Lisbon Treaty (No. 3)

Not at this stage. Viking Line is a Finnish ferry company. In 2003, it decided to re-flag its vessel the Rosella in order to register it in Estonia and employ an Estonian crew on Estonian pay and conditions, thus cutting its wage costs by 60 per cent. The Finnish shipping union appealed to the International Transport Workers Federation in London, which sent a circular to all affiliates telling them not to enter into negotiations with Viking. The shipping union called for Viking to maintain existing pay and conditions, and then threatened to strike. Once Estonia joined the EU in 2004, Viking sued the ITWF in the High Court for restricting its ““freedom of establishment””. The case was referred to the European Court of Justice, which ruled that in future any strike action affecting that freedom would have to meet stringent legal tests that the court itself could assess. At that point, a danger light went on. Although the court did not, on the face of it, rule against the employer, I would argue that the ruling is excellent news for corporate lawyers in the long term. They will be able to threaten trade unions with long and expensive court cases in order to discourage the unions—which do not possess the same resources as big business—from taking collective action against outsourcing or similar corporate behaviour. It also has very alarming implications for basic trade union rights and freedoms. Our right to industrial action has always come from the democratic mandate of the union through its members, according to laws determined by this Parliament. Now it will also need to meet criteria imposed and assessed by unelected European judges. Even more serious is the Laval judgment. Although most Members will know exactly what I am talking about, one or two will not, so I shall help them out. Laval is a Latvian company which, in 2004, posted workers from Latvia to work on building sites in Sweden, including the now infamous site at Vaxholm. The Swedish construction union asked the company to agree to the existing collective agreement in the building sector. It refused, instead operating under a Latvian agreement with lower pay scales that undercut the Swedish workers' wages. The Swedish union quite correctly went on strike, and as a consequence Laval's Swedish subsidiary went bust. Laval then sued the union for its losses and the case was referred to the European Court of Justice. The Court ruled that the company's freedom to provide services in any member state should not be restricted by having to comply with a non-statutory collective bargaining agreement. In a particularly alarming section of the judgment, the Court argued that, because the EU posted workers directive set out minimum rights, it was unreasonable to force the company to comply with further agreements at local or national level. So instead of EU legislation setting minimum standards of rights at work, we now seem to be in danger of those standards being seen as a maximum.