Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-23-Speech-3-359"
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"en.20050223.21.3-359"2
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"Mr President, this House unanimously adopted a resolution on this very subject just over a year ago. The outrage expressed from every quarter last year caused ThyssenKrupp to reconsider its decision to close its Terni plant. It went further: in June 2004 it signed a new agreement with a new investment plan.
This plan, as has already been said, promised to make Terni a centre of excellence in magnetic sheet steel production, which is strange in light of what Mr Langen has just said. In return it would receive infrastructure and energy cost benefits under an agreement with the Italian Government. These were in addition to the substantial benefits the company received directly or indirectly from Europe's Structural Funds.
Just seven months later, ThyssenKrupp has torn up that agreement – and that is the issue we are considering here this evening. It has gone ahead with closure, bypassing the social partners, the Italian Government and others who were party to the agreement. The company is the latest in a long line to make a mockery of EU laws on worker information and consultation.
Commissioner, you mentioned the Social Agenda adopted just two weeks ago. Let me quote a heading from that: ' Moving towards full employment: making work a real option for all, increasing the quality and productivity of work, and anticipating and managing change'. I am sure those words will ring hollow in the ears of the workers hit by this decision.
I am not criticising the Commission; I applaud many of the ideas Mr Špidla has included in the new Social Agenda. Let me remind you of some. The Agenda underlines the need for a proactive approach to the positive management of industrial change. It talks of the need to reinforce social dialogue, update legislation on collective redundancies and update and consolidate existing laws on information and consultation. It launches the idea of transnational collective bargaining. Finally, in the context of this debate, it underlines the need for improved corporate social responsibility.
The outrageous behaviour of ThyssenKrupp in Italy underlines the need for all these things and more to be done as a matter of urgency. What do I mean by 'more'? Let me say two things in closing. The first is that although the new Social Agenda foresees the creation of a number of high level groups, it fails to include a number of good ideas from past high level groups. How about the recommendations of the 1998 Gyllenhammar Group on Industrial Change that companies should produce annual managing change reports, and that any company dismissing workers without safeguarding their employability should be barred from access to public funds? Only when CSR includes such provisions, will companies like ThyssenKrupp take any notice of it at all.
Finally, Commissioner, you say that the Commission is powerless. When the closure was announced at the beginning of last year, the Commission and its President joined Parliament in roundly condemning the decision. I hope, Commissioner, you can give us the assurance this evening that you will do the same."@en1
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