Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-23-Speech-2-030"

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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, despite the fact that it has welcomed some of the positions adopted by the European Parliament, I find it deplorable that the Council persists in maintaining a proposal for a directive that fails to meet the expectations of workers in the European Union. When you see the behaviour of the directors of many companies, especially the multinationals, who decide to restructure, relocate or even partially or totally close down their businesses, making hundreds or thousands of workers unemployed simply to cut costs and/or increase profits, it is all the more intolerable that the Council should not have accepted proposals that we have adopted in this House. Examples of these are: the reference to the planning stage in the definition of consultation, its extension to cover economic and financial developments in the company and the obligation to seek agreement on all issues subject to the information and consultation of workers. extending consultation in particularly serious cases; extending the concept of a serious breach of the obligations to inform and consult; the implementation of the directive on public administration. the abolition of the employer’s right to retain particularly sensitive information and the obligation for Member States to promote social dialogue within SMEs. These are our reasons for supporting Mrs Ghilardotti’s proposals, which once again take up the positions adopted at first reading, with particular emphasis on the amendments that seek to step up sanctions and specific legal proceedings in cases where the directive is breached, on suspending decisions at the request of workers’ representatives when their implementation has serious consequences for workers, with a view to eliminating or minimising these harmful consequences, on eliminating the transitional periods for the directive’s implementation in Member States that do not have a system of worker consultation and on reducing the period of transposition into national law to two years as well as its implementation in the public sector. These are positive proposals which, as I said, we support. I can only regret the fact, however, that the rapporteur has dropped her two proposals on eliminating the option the Council wishes to give employers to, in certain cases, neither inform nor consult their workers, although the rapporteur’s proposals envisage sanctions against employers that fail to act promptly. The Council’s position, however, opens up loopholes that could prove dangerous for workers and it is, therefore, important to eliminate this possibility. This is the basic justification for the two amendments that we have tabled in conjunction with the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance. We hope that a majority in Parliament votes in favour of these and that the Council takes account of the positions that have been put forward here in one of the most sensitive areas of the protection of workers’ rights."@en1

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