Europe at the Crossroads

Steffen Lehndorff

Looking at Europe these days some people (at least of my generation) may remember the lyrics of a famous song of the rock band AC/DC from the late 1970s: “I'm on my way to the Promised Land — I'm on the highway to hell.” More and more countries of the Euro zone are drifting into another recession, and some Southern European countries have been driven into an ever deepening economic depression which has lasted for four years already. The stranglehold of cutting public expenditures is not just blocking the road to economic recovery; this obsession with austerity makes it increasingly difficult to draw lessons from the economic policy failures in the pre-crisis period. These lessons, however, are desperately needed for any re-orientation of socio-economic models (or “growth models”) in the crisis-ridden countries, but equally in the allegedly “healthy” economies. Moreover, European countries are being directed politically into national egoisms which are about to drive the European project to the brink. Europe is being forced into a fiscal dictatorship which suffers from a fundamental lack of democratic foundations for economic governance at the European Union (EU) level and has already begun to interfere with fundamental democratic rights within member states. The complexity of the challenge to find a way out goes well beyond a more appropriate macroeconomic policy.

Rank & File Participation and International Union Democracy

Vasco Pedrina

Trade union democracy and active rank & file participation are two sides of the same coin, both nationally and internationally. Historically, trade unions were built and operated almost exclusively by workers who devoted their spare time to the union cause. Along with the growth in their membership and the development of their economic strength, trade unions developed administrative and technical structures whose operation has increasingly been ensured by full-time union officials. Ultimately, this organisational transformation often led to bureaucracy, and the weakening of rank & file participation and trade union democracy. This transformation was characterised by an ever-increasing delegation of tasks from the active union base to the full-time union officials, a shift in union activities from the field to trade union offices, and a weaker trade union presence in the workplace.

From trade unionism in a booming economy to trade unionism in hard times[1]

During the economic boom of the “30 glorious years” that followed the Second World War, the impact of these developments was not very serious for the workers in countries with strong trade union traditions. For workers in such countries it was not too difficult to negotiate socially progressive agreements with the employers or the state at the bargaining table. Born from the ashes of a terrible war, the “Spirit of Philadelphia”[2], which gave rise to the "European Social Model", provided the guiding framework for the relatively calm labour relations characteristic of the period (at least in developed countries). The neoliberal offensive of the ‘80s and ‘90s, together with the first serious signs of systemic crisis, radically changed the situation. Many unions found themselves like “The Naked King”, paralysed by their bureaucracies, powerless in the face of the trends evolving in the consumer society, and confronted by a new generation of US-style managers and hard-right politicians, who had no time for social dialogue. In short, trade unions were no longer being taken seriously as a countervailing power.