‘Worker rights will be strengthened by treaty’

THE Lisbon Treaty will strengthen workers’ rights and claims to the contrary are unfounded, an Oireachtas committee has said.

In a new report, the cross-party Committee on European Affairs said claims by the No campaign that Lisbon would undermine employees’ pay and conditions were “without basis”.

No campaigners have argued that a series of European Court of Justice judgments – known as the Viking, Laval, Ruffert and Luxembourg cases – prioritised the EU’s free-market principles above workers’ rights.

The committee examined the four cases and also sent two members to Finland and Sweden, where the Viking and Laval cases originated, to consider the impact of the judgments.

The committee found that the Laval case, in which the ECJ essentially ruled that a Latvian company working in Sweden could pay its workers less than local union agreements permitted, “was unique to industrial relations systems in Sweden and could not have happened in Ireland” as this country has a statutory minimum wage rate.

“The Laval case cannot and should not be linked to the Lisbon Treaty,” said the committee, whose membership is predominantly in favour of Lisbon.

It found Laval and the other cases established a number of important principles which “benefited” workers’ rights in Ireland. “These include the right to collective bargaining, including taking strike action and the legitimacy to take strike action to combat social dumping.

“From our detailed enquiry, it is clear that claims made by opponents of the Lisbon Treaty that it will undermine workers’ rights or force a reduction in the minimum wage are completely false,” said Labour TD and committee chair Joe Costello.

Meanwhile, Socialist MEP and No campaigner Joe Higgins said a combination of massive business funding and media bias was distorting the campaign in favour of the Yes side. “The massive amounts of money being raised from business interests and being spent directly by powerful corporate interests, as well as a huge pro-Lisbon bias in most sectors of the media, are drowning out the input of ordinary people in the Lisbon debate.”

Elsewhere, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said Lisbon II was “exactly the same treaty that citizens rejected last year”, and called for another No vote.

Labour TD Sean Sherlock, meanwhile, called on the Catholic bishops to explain why anti-Lisbon leaflets are being allowed inside the doors of churches.

“I believe strongly that I have a right to attend church without being bombarded with messages from either side of the debate. That leaflets are being distributed with religious symbols and iconography on their artwork, but with a clear political messages inside, is a clear abuse of the openness and accessibility of churches.”