, 2011
The European Trade Union Confederation’s (ETUC) 12th Congress in Greece from 16-19 May adopted the “Athens Manifesto,” calling for necessary financial governance and tax changes in a social Europe. The manifesto also rejects deregulation and flexibility measures as false solutions to the sovereign debt crises hovering over several European countries – including Greece.
Some 500 delegates from 36 European nations attended, with those delegates consisting of representatives from 82 national labour centre federations and 12 continental union federations.
The manifesto states that wages are not the enemy of the economy, but rather the motor of it and that the autonomy of social partners in collective bargaining must be respected. “The ETUC will fight for a European New Deal for workers against austerity governance and for European economic governance that serves the interests of the European people and not the markets,” ETUC said. It places a priority on combating youth unemployment and a priority to improve the working conditions of all European workers.
Bernadette Ségol
The confederation said: “The ETUC commits to demand effective and stringent regulation of financial markets and ratings agencies and to campaign and claim that fundamental social rights take precedence over economic freedoms and consequently enshrine this principle in a Social Progress Protocol in European treaties, in a revised Posted Workers Directive and in internal market regulation known as Monti II. An action day has been approved to promote the Manifesto's aims.”
The Congress also debated a minimum wage and pay coordination across national borders. Outgoing ETUC Secretary-General John Monks set the tone for the week on opening day, 16 May, by saying, “Austerity is not working.”
In a letter to European finance ministers that accompanied an emergency resolution at the start of the Congress, Monks wrote, “The ETUC calls on you to immediately change course. Brutal austerity, both in terms of public finance and in terms of wages, is not working but instead undermining the economies of countries such as Greece and Ireland.”
EMCEF Delegation at ETUC Congress
In a secret-ballot election, the longest-serving member of ETUC’s executive committee, Bernadette Ségol, head of Uni Europa, was elected Secretary-General to replace Monks. A French national, she previously worked at the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation (ITGLWF) and at one of Uni’s predecessor unions, the banking and commerce federation Euro-FIET.
Elected Deputy General Secretaries were Patrick Itschert, General Secretary of ITGLWF and of ETUC-TCL, and Jozef Niemiec, the lone holdover from the Monks era on ETUC’s seven-member Secretariat leadership team. Itschert is Belgian and advocates an ETUC that “turns political developments into actions.” Niemiec is Polish, was an engineer in Krakow and member of NSZZ Solidarność during trade union revival in Poland, and was involved in European integration of his home country.
Elected confederal secretaries were Judith Kirton-Darling, formerly with the European Metalworkers’ Federation; Veronica Nilsson, who worked at TUAC and since March 2010 served as special advisor to ETUC; Claudia Menne, previously with the German DGB national labour centre; and Luca Visentini, from the Italian labour centre UIL.
ETUC statutes dictate a single term for the Presidency of the confederation. Wanja Lundby-Wedin of Sweden thus stepped down and Ignacio Fernández Toxo, President of CC.OO of Spain, was elected President of ETUC for the next four years.