Lodewijk Asscher (PvdA; Dutch labour) is the Dutch Minister
of Social Affairs and vice-PM in the cabinet Mark Rutte II.
Asscher was a bright, intelligent and eloquent
social-democrat alderman in the city of Amsterdam before he was called for ‘duty’
in The Hague. Since then, his star has somewhat started to fade. Although he can
be considered as one of the relative ‘stars’ in this bleak and weak cabinet, his
profile during the last year has been too low and his policy has been too
non-descript, to make a lasting impression.
This was a consequence of the weak
and ‘cowardly’ government agreement wherein the liberal-conservative
VVD and the social-democrate PvdA never made real choices. Instead the ‘architects
behind the cabinet’, Mark Rutte and Diederik Samsom, have played the card game ‘quartet’:
“This one is for you. This one is for me. This one is for you…”.
Here I quote some of my own lines in November 2012:
The whole government
agreement is very schizophrenic on the Dutch economy.
The PvdA aims at
green, green, green. This is hardly surprising, as Diederik Samson has been
heavily involved with Greenpeace in the not too distant past. Topics as
durability, green energy and electric vehicles are omnipresent in the lines
that have clearly been written by Diederik Samsom. Also the lines upon the
banking industry are clearly from his hand.
The VVD is strongly
into entrepreneurship of especially the Small and Medium Enterprises and sees
Schiphol and Rotterdam as the answer to every economic question. Foreign policy
seems exclusively aimed to protect the interests of Dutch people and companies
abroad. The platitudes on promoting human rights and the international legal
order seem very out of place here.
Non of the
aforementioned lines carry a real sense of urgency on the Dutch economy, except
for the fact that (to put it simply in my own words): ‘austerity is necessary
to get the state budget in order. When the state budget is finally in order the
economy will start to grow by itself’. Hallelujah!
The lack of real, even
painful choices made by the cabinet and the blatant lack of any vision on the
future by Rutte and his peers, made it probably impossible for Asscher to shine
in the past ten months. He had to keep ‘the shop open’ and the development of
wages had to be very limited with him at the helm: that was all he had to do. Nothing
else…
Yesterday, Asscher made clear that he had not totally
forgotten about his social-democrat roots. In combination with the British
publicist and writer David Goodhart, he has published an Op-Ed in the Dutch
Volkskrant and the British Independent about the free traffic of labour within
the European Union.
Their point: the total freedom of labour traffic within the
European Union threatens to push the poorest and worst educated workers within
the Western European countries into unemployment and/or poverty, due to the
large influx of cheap labour from the former Eastern Block countries.
Here are the pertinent snips of their Op-Ed:
The combined EU should
take care of the negative aspects of the free traffic of workers, according to
Minister Lodewijk Asscher and publicist David Goodhart.
In The Netherlands, a ‘Code
Orange’ is submitted when the water in the rivers reaches an alarmingly high
level. It is now time for a similar alarm, concerning the negative consequences
of the free traffic of persons (workers) within the European Union. We have to
watch out: at some places the dikes are at the brink of a breakthrough.
The free traffic of
workers within the EU has advantages for most people. It is in the interest of
our economies, especially for the segment of professions, which demand highly
trained professionals. In these professions, the contours of a European labour market
are visible. Besides that, the free traffic of labour within Europe is
justifiably seen as one of the pillars of the European ideal. We would not like
to see this pillar being broken down, as a consequence of diminishing support
among the population.
The right to live and
work in other EU-countries is one of the basic principals behind the Treaty of
Rome of 1957. This right was hardly used until halfway the 2000’s. In the year
2000, only 0.1% of all European citizens lived in another EU-country.
That changed in 2004,
when the UK, Sweden and Ireland waived their rights for a transition period and
immediately opened their labour market for the new member-states in Mid- and
Eastern Europe. In especially the United Kingdom, this had a dramatic effect:
in the six years afterwards no less than 1.5 mln people arrived from these
countries. Since 2011, about the same happened in Germany and The Netherlands,
when these countries opened their doors for the new-comers.
In hindsight, there
has been too little attention for the size of these influxes. With the entry of
the Mid- and Eastern European countries, a group of countries entered – with combined
80 million inhabitants – with an average income that was about one quarter of
the income in the richer (Western) European countries.
This has been an
enormous stimulus for a (temporary) migration from their countries to Western
Europe, especially for the people looking for low-qualified labour. This had a devastating
effect on a part of the poorer and less educated citizens in the richer
EU-countries.
It is now time to come
to a new agreement, which is fair for people from the ‘sending’ as well as the ‘receiving’
countries. And it is time to stop abuse. Workers from poorer EU-countries are
sometimes abused by consciousless employers, who get a competitive edge towards
their competitors, who play by the rules. Too often these workers receive too
little money (sometimes below the legal minimum wage rate), they work too long
hours and they pay too much rent for extremely poor dwellings.
Even if the system has
not been openly abused, there is still a sort of competition and displacement
of native workers, which can be considered as unfair, especially in times of
high unemployment. At the labour market our weakest citizens lose against
better educated and skilled people from elsewhere.
It is useless to treat
their complaints as the usual ‘nagging about foreigners’. It is a recognizable
reflex, which we yet should take seriously. Otherwise it poisons the atmosphere
and triggers possibly outbursts of hatred against strangers.
In my opinion, this is a must-read article of which I –
unfortunately – could not translate everything, as this would take too much
time (I advise non-Dutch readers to look up this article in the Independent.
This is what I also should have done, instead of translating the article - EL).
I do agree that this is indeed a problem in some aspects.
Especially the
abuse of low-paid and (sometimes) helpless workers from Eastern Europe
can be very brutal:
That not everything is
well in The Netherlands as well, proves the story on a Dutch female vegetable
grower that was accused of executing the practice of ‘modern slavery’.
Her vegetable-growing
farm, specialized in growing asparagus, was situated in a very isolated spot in
the province of Brabant. It was mainly run by Polish and Portuguese personnel,
under extremely poor working and living circumstances.
The people:
- had their passports taken away from them;
- worked for 7 days a week and much more than 8 hours per day;
- encountered physical violence and threats from the owner or her straw men;
- were stored in very small multi-person bedrooms, without proper kitchen and hygienic facilities;
- were charged more than €50 per person per week for these facilities;
- didn’t get proper nutrition;
- were fobbed off with petty advances on their salary, while being promised that their real salary would be paid very soon;
- The lady used a Polish straw man to keep the Polish personnel on the job and to suppress resistance;
- that didn’t want to work, lost the job and the money they already earned;
- that wanted to leave the farm, lost the job and the money they already earned;
Still, we must be very careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater:
- Why did the agricultural industry always have so many problems to fullfil their vacant posts, even in the toughest times of economic hardship?
- Why were there always(!) vacancies in the milk-factory, where I worked as a student and afterwards, in spite of the good working hours, the great working atmosphere and the excellent salary?!
- Why is the cleaning and facilitary services industry almost the exclusive domain of African, Arab and East-European workers?!
- Why were so many factory-owners so happy, when the borders went finally open for Eastern European workers?! Not only, because these people demanded less money!
Every now and then the discussion rises: it is strange that
we hire people from Eastern and Southern Europe (Spaniards, Portuguese!), while
we have so many unemployed people here. Should we not…?!
No, we shouldn’t!
Especially in the agricultural industry, bad and unmotivated
employees can ruin large parts of the harvest, by damaging fruit and
vegetables. An unmotivated (unemployed) Dutch worker is worse than a disaster:
he asks top-dollar for his work, works badly and damages his end-product, which
costs the entrepreneur money.
Here are some snips from an
article from 2011 on the same subject:
Instead the Dutch
unemployed people must do the jobs these Rumanian and Bulgarian workers can´t
do anymore: harvesting crops in greenhouses and on farmland (strawberries,
blackberries, grapes, asparagus, potatoes or flowers) and other heavy,
labor-intensive and often dirty jobs. With the kindest regards of the Dutch
government.
As inquiring minds
will have guessed already: the Dutch unemployed DON´T want to do these jobs. A
Dutch greenhouse farmer told on Dutch television with tears in his eyes that he
got fifty forms of potential Dutch job applicants from the employment office,
but NONE of them showed up for a job interview. He is now stuck in the
situation that he is not allowed to hire his last-year Rumanian and Bulgarian
workers and he doesn´t have enough workers to harvest his crop within two
weeks. And with harvesting crops it is: do it the right way at the right time,
or get burned litterally!
Even if you force
unemployed people to accept these jobs, they might have a thousand ways to screw
up. Squashed strawberries, broken asparagus or apples with brown spots, due to
harsh handling. Every glasshouse worker can tell you that unmotivated workers
are worse than useless, as they ruin their harvest and diminish their yields.
You could take the welfare away from Dutch unemployed workers that won´t do
these jobs, but nobody in The Netherlands will find that acceptable. It´s sad,
but true.
So what should Lodewijk Asscher do?! My answer: his job!!!
See to it that Dutch employers in every industry:
- play by the rules of white, properly taxed and decently-paid labour;
- don’t evade the regulations about legal minimum wages and wage-payments in collective labour agreements;
- don’t abuse people from Eastern and Southern Europe and keep them under bad working and living circumstances;
- don’t force people to waive their rights for membership of a union and legal representation;
- give every applicant a fair chance, by treating everybody equally, without making a difference between colour, race, country of origin and religion.
Although Asscher cannot personally look after it that
everybody in The Netherlands get a fair treatment, it is the task of (a.o.) his
ministry of Social Affairs to check this regularly.
Too often, cabinets with VVD and CDA (Christian-Democrat) representatives
in it have neglected their supervising tasks and left it to ‘the market’ and ‘self-regulation’
to fight abuse and underpayment. Too often cabinets and politicians have looked
the other way, when it came to abuse of people!
Therefore I demand that Lodewijk Asscher takes this duty
seriously!
And there is one more point where almost all cabinets within
the last thirty years have let the Dutch citizens down: education. The Dutch
people deserve better education.
Not so much at the level of scientific or high vocational
education. The Dutch universities and colleges are fine. PhD-studies and
MBA-studies in The Netherlands leave little to be desired in common. The same is probably true for Great Britain.
No, it has been the lower, professional education for
technical and handicraft jobs, which left a lot to be desired over the last
twenty years.
So often, there has been too much emphasis on computer and
language education and too little on training people to work with their hands
for jobs, like:
- mason;
- metal worker;
- plumber;
- electrical engineer;
- welder;
- carpenter;
- pipefitter;
And about the free traffic of labour within Europe?! That
has indeed always been the main pillar of the EU. And although I don’t deny that
this free traffic can have some serious drawbacks, we should consider very
thorougly whether we should reduce/restrict it for low-qualified labour or not.
People have always travelled around the world, looking for a
better place to stay, live and work. That is an undeniable human right, in my
humble opinion.
Besides that, the supply of labour and the amount of vacancies
in various countries work like communicating vessels: people move to the places
and countries with the most available labour and possibilities to develop
themselves. When the jobs in a city or country are fulfilled and there is no
more labour available, then the people begin to move to other places by
themselves.
Maybe the Dutch lower-qualified and unemployed workers could
take a lesson from their enthusiastic peers from Eastern and Southern Europe:
people who are willing to leave their safe homes for an uncertain future
abroad.
Maybe it’s time for them to become a little more adventurous
again!
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