The recent wave of protests against the Total-Jacobs-IREM contract in East Lindesy are yet another proof of the underlying falsity of one of the many promises of deregulation in Europe: that free market, and free movement of services, can create wealth and wellbeing for everyone. Ours, however, is not a generic tirade against the evils of the capitalist system of production and neoliberism. In this controversy the political culprits are very specific and easily discernible.

However before entering into the details of the matter, we must immediately clarify a misunderstanding that the press, both in Italy and in the UK, is currently generating. We are not confronted with a set of problems deriving from free movement of workers here. Instead we are facing problems emerging from what, in Euro-jargon, is defined as free movement of services. It is very important to be clear about this point, as it is evident that on this fundamental misunderstanding the xenophobic right is building a case against immigrants and foreign workers, while neoliberal and conservative apparatuses are trying to break up the labour front by playing workers against each other and accusing them of selfishness and lack of solidarity. Free movement of workers does not cause this sort of tensions, since a foreign labourer working in the UK must be treated exactly as a domestic worker, and this of course reduces drastically the risk of an unfair competition within the British labour market.

Having said that, we should examine a bit more closely the problems arising from the IREM  East Lindsey dispute. On this matter the viewpoint of the British labour movement is quite clear. A foreign company – that is to say IREM – has won a works contract in the UK. According to them, this happened because the Italian company pays its workers lower rates of pay than the ones provided by the relevant, British, sectoral collective agreements. Right now we do not yet know under what terms and conditions the Italian and Portuguese workers of IREM actually work. But there are three things we know for sure.

Firstly, we know for sure that even if IREM workers were indeed paid less than what specified in the British collective agreements (and for that matter even less than what is provided by the Italian ones…), the company could keep benefitting from this unfair competitive advantage at the expenses of all workers concerned, both British (that lose their competitive edge and their workplaces) and Italian (that only remain competitive as long as they are underpaid), without anyone being able to take up any legal action to bring it to account. That is because the relevant EC regulatory framework, a mix of EC Treaty provisions (Article 49 and following), directives (first and foremost the Posted Workers Directive 96/71), and European Court of Justice judgements (Viking and Laval of 2007 and the more recent Rüffert and Commission v Lussemburgo of 2008), effectively provides that foreign companies providing their services abroad (such as IREM) must only comply with those rules of the Host Country (for instance the UK) that are actually contained in legislative provisions, but not necessarily with those provided by collective agreements, unless the latter have erga omnes effects that is to say they are universally applicable to all business and workers operating in the sector..

Secondly, we know that, unfortunately, there is very little that workers can do against these forms of social dumping. In countries like the UK, but also in countries like Italy, collective agreements do not have erga omnes effects, and it is therefore impossible to force them upon recalcitrant foreign companies such as IREM, as one may do with domestic statutes.   Far from that being possible, decades of neoliberal attacks on trade union rights and collective bargaining have reduced the coverage of UK agreements to less than a third of the workforce, whereas in Italy the coverage – while higher – is still not such as to apply to the whole workforce. Countries like Italy are not equipped with statutory minimum wage provisions, whereas in the UK the meagre rates provided by the MWA 1998 are too low to be of any help in situations like the one we are confronted with. Moreover unions cannot even rely on their industrial muscle to contrast this degeneration of free movement. The Viking and Laval judgements were an unwelcomed reminder of the fact that any industrial action against these forms of temporary delocalization may well result in a breach of community law, thus exposing unions and workers to serious financial sanctions and liabilities. 

Thirdly we know that unless the political world (nationally and supranationally) matures an awareness against these mercantile degenerations of free movement, episodes such as the IREM-East Lindsey controversy are likely to be remembered as the first timid step towards a generalised, and this time global, problem. Indeed while neoliberal governments are failing to address these unfair practices emerging within the 27 EU Member States, the WTO has already set up a number of mechanisms and agreements (first and foremost the so called GATS - General Agreement on Trade in Services, with “Mode 3” e “Mode 4” dangerously replicating, on a global scale, EC free movement of services provisions), aimed at allowing a certain degree of free movement of services on a global scale.

In this context of European and global unfair competition, the only winners are the corporations involved in these transantional tendering processes. The big losers are the workers, whose protection and wages are continuously eroded by this relentless race to the bottom. But consumers and citizens also lose out, as they will eventually have to pay the bill for all these rather dubious chains of contracts. National states are the other victims – and sometimes the actual accomplices - of this progressive process of social and economic erosion.

It should be pointed out that there are several ways out of this dead end road, and they have always been upheld by the trade union world (at least by that part that is not subservient to neoliberal ideology) and by the communist and radical parties worldwide, first and foremost by Rifondazione Comunista. We must ask for:

• The introduction of national, European and international anti-dumping regulatory mechanisms
• The respect of national collective bargaining, and the adoption of genuine collective agreements on pay coordination at a European level
• The respect of the right to strike and of solidarity and sympathy action, at a national and transnational level
• The suspension of GATS, and the introduction of a ‘social clause’ in the WTO agreement.

We, the circolo “Karl Marx” of Rifondazione Comunista in London, would like to express our sympathy and solidarity to all the workers involved in the IREM/East Lindsey dispute. Regardless of their nationality, they remain the primary victims of neoliberal policies and deregulation.

Signed: The circolo PRC/SE “Karl Marx” of Londra