2001-01-28
Nedanstående klipp är insänt av R. Helmers.
"Svensk jämställdhet inspiration för EU". I maskopi med EU-kommissionen bedriver Regeringen den olagliga lönediskrimineringen!:
THE NEW"S EUROPEAN UNION and DISCRIMINATION in LABOUR RELATIONS.
The EC-Commission violates the Labour Law of the European Union by, contrary to articles 155 and 169 of the EC-Treaty, preventing the Directives of the Council of Ministers concerning the ban of discrimination to become effective. Instead the EC-Commission tries "off the records" to make the arbitrary salary discrimination of the 'New Swedish Model' binding the entire EU.
Obviously, the rights of all employees of the EU ("Equal wage for equal work") are in danger - see also the I.L.O.-Convention.
1 January 2001 the Swedish Government shall take the Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers. According to the attached report, this Government are obstructing both the binding Directives of this very Council of Ministers concerning the forbidden discrimination and the ruling Community Law, now for years. While the ruling parties call themselves 'feminists' and run propaganda against xenophobia, their Government are conducting salary discrimination against women and employees with foreign origin.
The Art of Legal Misinformation:
How the essential contradictions of Swedish Labour Lawto the Community Law of the European Union are covered up.
A report:
When Sweden was going to join the EU, the Swedish Labour Law had to be adjusted to the rules laid down in the EC-Treaty and several judgements of the European Court of Justice concerning labour relations. Contrary to the Labour Law of continental Europe, Swedish Labour Law is not based on the rights of the individual employee, the working <citoyen>, but presumes minor subjects without judicial capacity. Legal party is almost entirely the narrow leadership of each union.
Collective contracts or decisions to go on strike are never legitimated by democratic decisions or polls of the members. Only approximately 5% of the members participate in the elections of their leadership, these often already being the previous leaders and their close, favoured friends. Criticism by individual members is effectively suppressed at such meetings and the union press is controlled by the leadership. On the labour market, the unions possess a monopoly, e.g. by administrating and controlling the unemployment funds. Sweden has no unemployment insurance, run by the State.
In cases where individual employees are in conflict with their employers, the support by the union is dependant on the arbitrariness of its leaders. They have signed the contracts; the individual member is by procedural law discriminated. The Labour Court is composed of union leaders and representatives of the employers association - a typical corporative construction. While the union leadership can approach the Labour Court directly, the not supported member must first pass the District Court and is charged high legal costs. Such members - like unorganised employees - are from the beginning stigmatised without a reasonable chance of winning in court. One of the monopolist unions, the syndicate of academicians SACO, denies its members even the protection against notorious violations of Human Rights by the State. Members of foreign origin cannot expect support from a xenophobian leadership. Employees who are not members of the union are not even entitled to claim the fulfilment of a contract.
Such conditions on the labour market and in the unions favour the discrimination of minorities, such as persons with foreign origin, women, dissidents and political nonconformists. In reality, a system of 'closed shops' with integrated discrimination rules the Swedish labour market.
According to the judgement of 25 April 1996 of the European Court of Human Rights (Gustafsson/Sweden), the Swedish Government admitted their severe violation of Community Law namely that employees not being union members are discriminated in Sweden. The Minister Björn Rosengren - a former <white-collar> union leader - admitted publicly on 25 February 1999 that persons merely with foreign names are systematically discriminated on the labour market.
The systematic salary discrimination of employees with foreign origin is empirically investigated and proved by sociologist of Stockholm University (Carl le Grand & Ryszard Szulkin: "Invandrarnas Löner i Sverige", Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsliv, Nr.2/1999, S.89 - 110). The Swedish news agency TT reports 14/3 2000 from a conference in Stockholm that the average salary difference for immigrants is about 30 %.
The Swedish press (DN 11.8.97) mentions an OECD-report, according to which the employees in Swedish Public Service enjoy the lowest employment security of all 15 OECD-States. 85 % of the Swedish public servants against 24 % of the Italian collegues consider their employment as insecure. This result reflects the ruling arbitrariness in labour relations and the paltriness of the unions as counterpart to the State as employer.
When negotiating with the EU, the Swedish Government, however, pretended that those legal conditions against discrimination which are stated by Community Law and the legal provisions of the other Members States already are granted by the unions and do not need to be legislated in Sweden. However, this is obviously not the case.
Simultaneously with the negotiations, the Government introduced into their Public Service the salary discrimination as a Labour Law principle which they call fine-spoken <individual salary system>. The Public Service covers about 40 % of all employments. The salary discrimination permits the superiors to fix salaries of their employees on an arbitrary basis. The reasons - often libellous - are kept secret in order to prevent the employee from contesting the discrimination. Its arbitrariness makes the discrimination versatil, covering not only females and citizens of other EU-States.
This discrimination system is perfect: By keeping their reasons of discrimination secret, the Government and their authorities consider themselves safe and protected from any intervention from the European Commission for having discriminated women or citizens of other EU-States.
The principle of both I.L.O. and the EU <Equal pay for equal work> is no longer applied in Public Service. Because the union leadership had agreed upon it without asking their members, no defence against secret libel and the consequent salary discrimination is possible. Non-union members are, anyhow, denied working contracts and negotiations on their salary. Such a dictatorial lowering the relative salaries is a disciplinary punishments without the employee being heard. It is a means to enforce conformity and surpress criticism.
Obviously for the purpose of creating acceptance for this new <Swedish Model>, some publications were issued. THREE of the authors (Niklas Bruun,Anders Kjellberg + Kerstin Ahlberg) are affiliated with the Government agency 'National Institute of Working Live' NIW. One of them (Boel Flodgren) is Government appointed President of Lunds University with dictatorial competence. She is the pioneer in applying the salary discrimination with secret reasons against critical academic teachers as a punishment just when her book was published:
Niklas Bruun, Boel Flodgren and Håkan Hydén: <THE NORDIC LABOUR RELATIONS MODEL>, Aldershot Dartmouth, 1992.
Anders Kjellberg: in CHANGING INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN EUROPE, 2nd edition 1998, by Anthony Ferner and Richard Hyman. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford. ISBN 0-631-20551-9.
In further a publication, the members of this Government agency advocate that these collective labour contracts of the monopoly unions with their salary discrimination of both members and unorganised employees are declared generally binding EU Labour Law without the discriminated persons having any judicial remedy to defend themselves. Kerstin Ahlberg, Niklas Bruun: "KOLLEKTIVAVTAL I EU", Stockholm 1996.
The salary discrimination as the most characteristic achievement of the new 'Swedish Model' in labour relations is not mentioned with one single word in these publications, spread to European experts in Labour Law. This is no accident since the authors are well familiar with the new model.
Further precautions were taken to have the new <Swedish Model> of labour law accepted by the EU: The former Swedish minister Allan LARSSON is responsible for the introduction of the salary discrimination as a labour law principle. The Government managed to get him into the EU-Commission. Directly under Commissioner Padraig FLYNN, he is as the influential expert forming the EU's policy in Labour Law. He already both concealed and quashed without investigation complaints against this violation of Community Law by his and his Government's invention. Mr. Larsson was mentioned as the successor to Padraig Flynn.
The salary discrimination obviously violates the principles <Equal pay and treatment for equal work> (art. 100 u.119 Treaty of Rome ). Discrimination is forbidden. In order to give effect to these provisions, the Council of Ministers had issued a repeated number of Directives, such as 1612/68/EEC, 75/117/EEC,art.10, 10. February 1975; 76/207/EEC, 79/7/EEC, 86/378/EEC, 86/613/EEC, 91/533/EEC, 14.October 1991 und 92/85/EEC.
However, even the way in which the discrimination is conducted, its secret reasons and the denial of remedies against it are in conflict with these binding Directives. They bind any Government to provide the discriminated employees with effective judicial remedies. The judgement of the European Court of Justice (case 248/83, Johnston/Chief Constable, 15 MAY 1986, § 18) explains this principle with reference to the European Convention on Human Rights as the binding base of Community Law.
By obstructing the implementation of these Directives into national law, the Swedish Government allowed themselves to introduce this salary discrimination into their entire Public Service . Victims are mostly women and employees with foreign origin (EU-citizens).
It is the legal duty of the Commission in accord with arts. 155 and 169 EX OFFICIO to control the implementation of the Directives into national law. In his key-position, Mr Allan Larsson, the former responsible minister, protects his Government from this compulsory implementation from the very beginning.
Thus, the Swedish Government can just ignore the Directives of the Council of Ministers for the protection of employees against arbitrary discrimination in labour relations. The EC-Commission, "Guardian of Community Law", connives at this violation of Community Law. Thus, the Commission itself violates articles 155 and 169 of the EEC-Treaty according to which it has to control the implemention of the Directives into Swedish Labour Law. The Commission acts as an accomplice.
As a consequence, none of the many victims of discrimination has a chance of judicially defending herself/himself against discrimination. The unlawful discrimination is safeguarded completely by a 'denial of justice' and 'denial of access to court'. Although prohibited, this discrimination cannot be contested judicially.
The salary discrimination has caused discontent and envy instead of co-operation among the employees of the entire Public Service. Lacking co-operation has made the Swedish police ineffective in fighting crime. The educational crisis at universities and schools is further accentuated. The obstruction of the <equal pay> principle and the applicable parts of the Community Law of the EU is by the Government and its authorities considered as such important, that they even jeopardise the medical care of the citizens. In the public hospitals, they pay newly employed nurses up to 2000 SEK(155£) the month more than those skilled nurses who had been employed for years.
A recent, significant example: The Emergency Neurosurgery of the University Hospital of Lund is of vital importance for accident patients of Southern Sweden. Even there, in February 1999, the State authorities insisted on the salary discrimination against the nurses who claimed 'equal pay for equal work'. With regard to the working climate and the care to the patients, even their head-physician had claimed the abolishment of the discrimination. However, the leadership of the nurses' union had against the will of their members agreed upon the discrimination. Therefore, the nurses have no access to the Labour Court. Thus, the nurses could only protest by resigning from their employment, which 25 of 45 nurses did. Two weeks later, further 15 of 60 nurses at the intensive section of the same University Hospital followed, because the politicians refuse their claims for "Equal pay for equal work".
The protests of the nurses are spreading to further hospitals of the country; for example 50 nurses in Skellefteå of Northern Sweden resigned recently. In the meantime, this conflict has become typical for all Swedish hospitals from Luleå in the North to Ystad in the South. The patients are suffering from increasing operation queues. In stead of abolishing the salary discrimination, the politicians engaged private nurse-agencies with up to 3 times the costs of a nurse's salary. This was made public in a documentary by the Swedish TV on 27/9 1999: "Revolt of the nurses.
R. Helmers