The recent wildcat strikes, which gave rise to the slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’, raise a number of questions about employment rights, not just whether the strikes were legal, but also about the application of employment law in a global economy.

The strikes started as a result of a dispute at the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire. The refinery granted a construction contract to an Italian company, which sent its own staff over to work on the contract rather than using qualified local workers.


Government support
Health Secretary Alan Johnson immediately came out in support of the strike and said on BBC 1’s The Andrew Marr Show that the EU law guaranteeing employment rights had been undermined by the European Court of Justice and that the government would push for change at a European level.


EU law
The law that he was referring to is the posted workers directive. This gives workers sent from one EU member state to work in another the same core employment rights as local workers, such as working hours and pay. The aim of the directive is to strike a balance between the right to freedom of movement and the rights of workers. It is supposed to prevent employers from undercutting local labour standards by shipping in workers from other EU states on lower rates of pay – this is what the EU calls ‘social dumping’.


Core rights
The Health Secretary was objecting to European Court of Justice decisions that established that if the posted workers directive provides for anything more than core employment rights, it interferes with companies’ freedom under EU law.

So, for example, workers posted to the UK from abroad are entitled to the legal minimum wage, but not the going rate for the job agreed at local level. This means that employers in lower-cost countries can undercut British workers’ pay and conditions if those British workers are being paid more than the national minimum wage.


Campaigns
Unions are campaigning for the directive to be amended so that it strikes a better balance between employers’ economic freedoms and the need to prevent ‘social dumping’. However, given the current economic climate, such reform is unlikely to happen in the short term, despite government rhetoric.

So, wildcat strikes are likely to continue, especially while jobs are still being lost in labour-intensive sectors of the economy.