The EU doesn't protect workers' rights - it has destroyed them

[AntiBank]

Freedom of movement is about bosses driving down wages, not holidays

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/06/eu-doesnt-protect-workers-rights-it-has-destroyed-them


A feeble and erroneous argument for supporting the EU – one which is repeatedly used by both government and opposition leaders – is that leaving the EU would damage employment in Britain. This is simply not true. A campaign by Britain in Europe entitled “Out of Europe, Out of Work” claimed that Britain would lose millions of jobs if it left the EU. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, however, described the campaign as absurd, finding that British withdrawal would have no long-term impact on employment. In the words of its Director, Dr Martin Weale, the campaign was “pure Goebbels” and “a wilful distortion of the facts”.

The European Union is about economics, neoliberal economics, monetarist market capitalism - economics that do not work. It is inherently deflationist. That is to say, it is built on constraining economic demand and driving up unemployment. It is an economics that has failed in the past, is failing again and which has rolled back the successful economic arrangements that worked so well, so brilliantly indeed, in the immediate post-war decades.

This same economics is being inflicted on Britain – cuts and austerity. Living standards have fallen, wages reduced as a proportion of total economic output (GDP) and in real terms, and inequality and poverty increasing. In the rest of the EU however, things are worse, especially in the eurozone.

The EU is not at its core about employment rights, nor even is it about human rights. The EU has accepted employment rights to give the illusion that it is on the side of workers and trade unions – at least slightly – and to try to keep trade unions passive. The millions of unemployed in Spain, Greece and increasingly elsewhere have seen no benefit from alleged worker and trade union rights. In the cases of the Viking Line and Laval, workers tried to contest their employers replacing them with lower-paid workers from another EU country. But the European Court of Justice found in favour of employers rather than workers.

snip


The EU and other neoliberal nightmares

Workers across Europe are rallying against a union which has used its undemocratic structures to force neoliberalism on a continent.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/enrico-tortolano/eu-and-other-neoliberal-nightmares


Voting to leave the EU is a no-brainer for the Left. The European Union is remote, racist, imperialist, anti-worker and anti-democratic: It is run by, of, and for the super-rich and their corporations. A future outside austerity and other economic blunders rests on winning the struggle to exit the EU, removing us from its neoliberal politics and institutions. Corporate bureaucrats in Brussels working as agents of the big banks and transnationals’ now exert control over every aspect of our lives. Neoliberal policies and practices dominate the European Commission, European Parliament, European Central Bank, European Court of Justice and a compliant media legitimises the whole conquest. This has left the EU constitution as the only one in the world that enshrines neoliberal economics into its text. Therefore the EU is not – and never can be – either socialist or a democracy.

Against the left’s strategic case for exit is relentless blither and blather from the elitist liberal commentariat: the EU is a social-democratic haven that protects us from the nasty Tories is their litany and verse. This is an absurd fantasy: by design the EU is a corporatist, pro-capitalist establishment. Therefore, it strains credulity that the bulk of the Parliamentary Labour Party and a rump of the trade union movement believe in the myth of Social Europe. The late Bob Crow was bang on the money when he said: “social EU legislation, which supposedly leads to better working conditions, has not saved one job and is riddled with opt-outs for employers to largely ignore any perceived benefits they may bring to workers. But it is making zero-hour contracts and agency-working the norm while undermining collective bargaining and full-time, secure employment.”

The only thing that should remain is the truth: a social Europe was never part of the European Union super-state project. How could it be? The EU has always travelled on the “free trade” train alongside “free” movement of capital, business-austerity, flexible labour markets, low pay, privatisation of public services and the eradication of welfare states. These were not just random policy proscriptions, but specifically designed by ‘free-market’ fanatics. It was the deepening and integration of the EU project that allowed unelected policy makers, driven by the powerful EU corporate lobby, to circumvent and eradicate the social rights that were won by workers in the aftermath of World-War-Two. Creating democratic deficits in all the EU institutions and policy-making by unaccountable technocrats enabled and accelerated this process of dismantling rights. This arrangement ensured the neoliberal Holy Trinity of public spending cuts, privatisation and the removal of trade union rights could be enforced with little contestation.

It’s worth noting the continuity of contempt by the European Union elites towards public opinion. Jean Monnet the founding father of the EU understood democracy was an obstacle to the elitist project and had to employ a degree of deception: "via money Europe could become political in five years" and "…the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would … the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal." Jean-Claude Juncker, today’s unelected EU chief makes clear that nothing much has changed, “when it becomes serious, you have to lie”. “There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties.”

snip



Apprentice Cameron Summons ‘Master of Lies’, Darth Juncker


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/adam-hamdy/david-cameron_b_10478742.html


snip

Juncker was forced to resign as Prime Minister of Luxembourg as the result of a spy scandal, which involved illegal operations conducted by SERL, the country’s intelligence service. According to the former director of SERL, at one point the service had over 300,000 active files in a country with a population of 500,000. Luxembourg’s parliamentary investigation committee found that Juncker did not treat the intelligence service seriously enough, and most of the time did not even want to know what was going on.

Among other lurid allegations, German newspapers reported that when word reached Juncker that one of his senior civil servants could be involved in serious activities in the paedophile community, Juncker tried to turn the allegations into a “joke”, asking the man concerned whether he was aware that there was a “whorehouse” in his local city that could satisfy his urges instead.

snip


Jean-Claude Juncker quotes:


On Sovereignty

“Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?”

On Openness

“I’m ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious...I am for secret, dark debates”

On How The EU Really Works

“We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back”

On Lying

“When it becomes serious, you have to lie”

On Democracy

“There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties”'

The final remark explains why Mr Juncker is intervening in a British referendum: he has a fundamental problem with democracy. This is the man the Austrian newspaper, Der Standard once dubbed the ‘Master of Lies’. The man who presided over the explosion of Luxembourg’s use as a tax haven by multi-national corporations. The man David Cameron once tried to block because he is too much of an EU insider who instinctively resists reform. That the Prime Minister should call upon Mr Juncker tells us everything we need to know about his belief in the outcome of this referendum.

[msongs]

1. amazing how TPP haters seem to love the EU so much nt

[Meldread]

2. It's amazing that haters of trade deals...

...are cheering the Brexit (and potential break up of the UK as a result), while advocating for worse trade deals for the UK.

I am sure when the UK (likely at that point just England and Wales) comes to the US with hat in hand, wanting a NAFTA like agreement, the pro-Brexit crowd will just cheer for joy and happily assist their British and Welsh friends.

...or more likely, fuck them over, and leave them economically stranded because the deal didn't lopsidedly favor the United States and their protectionist desires.

[AntiBank]

4. you just dont get it, it is not JUST Brexit, the entire EU was a priori a horrid project

Brexit is partially just a tool to help aid the tearing down of the entire edifice

[Meldread]

5. Oh, I know exactly what you people want.

You are cheering for the collapse of the EU. Thus, you are indirectly (knowingly or unknowingly) cheering for the instability of Europe, and the complete fuckery of its people.

You might get your wish, just like the British and Welsh got their wish today. However, it will be a wish that you will come to regret, and it will give you nothing that you hope for--only misery and ruin.

[AntiBank]

6. ask the Greeks about fuckery

The EU is designed from its base to benefit the multinationals, the biggest nations within its ever growing borders at the expense of the small and less well off ones. It thrives off the easy flow of cheap, compliant labour, the iron fisted enforcement of austerity regimes, the constant pulling out of sovereignty from the individual nation states that allows the the never-ending path to complete financialisation of multiple sectors, It is absolutely riddled with cloaked protectionism, unbalancing subsidies, and superhighways of entry for the largest of the large, whilst the small, the regional is shackled with seemingly endless regulatory burdens, many that border on the comic and absurd. It is a project by, for and in the interest of the technocratic class, a public/private whip hand of predatory capitalism gussied up in false paradigms of "market efficiency" and false posturings of "peaceful projections".

Look at it's incursions on multivariate levels into Ukraine.

I use a part of an article here to show that far from preventing some imaginary, and profoundly unlikely (to degrees in the orders of magnitude) war between any of the current EU countries, the EU is helping START wars.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/22/the-left-and-the-eu-why-cling-to-this-reactionary-institution/

In the case of Ukraine, the action that set in motion the chain of events leading to civil war was the offer by the EU of an Association Agreement. This has frequently been depicted as a generous arrangement under which Ukraine would have benefited from most of the advantages enjoyed by EU member states, without, however, formally becoming a member. In actual fact the agreement would have required Ukraine to sever economic relations with Russia, a country to which it was intimately bound by a shared history, and was linked to a package of swingeing austerity measures that would have resulted in the ruination of Ukraine’s economy. Moreover, despite the outraged denials of its framers, the deal also mandated military cooperation between the EU and Ukraine and was clearly intended as a prelude to NATO membership.

Given the fact that approximately half of Ukrainians, mainly living in the East of the country, were opposed to NATO and favoured better relations with Russia, it was hardly likely that the Ukrainian President, Victor Yanukovych, who by all accounts had pro-EU leanings, would ever have been able to implement the terms of such a deal without splitting the country in two. When at the end of 2013 he therefore rejected the Agreement, prompting protests in Kiev’s Maidan Square, in which Ukraine’s fascist parties, which are driven by a racist hatred of the country’s ethnic Russian population, played a prominent part, both the EU and the US chose to back the protesters agitating for his removal. After Yanukovch was overthrown in a putsch in February 2014, spearheaded by those same fascist elements within the opposition, instead of spurning the interim government that was installed following his ouster the EU immediately proceeded to signal their approval by securing its assent to the Association Agreement that Yanukovych had originally refused to sign. When Eastern Ukrainians rose in revolt against the putschist government, which had removed the democratically elected President from office and concluded an Association Agreement in spite of their objections, the EU disingenuously attributed Ukraine’s descent into civil war to Russian interference.

The defenders of the EU refuse to acknowledge its contribution to the turmoil that has engulfed Ukraine, or its part in bringing about a new cold war, even arguing that Russia’s opposition to the European project stems from a distaste for democracy and human rights, rather than simple geopolitics.

[Meldread]

7. You are too busy engaging in the imaginary battle in your mind...

...rather than the war that is actually being fought.

I am not going to stand here and defend the neoliberal agenda of the EU, nor am I going to defend its flawed apparatuses. I am not arguing in favor of any of those things. I believe deep reform is necessary.

What I am arguing is that the EU provides the necessary stability that holds Europe together. It is under that umbrella that human rights have flourished and the cause of the Left has been advanced--more so than anywhere else in the world.

The Brexit will not benefit progressive, left-wing forces across the continent. It was led by right-wing reactionary forces in the UK, and this is only going to boost that reactionary arc developing across Europe -- from the presidential campaign of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen in France to the rise of the AfD in Germany to the electoral successes of the Austrian Freedom Party. If the EU collapses in this climate, that is who is going to take power. Not left wing forces.

The economically disadvantaged, migrants, and the Left are the ones who will suffer as a result of Brexit and a potential collapse of the EU.

You have empowered the Tory hard right--pushing the UK further to the right than even Cameron. It is likely the next Prime Minister will be Boris Johnson, and considering the fact that Brexit took place as a result of strong anti-immigrant sentiment, Johnson is likely to introduce draconian anti-migrant measures in response to the xenophobic feelings of the new hard right coalition that takes power.

In addition to this, a Johnson-led government is almost certain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Tories have been chomping at the bit to get rid of for quite some time.

Then comes the far right radical neoliberal economic reform. As Paul Mason recently put it:

Johnson and the Tory right are seeking a mandate via the referendum for a return to full-blown Thatcherism: less employment regulation, lower wages, fewer constraints on business. If Britain votes Brexit, then Johnson and Gove stand ready to seize control of the Tory party and turn Britain into a neoliberal fantasy island.

In the end, the Left achieves nothing and becomes more marginalized than ever in UK politics. Things grow worse if Scotland decides to leave the UK for the EU.

It's time to face reality and stop fighting a battle that only exists in your imagination. The choice was not between the collapse of a neoliberal European Union, and the rise of a progressive Left UK that is freed from the shackles of their masters in Brussels. It was a choice between the neoliberal European Union and the ultra-neoliberal hard right reactionary forces in Britain and across all of Europe. That is the reality. Now the ultra-neoliberal hard right reactionary forces in Britain and across all of Europe have been gifted a giant victory. Congratulations. Enjoy your celebration.

[AntiBank]

10. I can simply reply that you have far too little faith for Labour

and the left in general in the UK and so many other countries. Part of the EU substructural undertow is the pushing out and disempowering of the organic democratic socialist left and the co-opting the centre left to turn neoliberal in both outlook and practise. This is similar (to a point) to what is being done in the USA through its internal systemic controls.

Many of the very forces that are empowering and animating the far right are coming directly as the result of EU policies and actions, aided by the military force global projections of the US/UK/NATO regime which cause both blowback and forced mass refugee-based immigration fleeing their empiric war theatres, plus the formation of an ever larger economic underclass across all ethnic spectrums.

The Tories will muck things up, as they always do (with or without being in the EU) and the left will take back the government, this time unencumbered from corporatist externalities imposed from Brussels. Look at how effectually and quickly the EU has whipsawed a superb left party (SYRIZA in Greece) into submission.

[Meldread]

13. It is not the left that I do not have faith in, it is the voters.

The neoliberal far right reactionary forces are already coming into power. In the UK they are already in power, and now their hand has been strengthened with a major victory. Their victory is going to strengthen the hand of other such far right groups across Europe.

The Tories will muck things up, as they always do (with or without being in the EU) and the left will take back the government...

This is always the mistake that people make. We know their neoliberal policies are shit and are going to wreck the economy and cause horrible damage. So, we sit back and think that once this happens this is going to send the people running into our open arms. Wrong. What actually happens is that the far right strokes nationalism and blames the economic and social problems on those considered to be outside forces--be it immigrants, despised minorities, or external nation states. The people overwhelmingly go running in that direction, and the Left--in trying to stand up for such individuals--gets labeled as sympathizers and traitors to the nationalist identity/cause. Thus, economic hardship only ends up strengthening the hand of far right reactionaries and nationalists. It *NEVER* works to our benefit.

[AntiBank]

17. you keep saying neoliberalism is the far right, it is not, it is an infection of the left (making

them act in centre right, corporatist ways).

The far right is NOT neoliberal, they are reactionary, right wing populists, (anti neolibs if you will) and then moving on to even more extreme versions would be true (the label is often misapplied to Trump) fascists and real neo nazis/white nationalists who detest the structural control and general tenor, thrust and tone that emanates from neoliberalism.

I still say you have to wait a bit and watch how this goes. It's not going to be the "sky is falling" moment so many are hand-wringing over.

[George Eliot]

19. Agree. Sometimes rebuilding from bottom up only answer.

You can argue this multiple ways depending on whose dragon you want to slay. We'll see if the right dragon is slayed and its replacement rebuilt with integrity. You sure aren't going to cure the patient by putting band aids on the cancer.

[Meldread]

20. Neoliberalism is defined by...

...a general favoring of laissez-faire economic ideals, support for privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, turning over government programs to the private sector of the economy, and so-called free trade deals. This more-or-less defines the Tory's economic policies.

They are ALSO reactionary right wing populists, as you correctly labeled them. Their populism comes not from their economic policies, but from their populist appeals to social policies, such as anti-migrant and Euroskeptic sentiment.

We obviously don't know how things are going to turn out. However, I find it morally difficult to justify gambling with the lives of the people of the UK and the future stability of Europe, all in the hopes that something positive MIGHT happen. When the more reasonable alternative was always to remain, and begin building a liberal movement toward dramatic reform of the EU.

[AntiBank]

25. "a general favoring of laissez-faire economic ideals, support for privatization, fiscal austerity,

deregulation, turning over government programs to the private sector of the economy"

Sounds a lot like Bill Clinton and the ex parte DLC Dems to me (minus absolutely harsh austerity, they prefer the little cat feet of chained CPI, outrageously low COLA's, etc)

Sure many if not most of the right wingers do it too, (not so much the true economic populists like a protectionist right winger, and certainly not actual neo nazis and fascists) but THAT'S my point, the neoliberal left AND the centre right BOTH traffic on mutual turf when it come to propping up the elite at overarching levels. Its a confluence of predatory (sometimes in faux left clothing some garbed in right tinged cloth) economic policy that pushes up the 1% at an ever growing expense to the 99%.

[a la izquierda]

48. Neoliberalism is NOT leftist.

Latin American centrists/conservatives pushed neoliberal agendas through the 80s into the 90s and in some instances still do so (see the crises in Mexico...currently not covered in the US media).

Liberal,neoliberal, and leftist are not synonymous except maybe to Americans who don't know better. Neoliberalism is new liberalism; and liberalism of the 19th century was far from economically leftist.

[AntiBank]

49. never said it was left, obviously

I said many centre leftists are infected with neoliberalism, ie Bill Clinton, Blair, etc, that makes them push through right wing policies

[a la izquierda]

62. No, you said it's an infection of the left.

Whether or not centrists act in this way is immaterial; they are not leftists. Bill Clinton wasn't-gasp- a leftist. He was decidedly a centrist.

Neoliberalism is a conservative -ism. Conservatism isn't necessarily hard right.

[Aerows]

63. I think the point was that the

left has been infected by corporatist and neoliberal goals. That's the way I read it. And it is true - the DLC infected the left in our country to drive the Democratic party to the center/center-right.

[a la izquierda]

64. Well that I can agree with...

At least in the US.

[AntiBank]

65. and that is what I meant

sorry for the confusion

[AntiBank]

18. btw I had read that Mason article several days ago

[swhisper1]

26. not the collapse, just reform

[whathehell]

50. "You people"??

[AntiBank]

3. watch and wait till Clinton does her likely post election pivot and TPP (if not rammed through

already in the lame duck, which I am terrified of) is teed up for passage by her.

Many of "haters" will become the loudest cheerleaders for passage.

There are plenty of ex parte DLC 3rd-wayers just itching to cram more neolib action plans down our collective gullet.

[George Eliot]

8. First intelligent thread on Brexit I've read. Thanks.

Reducing it to an immigrant issue serves our masters goal well: pitting us against ourselves. And the multitudes of apolitical uninformed Americans buy it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

44. It is an immigrant issue: that's what the polls all show was the Leave voters' main concern

Thinking it would be nicer to see it as a struggle of an independent, worker-friendly country against a neoliberal international organisation may sound romantic, but it ignores the reality of what is likely to happen in the UK in the next few years. Hardly anyone in the UK talks about 'neoliberals'; if those who voted Leave were to characterise the EU as anything, it would be a bureaucracy with too many regulations. And, as has been shown, what they most object to is the unlimited movement of labour within the EU.

The MP who authored the first excerpt in the OP has to say "oh, it's OK, Labour can commit to keeping the worker protections the EU provides, and the human rights guarantees it provides, and then we'll win and everything will be brilliant", but Labour won't actually get into power before 2020 at the earliest, and neither issue is a vote winner (in fact, the right wing media has stirred up their more vindictive readers so much that campaigning for human rights can be a vote loser at the moment).

Leaving the EU now gives the anti-EU Tories the ability to handle all the negotiations and what we keep from our time in the EU. They're going to design things for less regulation, less protection for workers, and fewer human rights.

[JSup]

46. But the main reason...

...immigration ever becomes an 'issue' is when economic inequality (which has been skyrocketing in the UK lately) or unemployment get bad.

http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-housing-shortage-reasons-home-builders-only-build-for-the-wealthy-2016-1
http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns_/why_we_campaign/the_housing_crisis/what_is_the_housing_crisis
https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk

Being poor and desperate can turn a lot of people into temporary racists.

[muriel_volestrangler]

47. Yeah, that's the situation in the UK. Government policy has caused a housing shortage

and allowed inequality to increase. And the right wing media then used immigrants as scapegoats. Leaving the EU won't fix it.

The unemployment rate isn't that bad, historically - see http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/unemployment-rate and click the 'max' time period button. It's down to 5%, which it was at the start of Thatcher's government, and roughly what it came down to during the Blair Labour government.

[JSup]

61. Yeah, employment is pretty decent...

...but the housing problem and the inequality (notice the outer London boroughs where the rich don't live voted to go) are the main culprits and when housing becomes limited many people will blame the those that are 'different' first.

Human loyalty priorities (I'm saying this in general) tend to go family, social-circle, political party 'race', class, nation, "Western/Eastern", species.

If the well-off in England and Wales didn't want to leave the EU, they should have made it so that more people weren't left behind.

We are in a new age of political upheaval for the same reasons many other upheavals occurred.

[closeupready]

9. K&R - though the EU didn't start off corrupt.

There certainly were those advocating for the EU who endured suffering in both WWI and, to a greater extent, WWII. Unification, it was argued, would make warfare much too taxing to its proponents, since they'd be destroying their trade partners and capital investments.

[sendero]

12. Fido didn't start off...

... rabid, but when he got that way we had to put him down.

Seriously, I'm amazed that so many DUers think the EU is good for the average Brit. It's ridiculous.

[closeupready]

15. Well regardless, it doesn't matter what I think - I'm American, and

so this is ultimately up to Europeans to figure out. Cheers.

[closeupready]

16. On the other hand, there's this to consider:

https://twitter.com/liamstack/status/746361622738911232/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[George Eliot]

23. Corruption. Everything becomes corrupt. Americans must stay informed.

I don't know the answer. Big money drives everything. Quit trusting main stream media.

[JaneyVee]

11. UK just dug their own grave.

[pampango]

14. That's why British unions, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders supported Remain and

Donald Trump, Neil Farage and Boris Johnson supported Leave.

[George Eliot]

22. Link Bernie's support please. Per link, not so.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/284751-sanders-on-brexit-global-economy-isnt-working-for-everybody

Blog Briefing Room feed
June 24, 2016, 08:14 am
Sanders on Brexit: Global economy isn't working for everybody

By Jesse Byrnes

Bernie Sanders on Friday sidestepped questions on whether he supported Britain's vote to leave the European Union but emphasized that the "global economy is not working for everybody."

"What worries me very much is the breaking down of international cooperation," Sanders told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"On the other hand, I think what this vote is about is an indication that the global economy is not working for everybody," he continued.

"It's not working in the United States for everybody and it's not working in the U.K. for everybody."

The Democratic presidential hopeful has focused much of his campaign on economic inequality and criticized international trade agreements the U.S. has engaged in. On Friday, he called for more international cooperation but added that "we do not forget about the people left behind."

Sanders's remarks came after Britain voted to leave the EU, a stunning result that prompted immediate global financial uncertainty and a plunge in value for the British pound.

[LeftishBrit]

29. For example...

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bernie-sanders-says-he-hopes-britain-votes-to-remain-in-the-european-union_uk_571d4aaae4b077f671e7fc61

[pampango]

31. Sure. "Bernie Sanders Says He Hopes Britain Votes To Remain In The European Union"

Bernie Sanders has said he wants the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union.

His comments come after both President Obama and Hillary Clinton urged the British people to vote in favour of EU membership at the June 23 referendum.

Senator Sanders, who is fighting Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president, told NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday he wanted to “let the British people make their own decisions”.

“I think the European Union obviously is a very, very important institution,” he said. “I would hope that they stay in, but that’s their decision.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bernie-sanders-says-he-hopes-britain-votes-to-remain-in-the-european-union_uk_571d4aaae4b077f671e7fc61

That was back in April when he supported Remain. Now he "sidestepped" the question and did not contradict his earlier statement. I am glad he reinforced the message that the "global economy is not working for everybody".

[roamer65]

21. Just wait until the 3rd Greek bailout and the upcoming European bank crisis.

It's all coming very soon. There will be more countries heading for the door at that point.

Farage is right on one point. The euro is a straightjacket to countries like Italy, Greece and Spain who desperately need to devalue to stay competitive.

That single currency is going to bring Europe to its knees.

[laundry_queen]

42. +1000

that is exactly the issue here. Economically, the EU as it is, is completely unsustainable. It had 2 choices - disband or have Europe become one country where fiscal and monetary policy are controlled by one central government. It chose to stay in no-man's land and now each country will make their own decision and with the UK going first, it looks like it's going to be the end of the EU.

[Rex]

24. It is hard to have a discussion with folks that don't know the difference between free and fair

trade.

[smirkymonkey]

27. +1000

[anigbrowl]

28. This is bullshit. I'm european and I remember how it was before the single market`

It fucking sucked and high unemployment was a fact of life. Leftie theorists who are blaming it on the the EU are either idiots or lying through their teeth. The EU brought massive improvements in the quality of life compared to when I was a child, in respect of employment, environment, infrastructure and many other areas.

[Hoyt]

30. Thanks for some firsthand knowledge.

[AntiBank]

32. I am a European resident too, some of it pre EU and you are dramatically distorting things

Unemployment is fucked NOW in so many more places than it was before, the cost of living has EXPLODED in so many places, violent crime has skyrocketed in so many places, so you are way over the top with your projecting.

[AntiBank]

36. you are the one with willful ignorance, all you do is ad hominem attacks

and make baseless anecdotal claims with no backing logic or evidence

[AntiBank]

43. bullshit eh?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027950783#post41

[tenderfoot]

35. I'm the Queen of England and think you're disingenuous.

eom

[AntiBank]

37. have you ever lived here in the EU? you have some nerve calling me

disingenuous. I love how stateside Americans like you presume to preach and bark insults at expats who have cogent, logical well thought out positions and all you offer is knee jerk attacks based off your cognitive dissonance.

[AntiBank]

41. pwned

[d_r]

53. Man

Look at that Scandinavian summer light at 2 am! Awesome and enjoy summer.

[AntiBank]

33. Debt at all levels (personal, private business, local governmental, national, and international)

has also exploded, trapping entire sectors into perpetual wage slavery or debt service and forcing governments into brutal austerity regimes.

Also, many of the improvements you give the EU sole credit for would have also occurred under a far less expansive union.

[Spider Jerusalem]

38. The EU has done a better job of protecting workers' rights than the Tories would've done

if you believe otherwise, I have a bridge you may be interested in buying.

[AntiBank]

39. go tell that to the millions of Eastern Europeans who are being

slagged out for sub standard wages via EU protocols that give transnationals labour rules exemptions in the dominant countries. You make the faulty assumption that a vibrant healthy left can only exist within a monolithic supranational structure such as the current EU, a latticework designed at it's roots to continuously ratchet up pressures on the weaker member states and ensure the constant flow of cheap labour. A framework designed to cudgel nation states with budgeting requirements that ensure a nearly perpetual stratagem of brutal austerity.

[joshcryer]

45. I'll be expecting the Tory's to enact sweeping labor laws soon.

[pampango]

40. Well said. British unions supported Remain because they trusted the EU more than they trusted the

Tories. Whichever Tory is the next prime minister will be much less worker friendly than EU protections that corporations can now avoid.

[Teamster Jeff]

54. "Whichever Tory is the next prime minister". That says it right all there.

How'd that happen is the question.

[pampango]

56. Labour campaigned to stay in the EU so I would love to see them win the next election.

The Tories will appoint the next prime minister in October long before there is a new election. It is likely to be Boris Johnson who has stated his desire to turn the UK into a "hyper-capitalist island freed from EU regulation", a "neoliberal fantasy island".

[Teamster Jeff]

51. The EU did such a good job with workers rights 52% of Brits voted to Leave

They must all be racists or they must all be stupid. Wait, that sounds familiar?

[Spider Jerusalem]

52. Or both

like this charming individual: http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/man-says-he-voted-leave-to-keep-out-immigrants-from-iraq-fails-to-see-the-problem--W1xZuUl8aNb

Or like these people (NB that "BAME" means "Black and minority ethnic): http://metro.co.uk/2016/06/25/is-this-what-bame-people-have-to-look-forward-to-post-brexit-5965720/

This sort of thing is happening quite a lot, now. Overt racists feel emboldended by the result of the Brexit vote (which for a lot of them was all about immigration).

[Teamster Jeff]

55. No doubt racists are getting their rocks off but that doesn't explain 52%

Unless you really believe that they are all stupid and racist?

[pampango]

57. Older conservative voters favored Leave. Younger liberal voters favored Remain.

You could make the case that older conservative people tend to have a higher proportion of racists but it really turned into a battle of Trump vs Bernie voters and the former won.

[TubbersUK]

58. That's Odd

Because it was Thatcherism and successive Tory/Blairite governments that eroded mine.

The ones I have left are (sorry were) those underpinned or conferred by EU standards.

ETA: And I'm wondering how long the ones I have left are going to last in Boris or Gove's tender care

[MohRokTah]

59. I completely disagree. The EU has been wonderful for workers. eom

[AntiBank]

60. drive-by lightweight woo, you rebutted nothing I posited, and here is a direct example of the EU

implementing an anti-worker stance. The EU practises union pacification and dis-empowerment, it is structurally set up to erode worker's protection and to encourage a permanent floating pool of cheap labour, mobile and insert-able into transnationals via exemption to member states' own labour rules and laws.

Explain how THESE European Court of Justice rulings are pro worker (hint Thomas, Alito, Roberts would be proud):

Laval, Viking Line and the Limited Right to Strike


http://www.elaweb.org.uk/resources/ela-briefing/laval-viking-line-and-limited-right-strike

Two European Court of Justice rulings, Viking Line and Laval, have a potentially far-reaching impact on the lawfulness of industrial action in the UK. In both cases, employees sought to strike to protest against plans to replace workers from one EU country with lower-paid workers from another. The central legal issue was the tension between the freedoms of movement and establishment (under articles 49 and 43 of EC Treaty) and the lawfulness of industrial action that could limit those freedoms. Daniel Ornstein focuses on three aspects of the rulings. First, they place new limitations on the lawfulness of industrial action. Secondly, where industrial action is potentially incompatible with community law, they require the UK courts to adopt a radically new approach to applications for injunctive relief to prevent industrial action. Thirdly, while on the surface the rulings are limited to where there is an international element involving more than one community member state, the influence of the decisions may nonetheless be far-reaching

snip


Justified and proportionate

The ECJ held in both cases that the issue of whether industrial action is justified and proportionate is a matter for national courts. Nonetheless, it provided guidance as to how to address these issues.

As to justification, the ECJ held that ''the right to take collective action for the protection of workers was a legitimate interest, which in principle justified a restriction of one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Treaty''. As to proportionality (only addressed in Viking Line), it was held that national courts should assess whether the union taking industrial action has ''other means at its disposal which were less restrictive of freedom of establishment'' and has ''exhausted those means''.

These requirements impose significant new restrictions on when industrial action is lawful in the UK. For example, the requirement under UK law for lawful industrial action to relate to a trade dispute (defined in s.218 of Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act and interpreted broadly by the courts), appears wider than the requirement from the ECJ that lawful industrial action must protect workers' rights. Where community rights apply, the narrower ECJ test rather than the broader TULR(C)A will apply.

In addition, the guidance that the ECJ has given on proportionality suggests that the lawfulness of industrial action will depend on matters including the steps a union has taken to try to resolve a dispute, the alternatives to taking industrial action and the level of impact that the issues in dispute has on employees - matters that have no bearing on the lawfulness of industrial action under UK domestic law.



snip

The far-reaching international element

Although it may appear that the influence of the Viking Line and Laval cases is restricted because it only applies where there is an international element, this may not be the case.

First, Viking Line and Laval confirm that the magnitude of any restriction to the freedom of movement or establishment is irrelevant. This means that an act of a trade union can be challenged by an employer on community law grounds even if it only results in a trifling restriction to free movement or establishment.

Secondly, there is scope for companies to plan their business affairs in a way that enables them to rely on an international element to challenge industrial action.

Thirdly, it is arguable that the ability to invoke community rights only where there is an international element is of itself a restriction of community rights. This is on the grounds that if an employer has lesser protection against industrial action in relation to, say, a move from Manchester to Liverpool than a move from Manchester to Lodz, this of itself operates (albeit indirectly) as a restriction of an employer's freedom of movement and establishment in the UK because the employer is less free to operate in the UK than in Poland.


snip

Conclusion

These two rulings impose substantive new restrictions on the lawfulness of industrial action and require the UK courts to adopt a new approach to the grant of injunctive relief, at least where there is a direct international element. Moreover, they may also apply where there is very little or even no direct international element. There is therefore every reason to conclude that Viking Line and Laval have provided employers with a potent new weapon with which to oppose industrial action.

I can posit many other examples that I have seen and observed as an actual EU resident.

You simply are either ill-informed due to lack of time spent on research or poor sources of information, definitely shallow in your reply, and/or lack substantive knowledge on the subject.