Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-13-Speech-4-108"
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"en.20030213.5.4-108"2
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". – Mr President, the European steel industry has been through a difficult period over the last 20 years. There was a need for an overall restructuring of the sector. Nowadays the European steel industry is very competitive. In order to maintain their global position, however, companies need to engage in a continuous process of adapting their structures.
The most recent texts clearly promote upstream worker involvement, notably on strategic issues and on the foreseeable evolution of employment within companies. This is the only way to help the European workforce face the challenges of change successfully in that it allows for the timely development of the employability and adaptability of workers.
The two cases I mentioned before can only confirm those assertions, one positively and one negatively. It is up to national courts and other authorities to ensure compliance with Community directives. The Commission will, of course, fulfil its ultimate role of control of the application of Community law if breaches are not effectively sanctioned.
Those aspects will constitute some of the main elements of the forthcoming revision of the European Works Councils Directive. More importantly, the Commission very much hopes that the European social partners identify and find the means of developing good practices of corporate restructuring throughout the EU, as they decided to do when responding positively to last year's consultation on this issue.
Those good practices go well beyond the information and consultation of workers. They cover actions with a view to anticipating the market and technological developments, investing in people on a permanent basis, developing employability, seeking alternatives to closures and redundancies, redeploying, whenever possible, workers affected by restructuring operations and so on - precisely those good practices which I hope will help Arcelor's workers overcome the present difficulties, and which are dramatically absent in the Metaleurop environment.
It is also useful to recall in this context other initiatives of the Commission relating to corporate social responsibility, social dialogue and the European Monitoring Centre on Change.
Besides those policy aspects, our immediate concern today is the recent cases of restructuring. The Commission would like to state clearly that, above all, we share your regret and concern on the possible social consequences for those who may be affected. I sincerely hope that every effort is made to prevent or attenuate them through dialogue between all parties concerned.
The industry is still striving for efficiency, but even if remaining overcapacities are closed down, from an industrial point of view, we cannot talk about a real crisis on the scale that we had in the 1980s, but rather about a social crisis due to new closures. Restructuring is often a synonym for job losses which can have tragic consequences on the social fabric of any region, but in particular on those regions facing a low job creation potential.
The Commission is acutely aware of the need for citizens and workers to feel secure in taxing times. We have observed again in recent weeks extremely different experiences and approaches on how to deal with large-scale operations of corporate restructuring. In some cases, these operations are prepared well in advance, fully involving workers' representatives, with due care being taken to search for less damaging solutions, and seeking actively and in good time to prepare workers likely to be affected to face the challenge of sudden unemployment.
In other cases these operations were launched and implemented with no care or concern at all for those affected. On every occasion in the past, the Commission has always highlighted the following basic principles. Firstly, decisions on corporate restructuring remain a prerogative, as well as a responsibility, of management. This means that when contemplating actions likely to have serious social consequences, companies should always actively search and choose the less damaging solutions.
Secondly, when dismissals prove to be inevitable, the utmost must be done to improve the employability of those concerned. This requires anticipation and adequate management of those processes.
Thirdly, nothing can justify the absence of timely and effective information and consultation with workers' representatives. These basic assertions attract a wide consensus in Europe. It is, thankfully, increasingly rare to see companies embarking on damaging restructuring operations, ignoring these fundamental concerns, but it does sometimes happen. The way in which Metaleurop conducted the closure of the Pas de Calais plant is the worst possible example of disregard for the interests, the concerns and the rights of workers, as well as for the health and safety of the surrounding population.
It is, of course, fair and necessary to underline other approaches: at the other extreme, Arcelor is also facing a restructuring process with unavoidable pain for its workers, but is tackling it differently. The Commission does not wish to interfere in the economic logic behind the management's intentions, it is the management's role to do that in close consultation with workers' representatives. Arcelor took a number of positive and productive steps, well before the recent announcement measures had already commenced, to anticipate the problems. Again recently, the management reaffirmed its intention to enter into effective consultations with workers' representatives at all levels. The consultation process encompasses: the economic reasoning behind the projected closures; taking independent expert advice on the whole affair; taking all possible measures to avoid the closures or limit their social impact; and seeking to clean the local environment and re-industrialise the closed plants.
This extensive programme is serious and is considered to be so by all stakeholders. It is the result of a different kind of industrial relations which have led, for instance, to an agreement on transnational information and consultation of workers that is widely recognised as being very advanced and effective. The three seats on the board for workers' representatives, although there is currently no legal obligation for this, also illustrate that same positive approach. This in fact anticipates the European Company Statute.
We have built over recent years in the European Union a wide range of instruments that meet these concerns. The directives on collective redundancies, transfers of undertakings, information and consultation and the European Works Councils directive are some examples."@en1
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