1. Trade unions and the crisis
“Europe and its citizens face an existential threat – the destruction of the European social model. Growing inequality – due largely to a reducing proportion of GDP going to wages and attacks on workers’ rights – created the conditions for the global financial crisis, followed by sovereign debt crises and trade imbalances. Most European countries are affected, although in different ways at different times.
Governments and employers across the EU have responded to that crisis by proposing more of what led to it: attacks on collective bargaining; reductions in wages, pensions and social protection; deregulation, liberalisation and flexibility leading to insecure and low value jobs; and privatisation or cuts to public services and the welfare state. Austerity in the public sector and reductions in workers’ living standards are storing up further problems for the future. “