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7 March, 2012
In calling attention to jobs creation as equivalent economic growth, working people across Europe on 29 February, led by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), manifested in a Day of Action against the European Council’s adoption of a budget discipline treaty.
The decentralised mobilisations occurred in scores of cities and worksites with a common theme pointed at EU governments and decision-makers: “Enough is enough! There are alternatives to austerity. Employment and social justice are the number one priorities.”
The 29 February ETUC Day of Action took the form of demonstrations, work stoppages and information postings inside workplaces, as well as government institutions and stated that the European summit’s Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance is a “straightjacket” that will plunge the Eurozone into free-fall recession.
The actions included two demonstrations in Brussels, site of the European Council’s 1-2 March summit where the misguided treaty will intrinsically slash wages and social protections, restrict collective bargaining, and provide even more neo-liberal policies, hardly the remedies for economic growth to assure a sustainable future.
Union leaders, led by ETUC General Secretary Bernadette Ségol, met 29 February with Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Parliament President Martin Schulz in Brussels, while a mass rally took place at the European Council building. Members of all Belgian trade unions united in protest on 29 February, and targeted their manifestation outside the Belgian National Bank.
A sampling of other actions on 29 February included a mass demonstration organised by the Romanian national trade union centres at Victoria Square in Bucharest. In Rome, Italian labour federations CGIL, CISL and UIL demonstrated at Pantheon Place, while Hungarian trade unions held a press conference and manifestation.
In Greece, trade unions undertook a three-hour work stoppage, while even in Georgia trade unions protested ETUC’s Day of Action with a rally at Parliament in Tbilisi. This protest was against their government’s utter failure to adopt a fair labour code, all the while developing trade with European markets.
In the UK, British trade unions used the day to gear up their defense of the National Health Service (NHS), which happens massively today, 7 March, across Britain. Both the ETUC and Trades Union Congress (TUC) denounce austerity measures that “fall hardest on the shoulders of the weakest” when public services are slashed.