Daily Telegraph

Strikes on use of foreign labour continue;

Italy accused of hypocrisy in application of EU law
published: 04 February 2009

Wildcat industrial strikes are continuing over the use of foreign labour at the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire.  The FT reports that British PM Gordon Brown is resisting union demands to tighten the law on the use of foreign workers, as the conciliation service Acas is examining the awarding of a sub-contract to an Italian company to determine if any British or EU law was broken.

The BBC reports that an initial deal to resolve the dispute has been rejected. Derek Simpson, the joint General Secretary of the UNITE union has said that “Even if this dispute is settled [there is] still a major problem about how these foreign companies, who win contracts and come complete with a workforce, are going to create other difficulties.”

The Telegraph reports that Italy has been accused of hypocrisy in its application of EU law over a 20-year dispute for British lecturers to receive equal pay and conditions in Italian universities, while calling for the rights of Italian nationals to be protected in Britain.  David Petrie, the Chairman of the Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy said “It is total hypocrisy and they know it…The Italian courts are experts at tying you up in legal battles for years and the Italian government just digs its heels in.”

A separate article in the FT argues that at the “heart” of the strikes is “whether employers of foreign workers should be allowed to undercut the pay of indigenous employees”.  EU free movement laws allow foreign contractors to bring their own staff from overseas and grant them the same legal rights as British employees.  However, unions argue that this undermines industry pay agreements reached separately in the UK which are not legally binding, unlike in France, Belgium or Germany.  According to figures from the European Commission, 47,000 UK workers were posted to European countries in 2006, which is three times more than 15,000 foreign workers posted to the UK.

Writing in the Guardian’s Comment is Free section, author Philippe Legrain argues that if British workers are being discriminated against, it is unacceptable, but otherwise the free movement of labour is at the very heart of the EU and without it, the EU would “unravel”.

Conservative MP Bill Cash will today present a Bill in Parliament to provide for “workers or members of a trade union who are UK nationals shall have rights of employment in the United Kingdom equal to or as favourable as those afforded to foreign nationals or conferred by the United Kingdom Parliament.”  The Irish Times reports that the Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, has requested that the European Scrutiny Committee examine the legislation covering the free movement of labour.

The CBI’s Deputy-Director John Cridland told the Home Affairs Committee yesterday that the use of migrant labour in Britain would decline as companies faced a fall in demand for their goods and services, reports the Guardian.