The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is urging its 490,000 members in the State to vote for the Amsterdam Treaty, because it has made employment and social inclusion policy priorities of the EU.
The ICTU's deputy general secretary, Ms Patricia O'Donovan, said at the launch of the ICTU referendum campaign yesterday that, "unlike Maastricht and other treaties, the trade union movement has had quite a lot of involvement this time. When the treaty was first broached in March 1996 the European trade unions made it clear that unless employment and social inclusion were part of it, the new treaty would lose the support of trade unionists."
The fact that trade union concerns had been taken on board in the new Title on Employment marks "an important breakthrough for the unions and for all those working in the voluntary sector to combat social exclusion," Ms O'Donovan said. The new title provides for a co-ordinated strategy for employment, promoting a skilled workforce and "employment proofing" other EU policies. "These measures, combined with the inclusion of `a high level of employment' as an explicit objective in the new treaty, represent a major move towards putting employment at the heart of EU policy," she said. EU member-states will now be obliged to produce and implement national plans to achieve employment and social objectives.
"The incorporation into the treaty of a reference to the Charter of Fundamental Rights for Workers strengthens the right of workers to fair treatment in the workplace." Already, Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome had made an enormous difference to women in the workplace. The new treaty will widen equality provisions to people with disabilities, older employees and those of different sexual orientation.
"If Maastricht was about making the Single Market and Monetary Union the priority, Amster
dam is an attempt to address the imbalance." The new Treaty represented "an important step on the road to a fairer Europe".
On defence and security issues, Ms O'Donovan said the ICTU did not feel the new treaty would jeopardise existing safeguards to Ireland's neutrality. Any changes that might be proposed would require to go before the people in a separate referendum. In some respects, by specifying what the issues were, the Amsterdam Treaty could be seen as copperfastening our neutrality. The women's committee of the ICTU also called for a Yes vote in the referendum. Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome had provided a sound legal basis for equal pay claims and the various equality directives which had followed on issues like equal treatment, pregnancy, occupational pensions, parental time and part-time working.
The treaty would reinforce this trend and lay the basis for combating other forms of discrimination, the committee said.