Allister identifies subservience to EU as cause of industrial unrest
03 February 2009
Traditional Unionist MEP, Jim Allister, has raised in the European Parliament in Strasbourg the rising industrial unrest in the UK over the influx of foreign workers to deliver major public contracts.
Identifying the UK's membership of the EU as the source of this influx, the Ulster Euro MP said that thereby we subjected ourselves to the supremacy of EU law and the rulings of the European Court of Justice. Hence, the inability of the UK to write and shape its own labour laws.
The EU rules on procurement, whereby all sizeable contracts have to be opened up to all EU countries and companies, are also contributing to this situation, with preference for local contractors and workers outlawed by EU procurement policy.
In the course of his remarks Mr Allister said:-
"As the economic crisis deepens, major issues, leading to industrial action, are emerging in the UK, flowing from the compulsion of unrestricted free movement of labour within the EU and the procurement requirements in regard to major works, whereby contracts won by foreign contractors are resulying in a huge influx of foreign workers, to the disadvantage of local workers and unemployed.
In this, I believe, many will come to see the price being paid by the UK for EU membership, in that we have been compelled to subject our labour market and laws to the supremacy of EU law and the rulings of the ECJ.
Procurement policy, which prohibits preference for local contractors and workers, is stoking up more and more resentment of the EU and its inflexible dogma."
