(eca 013): Europe's strikes raise questions, provide few answers available (News Feature)

By dpa correspondents Feb 26, 2010, 10:34 GMT

Berlin - What do a Polish nurse, a French aeroplane pilot and a Greek tax collection agent have in common? All threatened to - or actually did - go on strike this week.

And they weren't alone. Finnish dockworkers have threatened a strike, as have Czech transport unions. Lufthansa pilots in Germany staged a one-day strike before being sent back to work by a court and French oil refinery workers with Total finished off a strike.

What's not clear is what it all means.

Clearly there are economic ramifications. Lufthansa's pilots were criticized for the damage their labour action could do on Germany's wobbly economy. The Total strike caused fears of petrol shortages, just like the ones that actually appeared in some parts of Greece after its customs agents went on strike earlier in the month.

Analysts, however, said the simultaneous nature of the strikes across Europe was probably little more than a coincidence, perhaps spurred on by various knock-on effects from the lingering economic crisis.

'As far as I can see, the strike action happening across Europe right now cannot necessarily be tied back to the running economic crisis,' said Helmut Rainer of the ifo Institute for Economic Research.

Sotiria Theodoropoulou, a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre, agrees.

'Of course, the crisis makes things worse, but this is not what is at the very heart of it,' she said. 'I guess the crisis is precipitating. It is a common thread.'

And there are degrees of variation. Workers in Ireland and Greece are the victims of belt-tightening as governments try to fix budgets damaged amid the economic crisis. Other countries might be faring better, but workers are suffering as their private employers face a rough economic climate.

'One has to differentiate across cases. The pilots of Lufthansa are not facing the same problems as Greek employees right now,' Theodoropoulou said.

Which indicates that there will be no one-size-fits-all approach for the countries and corporations of Europe as they wrestle with the demands of their workers.

'They highlight ... the kinds of challenges that Europe is facing,' said Theodoropoulou. 'Across Europe, there has to be some adjustment in public finances.

'I think it shows the kind of difficult bind that European governments are in. They have to deal with longer-term trends.'

And wrestle with those challenges they will, since the workers show no signs of backing down soon, even if several commentators noted that, in some cases, the protests seemed to be more out of force of habit than out of actual hope for improvements.

For example, in Athens thousands have taken to the streets in recent weeks, protesting austerity measures aimed at pulling debt- plagued Greece out of its worst postwar financial crisis.

But the protests so far have been largely symbolic and lacked widespread public support. Opinion polls show more than 55 per cent of Greeks consider the government's stricter measures fair.

'We know that the government will be left with no choice but to go ahead with public sector and pension cuts but we feel that it is our right to let them know that we will not be able to afford any more measures,' said 50-year-old factory worker Antonis Meimaroglou.

Similarly, in Britain, the trade union movement, acutely aware of the perils and pitfalls awaiting the Labour government in the forthcoming general election later this year, has seemingly been able to stop members' anger from spilling into the streets.

But at the same time, a threatened strike by cabin staff at national carrier British Airways (BA) is seen by many as a symptomatic reflection of poor labour relations at a time when reform, restructuring and cost-saving are the order of the day.

The threats come even as BA chief executive Willie Walsh says the airline is in a fight for its survival after its worst-ever annual loss in 2008, amid predictions that figures will be even more calamitous in 2009.

Poland's nurses are also playing tough, threatening a nationwide strike unless the Health Ministry can reach a deal on raises. Currently, nurses are on strike in four hospitals in southern Poland.

Some have even begun a hunger strike while others have gathered outside the Health Ministry, playing revolutionary ballads from Poland's communist era.

'We came to Warsaw so that the Polish government and parliament will at last wake up,' said Janusz Sniadek, head of NSZZ Solidarity. 'There's a crisis coming though the windows and the doors,' he said, calling for job security for the country's defence industry workers.

The list goes on and on. In Ireland, public sector workers have been staging a go-slow since February 1 in protest against pay cuts in last December's austerity budget.

In Finland, retail trade and other business are closely following threatened labour action by 3,000 dockworkers organized by the Transport Workers' Union (AKT), mainly over severance payment and redundancy terms as part of a collective agreement.

And the Czech transport unions plan to go on strike on Monday morning, representatives said this week, protesting a revamped value- added tax law which effectively raises the tax on employee benefits.

But still, Rainer says he does not see a link between the protests, noting that, from an economic standpoint, strikes make little sense during an economic crisis.

'The risk of losing a job during a crisis is particularly high,' he said. 'When the risk of a job loss is particularly high, the bargaining power of the labourer sinks. The chances of winning a fight are, therefore, slim.'