How European Unions Confront ‘Austerity Measures’

By Ron Blascoe, AFT Retiree

In June, Greek unions held their fourth general strike in opposition to government austerity measures, and in May French unions shut down much of that country to stop an increase in the retirement age. In June, 2 million Spanish public sector workers went on strike to protest proposed wage cuts and threats to their pensions. Italy’s largest union federation shut down that country at the end of the month to stop a series of measures that would reduce wages and increase job insecurity.

Meanwhile, in this country, unions have generally responded to wage cuts and other austerity measures with little more than a “strongly-worded speech” at the Washington Press Club.

Is there something union members in this country could learn from our European counterparts?

Same problem, same fight
From Madison to Madrid, California to Catalonia, governments are facing huge budget deficits. And, while details differ, the general cause is the same. For decades financial speculators have been gambling with other people’s money, and accumulating more and more wealth for themselves in the process. When the bubble inevitably burst, tax revenues plummeted at the same time demands for services increased.

Governments responded to the crisis by giving away billions of dollars and Euros to the very financial institutions that created the crisis in the first place, making public deficits that much worse. In late May, the heads European heads of state and the International Monetary Fund agreed to a 750 Billion Euro (about $908 billion US dollars) “rescue package.” To date, US taxpayers have bailed out Wall Street to the tune of about $1 trillion.

Of course, someone has to pay for these deficits and bailouts. And the employing class and their governments agree that that “someone” should be the working class. Thus we’ve seen proposals to cut jobs, pay and pensions, increase regressive sales taxes and for “labor law reforms” aimed at making it easier for employers to undermine union contracts.

But across national boundaries – in English, Spanish, Greek, Italian and Portuguese—works have spontaneously come to the same conclusion: “We didn’t cause this crisis, and we’re not going to be made to pay for it.”

Same fight, different strategies
We have come to accept the fact that European unions are just more militant than those in the US. They shut down production with nationwide general strikes while our leaders make strongly-worded speeches.

One often cited explanation for the differences in response is that unions are much larger and more powerful in Europe, which somehow translates into a more militant posture. In fact, the average level of unionization among European Union nations is a little over 26 percent, compared to a little over 12 percent in this country. But France’s unions currently represent only 12 percent of the workforce, and they can still shut down most of that country. And even when US unionization levels were at their peak (about 35 percent in 1954), there was little in the way of mass direct action. So, size doesn’t seem to matter.

A more likely explanation is that the European unions have historically been associated with anti-capitalist political parties and so have no stake in making the current system work.

In Italy, for example, the 5.5 million member CGIL is closely aligned with the Italian Communist and Socialist Parties. The French CFDT is associated with the French Socialist Party and the CGT with the Communist Party. Together they have roughly 1.5 million members. The Spanish CCOO, with about a million members, was formerly associated with the Communist Party and the UGT, with over 800,000 members, is traditionally linked to the Socialist Workers Party of Spain (PSOE). Unions in Britain support the Labor Party and those in Germany generally support the Social Democratic Party.

The two labor federations in this country, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, are no less aligned with the Democratic Party which, Tea Party rhetoric notwithstanding, makes no pretense of being anti-capitalist.

These affiliations of unions with specific left-wing political parties create opportunities and some serious limitations. Since the budget deficits and many of the austerity measures are being managed by elected officials, unions can use their power to threaten or even bring down governments.

But what if it is your own political party that is in power and is implementing anti-worker austerity measures? That’s the case in Spain, where the UGT finds itself in the streets protesting the actions of the PSOE and in Greece, where the unions are battling the government of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement.

In this country, many of the austerity measures designed to cut wages, pensions and job security are being pushed by Democratic Party administrations at local, state and federal levels, which may explain some of the reluctance of US labor leaders to directly confront attacks on their members.

There have even been some visible splits in labor unity in Europe, apparently due to political affiliations. For example, when the Spanish CCOO called a national rail strike in May, the PSOE-associated UGT boycotted the stoppage.

On the other hand, Britain’s Labor Party has just been voted out of office, leaving its trade union base a free hand to confront the policies of the new Conservative-Liberal coalition government.

International solidarity
The forces of international capital are coordinating their efforts across national boundaries in a rare showing of international solidarity. The European Union (EU) countries have agreed on bailout and budget slashing plans, and the US Administration has been working closely with the EU and the IMF to prop up financial markets on both sides of the Atlantic.

But, up until now, Europe’s unions have taken a more or less nationalistic approach. Unions in relatively rich countries, like Germany and France, have sometimes resented calls to use tax revenues to “bail out” poor countries like Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, which have been characterized as “living above their means.” Workers in those poorer countries, of course, resent draconian cuts in their standards of living that seem to be imposed by their rich neighbors.

The strikes and protests by European unions have tended to demand only that their “own” government not attack their own workers.

But, that may be changing. Leaders of many of Europe’s unions met in Brussels in June to discuss joint Europe-wide actions against the common austerity measures being imposed by a seemingly-united capitalist class. If it comes to pass, such actions could spark the rebirth of a new and unified working class movement “without a country,” and provide a new direction for labor in Europe and here at home.