The bias towards capital against labout is written int o the Treaty of Rome, and the next 6 treaties that followed. The myth that th EU protects workers is a joke. The truth is that social Europe never delivered all that much, even in the days when the European economy was in much better shape than it is currently. That’s because a succession of EU treaties has enshrined in law four basic freedoms for business: the right to provide services; the right to establish an enterprise; the right to move capital; and the right to move labour. These freedoms trump all other considerations, including the right of workers to withdraw their labour. This was best illustrated in the European court of justice’s ruling in the Viking case in 2007. At issue was the concept of “posted workers”, employees hired in one country but employed in another. Viking, a Finnish ferry company, posted workers from Estonia as a way of getting round collective bargaining agreements made in Finland. The action by the company – a classic example of a race to the bottom – was challenged by the International Transport Workers Federation and ended up in the ECJ. The judges sided with the company, with the ECJ advocate general Poiares Maduro saying “the possibility for a company to relocate to a member state where its operating costs will be lower is pivotal to the pursuit of effective intra-Community trade”. Thus dies the delusion that "the Eu protects the workers"
Biting the hand that feeds IT
