‘Third way’ splits unions

Date: 08/07/1999

By Simon Coss

SPLITS have emerged within the European trade union movement over Anglo/German calls for EU governments to adopt more 'market friendly' employment policies.

Two of the largest members of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the organisation which represents employees in talks on proposed new Union labour laws, have expressed widely differing views on the move.

In a joint declaration released last month, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said future EU economic and employment policies should fall somewhere between the traditional European model of highly regulated, inflexible labour markets and a US-style market-led 'free for all'. Blair described this new approach as the "Third Way" while Schröder called it the "New Centre".

Dieter Schulte, the leader of Germany's largest trade union grouping the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), was so incensed by the document, which he regards as an attack on his members' hard-won rights, that he fired off a blistering letter to Schröder condemning it in the strongest terms.

But John Monks, head of the UK's Trade Union Confederation (TUC) said he was "relaxed and not too excited" about the idea.

He added that what Blair and Schröder were proposing appeared rather innocuous compared to the anti-union rhetoric of previous UK governments.

The ETUC's views appear to be closer to the DGB's stance than to the British approach, with the organisation's General Secretary Emilio Gabaglio warning that governments should think long and hard before abandoning tried and tested policy-making methods. "If you go looking too hard for new ways, you can sometimes end up losing the good things you already have," he said.

He is also sceptical about whether Blair and Schröder's proposals would provide a balance between encouraging entrepreneurship and protecting workers in a rapidly expanding global economy. "Trade unions remain a crucial force. I sometimes have difficulty seeing this in some of the declarations that have been made recently," he said.