TEEU:THE GENERAL secretary-designate of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU), Eamon Devoy, has said that his union is recommending a No vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum.
He said the TEEU was coming out against the treaty because employment standards in the country were being relentlessly driven down by those whose only goal was to accumulate wealth.
Speaking in a debate at the Desmond Greaves School in Dublin last night, he said that the treaty was “deficient” and workers across Europe should demand that it be redrafted to include a right to trade union organisation and representation. “A new treaty must include a social progress protocol that takes precedence over the other so-called freedoms that guarantee the ‘right’ of employers to continue their race to the bottom with impunity, jeopardising the gains made for ordinary working people by the labour movement over the past half century,” he said.
However, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions David Begg said that there was nothing in the treaty that was inimical to workers’ interest. He said that the race to the bottom experienced in Ireland was not caused by Europe but rather was driven by domestic business interests.
He said that the decision to open the doors to the free movement of labour – following EU enlargement in 2004 – and without strengthening employment safeguards, was motivated by a low-wage agenda.
The TEEU leader said that he did not believe that the fortunes of Irish workers were improving in an EU context. He said that supporters of the treaty within the trade union movement had claimed that workers should vote for Lisbon on the basis that the Charter of Fundamental Rights might be adopted at EU level.
However he said that the charter had been in existence since 1966 and there will be no greater obligation on member states to implement it after the vote than in the past.
