Latest 08.06.2008
Why Workers Are Voting No

The last Irish Times/ MRBI poll on the Lisbon Treaty showed that the debate has fractured on the lines of social class.

The Yes vote registered a majority only in the better-off ABCI voters while in the working class C2DE category, there was a big majority for the No side.

Despite the best efforts of the Labour Party leadership, their voters are overwhelmingly opposed to the treaty, with 47 percent voting No, compared to 30 percent voting Yes.

The Lisbon Treaty has been characterised by an unusually strong intervention by big business.

On the Yes side, the employers' organisation IBEC is supporting the treaty because it facilitates more 'liberalisation' and has spent huge sums to get their message across. On the No side, Libertas has been given an inordinate prominence in the media, even though it represents few grassroots activists thus, proving that money can trump democracy in buying you a hearing.

Yet the poll found that one of the primary issues raised by business groups preserving the low corporation taxonly featured in the concerns of 5 percent of No voters.

The poll findings mirror a similar pattern in France where support for the EU constitution came overwhelmingly from higher socio-economic groupswhile opposition was concentrated in the manual working class.

The class dimension to voting patterns is also reflected in the manner in which the debate has been conducted. Faced with strong working class opposition, the Yes side tends to question the rationality of the opposition.

Calls are repeatedly made to 'get real' and the NO side are told they just do not understand the treaty. Rarely is it even acknowledged that there is an intellectual difference between both sides which go beyond 'who knows the treaty better' and a debate conducted on those differences.

Faced with this prejudice, it is worth presenting a simple, short explanation for why many workers have a rational case for opposing the treaty.

There is in the first instance a reaction to the gobbligook factor. Many people have not understood the treaty and rather sensibly will not assent to what they do not understand. About 30 percent of No voters who cite this point have passed the stage of 'trusting' their betters.

Yes supporters disparage this attitude by claiming that complexity is sometimes necessary and cite the annual Finance Acts. It is a revealing comparison precisely because this less than transparent process allows hosts of accountants to lobby the Minister of Finance in order to 'tweek' these acts to their advantage.

The Lisbon Treaty could have been written in an accessible format. It certainly was in its last incarnation as the EU constitution. Yet after this constitution was made freely available in French post-offices and widely read, it was rejected in a poll with a 70 per cent turn out.

In response to this democratic rejection, the Yes side resorted to a standard elite strategyhide transparency behind a veil of 'complexity'. Guiliano Amato, the convenor of the group of 'wise men' who helped re-configure the EU constitution into the Lisbon Treaty, acknowledged that the new 'unreadable' form had a particular advantage because it enabled local politicians to tell their populations ' Look, you see, its absolutely unreadable, it's the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum'.

The class scepticism on the NO side is therefore to be commended. But many workers are also aware of other issues which incline them to a No vote.

The position adopted by Ireland's largest union, SIPTU, provides a useful avenue into these discussions. The union might normally be pre-disposed to vote Yes as many of its leading figures are closely connected to the Labour Party. Yet in a pamphlet widely disseminated to its activists, the union notes that 'the Right are in the ascendancy on the political landscape of Europe …. (and) many trade unionists believe that it is also reflected in the number of recent judgements emanating from the ECJ(Viking, Laval, Ruffert)'.

Throughout most of the campaign, the Irish media has missed on the significance of these casesand, by extension, the salience of manual working class opposition to the treaty.

Without rehearsing the details of the cases, they collectively represent an important indicator of the neo-liberal turn in Europe. This turn is further codified and strengthened in the Lisbon Treaty.

The three judgements effectively told European workers that while they have a formal right to pursue industrial action, these rights are subordinate to market principles. In the words of the ECJ itself, ' restrictions may be imposed on the exercise of fundamental rights, in particular in the context of the common organisation of the market'.

Several articles in the Lisbon Treaty expand on this neo-liberal drift in the EU. The Protocol on the Internal Market explicitly states that it includes 'a system ensuring that competition is not distorted' thus copper-fastening the notorious judgements made by the ECJ. The 'independence' of the European Central Bank and its mandate to focus exclusively on 'price stability' to the detriment of full employment or modest interest rates is maintained. The EU Council is given greater leeway to issue judgements on government spending limits and to issue warnings and fines to any government that borrow 'excessively'. Any restrictions on speculative movement of capital are banned in Article 56. Any step backwards from liberalisation will henceforth requires unanimous support from every country because of Article 57.3.

SIPTU's response to this neo-liberal drift has been most modest. It merely wanted a balancing mechanism so that Irish workers would get more legal rights to collective bargaining.

The relevant issue here is the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Article 28 states that 'workers and employers… have in accordance with Union law and national laws and practices, the right to negotiate and conclude collective agreements….

The small sub-clause in italics has often been left out by those who claim that the Charter gives Europe 'a soul'. Yet the recent Supreme Court judgement in the Ryanair case effectively removed exceptionally restricted rights to collective representation in anti-union firms.

Even if SIPTU's demand was fully conceded, it would not undermine the pattern of Laval, Viking and Ruffert as these judgements indicated that rights are subordinate to market rules. However, the response to SIPTU's most modest proposal has been instructive in itself. In contrast to last minute concessions made to the IFA, Taoiseach Brian Cowen said he could not concede. One leading Sunday newspaper ran a headline about SIPTU 'blackmail' and quoted an employer source who said 'It's an attempted coup by SIPTU'!

If anyone was in any doubt about the class issues that lay behind the vote, these responses must clarify matters.

Finally, the Yes side has attempted to disparage concerns about privatisation, claiming that this has nothing to do with the treaty. In fact Article 88.4, gives extra powers to the EU Commission to issue recommendations about categories of state aid to public services. Irish workers have not forgotten how such rules have already led to the privatisation of Aer Lingus.

A substantial number of labour activists are also aware of the dangers posed to public services by current negotiations at the World Trade Organisation on the General Agreement on Trade in Servicesyet their concerns have not received the same prominence as the issue of farm subsidies.

The last Nice Treaty gave a clear veto to national governments on deals covering Health, Education, Social Services and audio visual services. The current treaty, however, severely restricts this veto and renders it entirely ineffective. By doing so, it helps to shelter local politicians from democratic pressure as they can claim that further privatisation is 'out of their hands' and the result of EU negotiations at WTO level.

There is an entirely rational case for Irish workers voting No. Yet the Yes side can barely acknowledge that because it might mean confronting their own class prejudices