Crisis may put European working class in same situation as workers in emerging nations

Criado em 06/08/13 12h01 e atualizado em 06/08/13 12h09
Por Gilberto Costa Edição:s Fonte:Agencia Brasil

Lisbon – The economic crisis in Portugal and the rest of southern Europe could mean a sea change in labor relations. According to professor Ricardo Antunes, the labor markets in much of Europe could become similar to those in emerging nations, such as Brazil, where “work has been precarious ever since industrial centers were installed and the rise of the services sector.” Antunes is a professor of sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences, State University of Campinas.
The professor says the “financialization” of the economy and intense corporate competition have brought about the need for a labor force with weaker rights . “In the 1970s, we, in Latin America, had a labor force that was exploited. Over the following decades, the exploited labor force moved to Asia,” said the sociologist to Agência Brasil in a telephone interview. Nowadays, Europe is vulnerable to having its workers put in a situation similar to that of workers in the southern hemisphere, declares the sociologist.
In his book, “The Meaning of Labor: An Essay on the Denial and Affirmation of Labor,” that will be published in Portugal in September, Antunes discards the thesis of a working class that is becoming less important or even “disappearing” amid industrial dynamics and technological advances that substitute human labor.
He turns his attention to the worker in more advanced nations and what he sees is, instead of extinction, “a new morphology of the working class,” where the worker is “a victim of deregulated labor relations and a shrinking welfare state.” A process Antunes says the international financial crisis of 2008 speeded up.
“Since 2008, we have been in a new era of precarious labor relations on a global scale. The great tragedy of European workers is that their starting point was much higher than what exists in the emerging world and they have been sliding down a very slippery slope, getting closer and closer to what emerging nation workers are accustomed to consider normal,” he says.
According to Antunes, a sign of changing times is that young people in Europe do not use social protection networks the way their parents do; after all, they have higher unemployment rates (as much as 60% in Spain and Greece, 40% in Portugal, among those in the 18 to 25 age group).As for older workers, they see rights that were guaranteed just recently being eliminated.
“It is as if the idea was to create a brave new world where workers are sacked, devastated and exploited to benefit big transnational corporations and financial institutions. The whole working class is being shafted: both the older workers who are the heirs of the welfare state with supposedly guaranteed worker rights and the younger workers who may have post graduate studies but still cannot find work,” he says.
According to Antunes, the machinery grinds on and worker rights are crushed by fiscal austerity policies foisted on them by the infamous Trioka and its adjustment programs (the International Monetary Fund, The European Central Bank and the European Commission). Antunes calls the troika, “the destructive tripod.” He says that fiscal policy slashes social rights and ensures the financial wellbeing of financial institutions. “A significant part of the deficit comes from public debt that remunerates banks. The truth is that these policies safeguard the international financial system,” concludes Antunes.

Editors: Graça Adjuto / Olga Bardawil
Translator: Allen Bennett