Unions have welcomed EU Advocate-Generals' opinions in two landmark cases against cheap labour from migrant workers from new member states at the European Court today.
SIPTU President Jack O'Connor said the opinions "are major steps forward in the fight against those
Advocate-General Mengozzi at the European Court of Justice
employers who fundamentally oppose the right of workers, organised in their trade unions, to defend collective agreements from being undermined through the use of sweated labour".
In the first case an Advocate-General Mengozzi at the European Court of Justice said trade unions "motivated by objectives which are in the public interest" had the right to oblige firms supplying workers from other EU countries to apply domestic pay rates.
The advisory opinion will now be considered by the full court before a final verdict later this year in a landmark case affecting employees across Europe.
The test case is the first covering equal pay and conditions for workers from low-wage eastern European countries — now EU members — when working away from their home country.
It involves a dispute over Latvian company Laval, which supplied construction workers to refurbish a Swedish school — drastically undercutting Sweden's own agreed basic pay rates.
Trouble flared when Swedish workers launched industrial action to protest against what they saw as unfair competition from cheap labourers from Latvia who were not covered by strict Swedish trade union agreements on pay and conditions.
Laval withdrew its workforce and began legal action in Sweden's labour courts. The case was referred to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg for a ruling on whether the Swedish industrial action — endorsed by the Swedish government — breached EU rules guaranteeing freedom to provide services and banning discrimination on nationality grounds.
Earlier, the EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, in charge of the single market, had angered trade unions and the Swedish government when he went to Stockholm during the dispute and supported the case for Laval workers to be paid at lower rates.
In the second case Advocate General Maduro backed union action to dissuade a company from relocating to another part of the EU to benefit from lower wage costs.
That case involves Viking Line, a Finnish ferry company, which tried to re-register one of its Finnish-flagged vessels in Estonia so as to switch to cheaper Estonian crew members.
In a similar case in 2005, Irish Ferries replaced the mainly Irish crew on the MV Normandyvessel with agency workers from abroad on lower rates of pay, and re-registered the ship to the Bahamas.
The cases throw a spotlight on the pitfalls of opening EU national borders to workers from low-wage member states while trying to defend national collective bargaining agreements.
Mr O'Connor said: "We hope that the Court upholds these findings, although it will undoubtedly come under pressure from powerful vested interests not to do so.
"It also highlights the need for greater protection of vulnerable, migrant workers across the enlarged EU labour market from gross exploitation.
"Nowhere is this more pertinent than Ireland. The Irish Government is one of only three in the EU which has flatly refused to legislate for equal treatment of workers employed by labour agencies with permanent employees".
The European Trade Union Confederation said it was a basic principle of the EU that each member state has the right to regulate its own labour markets and industrial relations systems, according to its different economic, social and political circumstances.
Additional reporting PA