Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-10-Speech-1-109"
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"en.20030310.5.1-109"2
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"Mr President, today it has once again become clear how far decision-making in the European Union is from the reality of the people it concerns. In this case, the people are the workers in the ports. Once upon a time there were a lot of them; their work was dirty and dangerous and poorly paid then. By organising themselves they have been able to improve these things and protect themselves against poorly paid, unskilled labour being hired in from outside by illegal contractors. Years ago the European Parliament called for rules governing competition between ports, particularly between ports serving the same hinterland, such as the North Sea. A lot of government money has been squandered on excessively low tariffs and excessively generous facilities to please the shipping companies.
The European Commission has now picked up on this, but not with a view to restricting competition between ports but rather to promote it within the ports. This competition is trampling all over the dock workers. That means a return to the old situation. The main aim is to cut labour costs even further. A lot of the work has already been mechanised, and the cost of port labour forms only a negligible part of the cost of goods these days, but they even want to cut back on this. It is true that the amendment limits opportunities for extremely low paid crew from developing countries to take over loading and unloading on quays from registered local dock workers, but this is difficult to monitor. We can expect a large number of disputes about rules being flouted and competition being distorted in years to come. That was not sufficiently clear to the trade unions at the first reading in November 2001. They have since agreed on their complete rejection on a European level, but many of the elements relevant to them have now been declared out of order for the second reading, and demonstrators have been kept far away from this building. Strikes against this unreasonableness are the only weapon the people have left. In order to avoid this, the entire proposal must be dropped, as was advocated by more than 40% of the Members at the vote in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism."@en1
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