Foreign Rules for Irish Jobs

[OneHumpNotTwo]

I am going to start this post with a misquote/wrong reference.

There is an EU proposal called the "Law of Origin"(that is the misquote) which says that a foreign company can tender for a job in Ireland on the basis of paying its workers the foreign "basic wage " and complying with the foreign "safety at work" legislation. This means that a foreign business can undercut (the Local National ) Irish businesses on both the cost of wages and on the cost of safety and health . This would mean that the Local National Government will have no control over wages or Safety and Health for foreign registered businesses operating in the State

I heard David Begg on the radio today suggesting that Irish busineses would take advantage of this provision and re-register overseas. He suggested this in the context of Irish businesses acting in a "bad" manner. I am suggesting that David Begg has got the wrong end of the stick.

Even on a superficial examination of the proposal it is clear that no Irbusiness can hope to compete against a competitor who pays substantially lower wages and saves costs of lower safety standards. It will be re-register abroad or bankruptcy.

The EU proposal will create a playing field tilted grossly in favour of the lowest standard. If you do business in Ireland you should comply with Irish rules. If you do business in France you should obey French rules . Irish workers have to pay Irish prices,they do not have a choice.Irish employers have to pay Irish prices,they do not have a choice. If the EU proposal passes it will have a disasterous effect on Irish, German , British, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish....... businesses. The "new" members of the EU will triumph over the older members.

Recently Bertie Ahern used the term "race to the bottom" in another context, it is however an appropriate term to use about the present proposal. I am all for competition, I am angered by "Rip-Off Ireland" , I want lower prices. A foreign company that competes in Ireland with the same basic wage and safety matrix but is less greedy on profits will be welcomed by me. That is not the proposal. Irish businesses will have to compete against employers who pay low wages and who abide by low safety standards. Irish businesses in competition will have to pay higher wages and to comply with high(Irish) standards.

In a struggle for survival Irish wages would have to be cut (to below subsistence level) and Irish Safety and Health standards dropped. Clearly this would be unacceptable.

Lest there be any misinterpretation of what I have written I wish to make it clear that this is not an attack on foreign/immigrant workers. Foreign/immigrant workers are helping to keep the celtic tiger roaring. We need them!

One aspect of the EU proposal that astonishes me is the idea that a foreign registered business can ignore the Local National Law (Irish).

[Pidge]

If what you're saying is true, then this seems strange. But, I get the feeling there's more to this than we're being told. Could you provide a link please?

[sackville]

I am going to start this post with a misquote/wrong reference.

There is an EU proposal called the "Law of Origin"(that is the misquote) which says that a foreign company can tender for a job in Ireland on the basis of paying its workers the foreign "basic wage " and complying with the foreign "safety at work" legislation. This means that a foreign business can undercut (the Local National ) Irish businesses on both the cost of wages and on the cost of safety and health . This would mean that the Local National Government will have no control over wages or Safety and Health for foreign registered businesses operating in the State

I heard David Begg on the radio today suggesting that Irish busineses would take advantage of this provision and re-register overseas. He suggested this in the context of Irish businesses acting in a "bad" manner. I am suggesting that David Begg has got the wrong end of the stick.

Even on a superficial examination of the proposal it is clear that no Irbusiness can hope to compete against a competitor who pays substantially lower wages and saves costs of lower safety standards. It will be re-register abroad or bankruptcy.

The EU proposal will create a playing field tilted grossly in favour of the lowest standard. If you do business in Ireland you should comply with Irish rules. If you do business in France you should obey French rules . Irish workers have to pay Irish prices,they do not have a choice.Irish employers have to pay Irish prices,they do not have a choice. If the EU proposal passes it will have a disasterous effect on Irish, German , British, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish....... businesses. The "new" members of the EU will triumph over the older members.

Recently Bertie Ahern used the term "race to the bottom" in another context, it is however an appropriate term to use about the present proposal. I am all for competition, I am angered by "Rip-Off Ireland" , I want lower prices. A foreign company that competes in Ireland with the same basic wage and safety matrix but is less greedy on profits will be welcomed by me. That is not the proposal. Irish businesses will have to compete against employers who pay low wages and who abide by low safety standards. Irish businesses in competition will have to pay higher wages and to comply with high(Irish) standards.

In a struggle for survival Irish wages would have to be cut (to below subsistence level) and Irish Safety and Health standards dropped. Clearly this would be unacceptable.

Lest there be any misinterpretation of what I have written I wish to make it clear that this is not an attack on foreign/immigrant workers. Foreign/immigrant workers are helping to keep the celtic tiger roaring. We need them!

One aspect of the EU proposal that astonishes me is the idea that a foreign registered business can ignore the Local National Law (Irish).

this would be a nightmare, particuarly after Turkey's entry. We'd need to withdraw from the E.U. altogether and there would considerable public support.

[geraghd]

I think this is coming from the Common Services Directive or whatever that was called, but I think the fears being outlined werent actually true or at least the directive hasnt been finalised yet...

[joemomma]

This is the Directive on services in the internal market, also known as the Services Directive or the Bolkestein Directive, after Charlie McCreevy's predecessor as EU Commissioner for for the Internal Market. You can read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Services_Directive

[JCSkinner]

I've said it before and I'm happy to say it again now - McCreevy needs pistol-whipping for championing this damaging and socially divisive and dangerous directive.
The Swedes quite rightly told him to shove his interference up his capacious Kildare arse when he tried to foist Latvian working standards and practices on them.
It is time the rest of us stood up for the standards we believe in too.

[Catalpa]

Lest there be any misinterpretation of what I have written I wish to make it clear that this is not an attack on foreign/immigrant workers. Foreign/immigrant workers are helping to keep the celtic tiger roaring. We need them!

If it's so obvious we need them where were all the economic experts prior to 1 May 2004 about our 'need' for 100,000+ working immigrants per year?

Please don't kid yourself. In a Capitalist economy increasing the Labour supply obviously impacts on the going labour wage.

500,000+ new workers over five years on an original working population of approx. 1.9 million is a 25% + increase.

Is there any other State in the World attempting anything like this scale of immigration? No for very obvious reasons.

There is no way such a huge inlux of foreign labour will not drive down Irish peoples salaries.

Some immigration into the State is acceptable but what we see happening now is nuts!

[agora]

Actually if anything the Services Directive may actually decrease immigration into Ireland. At the moment, migrant workers will go where pay and conditions are best (or at least where they think they will be) and some employers will seek to cheat by hiring workers on dodgy contracts.
However, if the Directive is passed, the Country of Origin section means that a company only has to operate according to the wage and working conditions of the country in which they are headquartered. In practice, I suspect that many Irish businessmen will rush to set up an office in Lithuania or Poland or wherever standards are lowest and others around Europe will join them in the race to the bottom, ultimately driving down workers rights and pay across the Union. Therefore, there will be no need to recruit foreign workers, as Irish people will have no choice but to work for slave wages as well.

[Pax]

This is the Directive on services in the internal market, also known as the Services Directive or the Bolkestein Directive, after Charlie McCreevy's predecessor as EU Commissioner for for the Internal Market. You can read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Services_Directive

Or the Frankenstein directive more like. The idea of a social Europe is one were the market raises minimum standards across the board not shatters them down to the lowest common denominator.

Read the Monbiot article on this, via the link below,

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/03 ... ht-banana/

[size=7]The Real Straight Banana[/size]
Filed under: globalisation health & safety

A coup against social Europe has been foiled – for the time being


By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 8th March 2005

There is a group of men and women which seeks to make life as difficult as possible for the progressives who support the European Union. They are members not of the UK Independence Party or the French National Front, but of the European Commission. Whenever we try to persuade our countrymen that the EU helps to raise our quality of life, defend human rights, protect the environment and ward off the market fundamentalism of the United States, they find some means of proving us wrong......

.....The gremlin inhabits a few lines of text in the middle of the treaty, concerning something called “the country of origin principle”. Companies, it says, “are subject only to the national provisions of their Member State of origin.”(2) Roughly translated, this means that a company based in one European country but working in another is bound only by the rules of the country in which it is based. If a construction firm whose offices are in Lithuania, for example, has a contract in the United Kingdom, it need abide only by Lithuanian law while working over here. The obvious result is that every enterprising corporation in Europe will relocate its headquarters to the place in which the laws are weakest.

And then it gets really weird. The state responsible for enforcing the rules – health and safety laws for example – will be the one in which the company is based, not the one in which it is working.(3) If, for example, a Lithuanian construction company is forcing workers in the UK to use dodgy scaffolding, our own Health and Safety Executive won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. Instead, the Lithuanian equivalent must send its inspectors over here, and, without local knowledge, hampered by any number of translation problems, seek to defend the lives of British workers.

Given the way such markets work, the company they are monitoring will, more likely than not, be a British one flying a Lithuanian flag of convenience. But if that company is threatening your safety on a building site in Brixton, you will be able to seek protection only by protesting to the authorities in Vilnius.

It’s a formula, in other words, for a complete breakdown of the effective enforcement of the laws restraining corporations. The directive would, in the name of “bringing down barriers”, raise such barriers for anyone trying to defend their rights that effective public complaint would become all but impossible. This, of course, is the point........

..........At first sight the country of origin principle looks odd. The purpose of the internal market reforms was surely to engineer a single set of standards across the whole European Union. This rule, in theory, could lead to 25 different sets of standards being applied in the same country. But when you read the briefings produced by the corporate lobbyists in Brussels, you realise that it will indeed harmonise standards – at the lowest levels to be found anywhere in the European Union.(5) Once corporations have moved their nominal addresses to the countries with the weakest rules (just as ship owners register their vessels in Panama or Liberia), the countries with stricter laws will discover that to stay in the market they must drag their own standards down to match the weakest ones.....

[Carrier]

Lest there be any misinterpretation of what I have written I wish to make it clear that this is not an attack on foreign/immigrant workers. Foreign/immigrant workers are helping to keep the celtic tiger roaring. We need them!

Do we? We were doing ok economically before they arrived.