All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) Congress

Warsaw, 28/05/2010

President, delegates and fellow guests, thank you for this invitation to address your Congress once again.

I came to a previous one and, since then, it has been a roller coaster for Poland, and for Europe – a period of breakneck growth followed by a crash, not so bad here as in most other EU countries but unemployment at 12,3% (from 10,9% a year ago) and high poverty is a distressing situation for the country’s workers.

Welcome to capitalism. It can do better than this. It did better than this in post war Western Europe and in building up the European Union.

But after the collapse of the Soviet system, capitalism was regarded as all conquering. It was “the end of history” said Professor Fukiyama; no longer would ideology divide nations.

Well look what has happened? Some people in America sold mortgages to poor people, and when interest rates and unemployment went up, they unsurprisingly defaulted. That might just have been a loss for a bank.

But these subprime mortgages had been packaged up with thousands of similar ones and sold as high interest bonds and the rest of the world bought them, with German banks prominent. The losses rocked the system. Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the system nearly collapsed.

It was rescued at huge expense by Governments who took the bad debts off the banks onto the public accounts.

And so now we have a crisis of sovereign debt, with speculation against the debts of nations. Your favourite colour – red – is the dominant colour of countries’ accounts.

As I said, welcome to capitalism and its booms and busts. But while the Soviet world collapsed fatally, capitalism survives, albeit on life support from taxpayers. And now Europe’s trade unions must fight for equality and justice, and against an agenda just of cuts.

As I said, welcome to capitalism and its booms and busts. But while the Soviet world collapsed fatally, capitalism survives, albeit on life support from taxpayers. And now Europe’s trade unions must fight for equality and justice, and against an agenda just of cuts.

You have seen synchronised swimming at the Olympics. Now finance ministers are all smiling and synchronising the cutting at the same time, and pretending that this is necessary.

One major economy cutting is tough for everyone. All of them doing it at the same time – and that is the current risk – could be lethal. This way is the route to depression.

So the ETUC wants

- robust regulation of financial markets – the German move on banning “naked short selling” is a welcome move, as are the decisions of the European Council and the European Parliament on hedge funds and private equity;
- new sources of taxation, especially the long overdue introduction of a Financial Transaction Tax (the “Robin Hood’ Tax), ideally G20-wide, but if necessary at EU level;
- special long-term help for young people, the group perhaps hit hardest by the crisis with unemployment rates as high as 40% in some countries / regions;
- industrial policies which promote European manufacturing and accelerate the development of a low carbon, sustainable economy;
- a strengthening of Social Europe with a Social Progress Protocol to be attached to the next EU Treaty;
- start a process of transformation of capitalism from the model, strongly based on financial capitalism and rising inequality (like it has been in Poland) and which grew rapidly in strength in the past 30 years, into a more sustainable, greener, longer term, more equal system where profits are made through making things, not gambling on socially useless financial instruments.

We are calling for a European social summit to discuss these ideas. We want growth, not recession; and if necessary we will be mobilising workers across the EU to take action early in the autumn.

We are calling for a European social summit to discuss these ideas. We want growth, not recession; and if necessary we will be mobilising workers across the EU to take action early in the autumn.

These are black economic times. They match the terrible weather that has affected Poland recently and which has wreaked such horror on the country and some neighbours. On behalf of the ETUC, we express our condolences to the families of the dead, and sympathy to the whole country. May you recover quickly.

The dark economic crisis bears some resemblance to that of the 1930s. That caused a profound political crisis leading to a terrible war. Let us vow today that the today’s economic crisis won’t do the same. In the 1930s, Europe went more right than left. Today we must not be complacent. We must keep up the fight against the ultra nationalists, all those who hate their neighbours and detest foreigners. They are still around, waiting to exploit economic distress.

So join the fight for growth, for job and for Europe – the fight not for a return to Sovietism but not to ultra liberal economies and politics either. Let’s us fight for democracy, toleration, jobs, equality, the social market economy and prosperity. That is a great cause. Come on OPZZ; let’s do it, and do it together.