News

The Belgian Unions FGTB CG and CSC, were joined by European Global Federations including UNI Europa, UNI Global Union, ETUC, EPSU, EFBWW and EFFAT, in urging the Commission to incorporate trade union demands into the EU public procurement directive. Over 250 workers demonstrated yesterday to call for the changes to protect the quality of services and the levels of employment conditions.

The issue is that in order to prevent a further `race to the bottom`the affiliate unions are calling on the European Union to include `social considerations` into the procurement rules. This is to prevent `cost unit` only considerations that will undermine quality services and waste public money. Far too many examples of this already exist across Europe, where contracts awarded on the basis of price only has led to workers trying to maintain services with less training, less equipment replacement, less health and safety and a higher turnover of staff.

The unions have put forward the following requirements to be added to the current draft of the public procurement directive:

1. Full compliance with labor laws and collective agreements of the host country, covering the full subcontracting chain.

2. Making better use of public funds by ensuring that quality services, not cheap services, are provided.

3. Providing that cost is a factor, of course, but that it is not the sole or overriding factor in determining which contractor is awarded public work.

4. Defines and identifies abnormally low bids in order to avoid undercutting industry standards, and country minimums, thereby avoiding the inevitable “race to the bottom” which occurs when the cheapest cost is allowed to be the dominant criterion.

UNI affiliates are asked to provide UNI Europa with examples where cleaning and security contracts were awarded on the basis of the cheapest bid, as opposed to the best bid. We want examples of how the lowest cost increases turnover, leads to a lack of trained staff, to undercutting collective agreements and country minimums such as wage and hour laws, paid leaves and health and safety standards.

Send these examples to Laila Castaldo, UNI Europa Policy Officer, who is heading up these negotiations for UNI Europa (laila.castaldo@uniglobalunion.org).