Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-12-Speech-3-121"
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"en.20000412.3.3-121"2
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"The Lisbon Summit, which can only euphemistically be termed “an Employment Summit” despite the clamorous declarations that went with it, achieved no more than to take another step towards changing employment into employability, redefining the concept ‘working person’ and destabilising labour relations and rights, to serve the celebrated ‘New Economy’ in the best possible way for big business, this being the new name for the old, familiar but still more unrestrained and harsh economic and social liberalism.
Masquerading with the greatest cynicism under the grandiose title of ‘modernising the European social model by investing in people’, are the demands of big business for greater profitability as a means of ‘supporting employment’. The competitiveness of enterprises is being increased by cutting labour costs, the labour market is being fully liberalised and made more flexible, atypical forms of employment are being promoted, social security systems are under review and any remnant of the welfare state is being provocatively squeezed. That is not ‘investing in people’ as the Summit meeting would have it. That is the estrangement of people to the benefit of the market, the subjugation of working people to the demands and criteria of monetary credit, and the subjugation of the social state to the indexes and criteria of nominal convergence and EMU.
What the Lisbon economic and social policy guidelines are promoting, what is in practice being prepared for working people and ‘served up’ under a misnamed ‘modernisation’ – intended to ‘sugar the pill’, deceive working people and reduce public reaction against the anti-labour and anti-grass roots economic and social policy of the EU – is a minimum level of poverty and not a minimum level of prosperity. The ‘New Economy’ is actively preparing the creation of an extensive stratum of ‘employed poor’, with miserly wages, restricted security and welfare rights, who will be obliged to change jobs according to the dictates of the unaccountable market and the laws of the lawless interests of big business.
The EU does not seem interested in fighting unemployment and promoting and supporting stable and full employment. On the contrary, it is preparing working people, and this indeed at a fast rate, to live in a situation of complete and permanent insecurity. Besides, the Presidency’s conclusions boldly state that the aim is ‘improved employability’ and both the information society and education are dragged along in chains to serve that rationale as tools to support part-time work, tele-employment and piecework employment.
Prosperity is destined for big business, to which splendid fields of glory are being opened since, in order to satisfy its demand for a ‘fully operational internal market’ and greater competitiveness against the USA, the pressures of international competition are being fully transferred to the labour market, liberalisation is being speeded up and the so-termed ‘structural changes’ (privatisations, market liberalisation) in vital sectors such as energy, telecommunications, postal services, transport, water supply and others are being promoted. Instead of being controlled, restructuring, mergers and company relocations leading to tens of thousands of job losses are being made even easier. Public and social investments are dwindling, equal opportunity and the fight against all forms of discrimination related to access to employment, and labour relations are being undermined, and priority is being given to whatever serves the aim of the ‘economic productivity of labour’ for big business, in other words low wages, lack of social protection, flexible and temporary employment, and the persistent exclusion of women, young people and people with special needs from the labour market.
The more than 60 million people who are victims of long-term unemployment, mass poverty and social exclusion, and all the working people in Europe too, cannot react ‘adaptively’, ‘supportively’, ‘obediently’ or ‘cooperatively’ to such choices. You will find them in front of you, unsubdued, uncompromising and unyielding, fighting for and demanding full and steady employment and a system of social policy that includes insurance, health, pensions, protection for the unemployed, real equality of opportunity, quality education and substantive professional training.
The only thing in the Lisbon conclusions one could agree with is that ‘people are Europe’s main asset’, except for the fact that they are not disposed to be ‘liquidated’ in the international money markets and to sacrifice themselves so that the monopolies can inflate their profits. That asset is, and will prove to be, valuable in the struggle for a social, democratic and supportive Europe, a Europe of peace, progress and socialism."@en1
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