Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-22-Speech-2-268"
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"en.20021022.10.2-268"2
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"Mr President, I am highly sympathetic to the content of Mr Hughes’ report. The text is very clear. He is extremely worried that so little is happening, and he puts forward a long list of proposals of a legislative and non-legislative nature which could improve the situation. I am sure that he will gain the support of the whole Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left for all this.
At the same time, he also addresses implementation and the difficulties of getting it all to work in reality. I believe we should speak more plainly in this context. This is in fact a dispute. We talk about dialogue and cooperation, but it is actually a dispute. Companies are required to put pressure on costs and profit margins in competition with other companies. The cutbacks have to be made somewhere. Health and safety cost money. We cannot achieve proper health and safety at work if the unions are not strong enough to put pressure on companies. These are the circumstances of the dispute, which are inherent in our system. We should recognise this in some way if we want better health and safety at work. Legislative and non-legislative methods work where there are employee organisations able to use the laws, recommendations and guidelines which we draw up. That is the reality of the situation.
Perhaps we should discuss whether we need to strengthen employee organisations, for example by strengthening union rights. It may be that the opportunities for legal assistance in disputes should be increased. Increased expert assistance might be considered. In the nineteenth century, when there were no strong unions, factory inspectors helped workers. In Eastern Europe we might need work and factory inspectors of the type found in the UK in the nineteenth century. We should perhaps make it clearer to the candidate countries that the right to strike is part of the body of law, or
which they are expected to introduce."@en1
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