How can we make social Europe a concern for everyone?

April 6th, 2008by Noel Hatch

Deborah Littman, Chair of London Citizens Living Wage Network & UNISON National Officer for Bargaining, t the New Social Europe debate of the PES Manifesto Consultation admitted she wholly agreed with many of the proposals in the PES Manifesto, but was concerned on how we get there, how we make social Europe a concern for everyone.

Work has been made insecure, the social wage has been reduced and there was been a steep decline in bargaining power from workers. Communities have been dismantled, workers distanced from their employers or contractors. There has been a very deliberate policy to push back the gains of the workers, often by stealth.

Expectations have been constantly lowered to the extent that our goal becomes not how we can make it better, but how can we prevent it being that bad.

How can you organise when you don’t know who you’re actually working for? The trade unions struggle with bargaining, sometimes too conservative in their approach. The game has changed – we need to deal issue by issue.

How can we fight for this manifesto? How can we make it exist in real life? How can we turn it into something powerful?

There is an issue of language – we have now replaced a collectively provided social wage with individualised budgets – losing the economies of scale and the social benefits of the former.

We need to frame the language on the notion of accountability. The corporate forces need to be accountable to the community, we need to reassert this notion that you are responsible for what you do to your workers. There is something more than money, giving back to your community.

Deborah explaining that with London Citizens, they focus on developing leadership skills and organising a “listening campaign”, bringing together 2500 people from over 90 organisations across London. They developed a range of proposals and voted on the top four to submit to the Mayor of London, asking him not only to take this forward but to work with us.

Deborah proposed that we need to:

• build a strong coalition within and beyond the labour movement
• build a “listening campaign” for the manifesto and the next elections
• frame the language on the notion of accountability to the corporate forces

See more of her proposals and her debate here: