The Deafening Silence of the European Trade Union Movement on Matters of Wide Social Interest

This article was exclusively written for The European Sting by one of our passionate writers, Mr. Alexandros K. Liakopoulos. The opinions expressed within reflect only the writer’s views and not necessarily The European Sting’s position on the issue.

Europe is marching from one end to the other against the war in Palestine, while the European political leadership failed to stand for the values expressed in the European Treaties, in the Chart of the United Nations and in the European Constitutions, namely the respect for Human Rights and Humanitarian International Law and the Geneva Treaties. As I have written in a previous article in this newspaper, this is democracy’s direst hour, as political leadership and people seem to have divorced over the very issue of right and wrong, of life and death of innocent civilians that is. Recently, Zafiris Tzannatos, senior fellow at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies and the Jordan Strategy Forum, published an article where he exposed the European political leadership’s silence and double standards for what it concerns the Palestinian conflict, along with the stance of the mass Media on the subject, massively biased as it is.

So, I will refrain from entering a subject so brilliantly covered elsewhere. The essence of my article is to discuss the stance of another voice of the “common causes” of the European people, of its workforce that is, of the Trade Unions, for which I have a special affection and sensitivity, as I devoted a long part of my youth to them and I was honored to serve as the President of the Youth Committee of the European Trade Union Confederation some two decades ago. Back then, which is not so long ago, the Trade Unions were an active part of society and were taking notice of all subjects touching it deeply: social and environmental issues, matters of peace and war, subjects of social justice, inclusion, racism, xenophobia were in our everyday agenda, along with the concrete matters of workers’ rights and social dialogue issues, like wages, insurance and the like. 

I still bear on my right eye four stiches to remind me a 300.000 Trade Unions organized demonstration in Brussels against the war in Iraq. The stiches are due to a raid of the mounted police which resulted to a horse hitting me with its chest and cutting my eyelid before bumping me 12 meters on the air before I crush to the arms of some comrades that were looking to catch me. “Those were the good old days”, as the saying goes. We did not stop the war in Iraq, on may argue, but we did know what we stood for, back then: we stood for reason, we stood for logic, we stood for right, we stood for peace, we stood for International Law at the Trade Unions and we were expressing our solidarity to other people suffering when all the above were proving short. And we were clashing with our governments, if they were not in accordance with us, for we knew that our convictions were on the right side of history. History proved us right afterwards, when it came out that this whole war – the Iraqi Dirty War – was based on lies and deception performed from the most official leaps, at the most official stages of international diplomacy: the very Security Council of the United Nations.

From then to today the whole world has changed massively, there is no doubt about that. The social causes have lost their touch and Trade Unions are bleeding out: membership is falling along with interest and participation. A 2019 ETUI study under the title “Bleak prospects: mapping trade union membership in Europe since 2000” finds that: “overall, membership and density rates are heading downwards in most countries, and very drastically in Central and Eastern Europe. Trade unions are not only struggling to keep membership developments in line with growing employment rates but are also ‘greying’. While the unionisation gap between younger and older workers is not new, fewer young people have joined a union over the past years in most European countries. The average age of union members is increasing and is higher than the average age of wage- and salary-earners in general. Simultaneously, while young people generally hold positive views about trade unions, they lack knowledge about them. With the loss in membership going hand in hand with a decrease in revenues, it remains to be seen to what extent and how trade unions will address the membership and generational challenges. Much will depend on trade union identities and the framing of the challenges, unions’ conception of membership, and their reliance on membership dues for their organisational sustainability. Whatever the case, the magnitude of the generational and member challenges also necessitates trade unions to reach out to other players to help bolster union security, in combination with unions’ own (recruitment and organising) initiatives.”

The following picture 3 of the above-mentioned study is indicative of the falling participation in Trade Unions in most European Countries:

So, why is this happening? Did people suddenly lost interest in Trade Unionism after more than a whole century of Trade Unionism’s positive development? Is it the impact of new technologies? Could it be that there is a lack of leadership in addressing the real issues touching the people’s “hearts and minds”, i.e. their interests that extend beyond their wallets? 

People (used to) unionize not only to protect their income, but also to protect their beliefs and their identities, to express their solidarity towards other people, to fight for common causes, to counter-back injustices and malfunctions of “the system”. 

Now, that the system seems broken beyond repair – the richer 10% is responsible for 50% of the global emissions, according to Oxfam’s study published yesterday, the super-rich 1% for 16% of the global emissions, which equals the emissions of the 66% poorest part of the global population – and wars are surrounding Europe fast, triggering European people’s reaction, the Trade Union’s leaderships remain silent and absent from the cause. 

Their silence is deafening; and their absence will be recorded, aggravating the already bad situation in terms of membership, attractiveness, and density.

While Europe and its people need its Trade Unions to become defenders for wider social issues, to start advocating and fighting for Social Justice and Inclusion, for Peace and Prosperity for All, for Human Rights and International Law, for Climate Justice and Degrowth policies, the Trade Unions Leadership opt for careerism, abstention and favoritism from higher echelons of the European establishment, which more and more reminds the former USSR, a system of patronage and stagnation, instead of dynamism and innovation based on common values and histories. 

The USSR did not end up well; should the EU continue to remind it, neither the EU will end up well. One of the first victims after the fall of the USSR was Trade Unionism, for it was completely corrupted and highly patronaged. The same will happen within Europe, should the case prove to be the same. The signs point to this direction. I sincerely hope I am wrong, but I don’t think I am. Change is massively needed and this change cannot be a top-down policy, when the top did not even initiate a strike, did not even make a statement, has not even produced a resolution against the human rights violations in Palestine. The leadership lost its right to speak now; not it’s time for the masses to speak. And when they will do, they will change everything, processes, structures, institutions and leaderships included. For people played deaf for very long; but they are neither deaf, nor are they dumb or weak. People are strong. And whenever their leaderships betray them for long, the people’s reaction should be expected to remind a tsunami, not a regular wave. In this case, regular public control meters won’t do and information tactics will fall short; History is indicative on the subject. Any freshman social scientist would come to the same conclusion. I just can’t figure out why the leadership of the European Trade Unions and the Political Elites just can’t do it. Is it just groupthink or should I start to be thinking in more sinister terms?