Europe

From January to December 2008, Europe saw more widespread and severe anti-union practices than in any recent years.

In December, the international trade union movement received gruesome news from Greece: a woman trade union leader was attacked with sulphuric acid and permanently maimed. Bulgarian-born Constantina Kuneva was obviously targeted because of her fight for the rights of over a thousand colleagues, many of them irregular migrants. Unfortunately, this was not the only case of assault against trade unionists: at least 14 trade unionists (six of them women) in various European countries have been attacked by management-hired thugs or the police.

In the Russian Federation, the leader of the ITUA trade union at the "Ford Motors" production plant was attacked twice, while two ITUA activists at the TagAZ plant that produces cars for Hyundai were beaten up at the factory gate. A French woman activist was hospitalised for two days after a brutal attack in Moscow. Another woman trade unionist was attacked in Bulgaria and two women activists were assaulted by the management of their company in Serbia. In Kosovo, a trade union leader was attacked in front of his office.

In Turkey, peaceful trade union protesters faced police violence and judicial harassment. The Istanbul Riot Police used disproportionate force against a May Day demonstration. A great number of trade unionists were injured and arrested, whilst leaders of KESK and DISK were beaten up by the police. Meryem Öszögüt, head of the Health and Social Services Employees’ Union’s Legal and Women’s Affairs Department, spent eight months in jail on trumped-up charges merely for having attended a press conference at which the killing of another female trade union activist was denounced. Seven activists of the national car workers' union, TÜMTIS, spent over six months in jail without appearing in court while several hundred others were dismissed due to their TÜMTIS membership. Eleven leading members of KESK risk jail sentences as their court cases are still pending, 26 were subjected to judicial enquiries and another 600 were subjected to "disciplinary enquiries" for having taken part in trade union activities.

In Belarus, 32 young trade unionists were arrested at the CDTU’s headquarters for not giving any justification of their presence in large numbers. Eight Belarusian trade unionists received short-term jail sentences, four of them were reportedly beaten up by the police. Though still an outstanding example of anti-union legislation and practices, Belarus has taken some steps in the right direction: the government agreed to scrap the proposed new anti-union laws.

2,400 anti-union dismissals, at a cautious estimate, were reported during the year. While 2,000 unionists were fired or forced to resign in Turkey alone, union activities cost people their jobs in Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, as well as Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In Albania (private sector), Georgia and Switzerland the law does not effectively protect workers from anti-union dismissals. The Georgian government finally agreed to an independent assessment of this law in the light of international labour standards, and the Swiss government launched a tripartite discussion (the latter has not yet resulted in a political consensus). In Montenegro, following the adoption of the new Labour Law, workers have been forced to change their open-ended employment contracts into fixed-term ones.

Trade unions’ right to collective action has been undermined in several countries. In France, a new law made organising a strike in primary and secondary education more difficult. In Belgium, several multinationals flooded courts with petitions to ban certain forms of collective action such as picketing, leading to arrests and clashes between workers and police when the police was enforcing court rulings. In the Czech Republic, the Constitutional Court repealed several provisions of the Labour Code, withdrawing preferential collective bargaining rights from the majority trade unions. The constitutionality of collective agreements was also questioned in Hungary. In Croatia, Poland and Macedonia, new laws undermining trade union rights are being elaborated. More positively, it should be noted that legal amendments in Lithuania and Bosnia improved compliance with ILO standards.

In Hungary and Serbia the global financial crisis prompted government attempts to pull back from national collective agreements; however, in both countries temporary compromises were reached postponing final decisions. Some employers, notably in the Czech Republic, used the economic recession to put pressure on workers to withdraw their support for trade unions. In Germany, collective agreements signed by non-representative trade unions are increasingly given recognition, even where those unions settle for lower conditions. A new law in France allows company-level agreements precedence, under certain conditions, over sectoral-level agreements even where the latter are more favourable to workers.

Some governments use "trade unions" lacking independence or representativity to undermine genuine workers’ organisations. In the Russian Federation, State officials pushed trade unions into the "Sotsprof" confederation, which clearly enjoys a privileged relationship with the authorities. In Georgia, a "yellow" trade union for education personnel has been set up and promoted by school principals and the Ministry of Education. In Kyrgyzstan, after the Federation of Trade Unions refused to elect a government protégé as its leader, the Federation’s president was suspended from office on criminal charges that had officially been dropped several years previously. In the Russian Federation, trade unions experienced growing interference by the public authorities. In Latvia, the property tax for the trade union headquarters was raised ten times after the union campaigned for constitutional amendments.

Several judgements of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) sparked controversy. The judgement in the Ruffert case effectively annulled the social clause for the public procurement contracts in Germany. This clause obliged tenderers to pay their employees at least the wages prescribed by local collective agreements. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) considered this decision "an open invitation for social dumping". On the other hand, in Belgium a judgement by the ECJ led to more representation rights for workers in small and medium-sized enterprises.