Received from: Prospect
Congress believes that the negative consequences of the UK’s mismanaged exit from the European Union are increasingly impossible to ignore. For example:
i. Export sectors have been hit hard with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest assessment pointing to a 15 per cent fall in trade as a result.
ii. Sectors reliant on cross-border collaboration and reputation, such as science, tech or the creative industries, have seen increased red tape and reduced national standing.
iii. The EU remains our largest trading partner, but a determinedly adversarial approach has left us without influence over its rules or direction.
iv. The UK sits outside of the EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan.
UK workers are already missing out on the potential benefits of the new EU directive requiring member states to actively seek to increase collective bargaining coverage. Planned environmental and safety checks on animal and plant imports have been repeatedly postponed due to the impossibility of recruiting sufficient staff on inadequate civil service pay.
Congress welcomes the inclusion of trade union voices on the Domestic Advisory Group tasked with monitoring and reporting to government on affected sectors. However, work to repair the damage of this reckless experiment, with workers’ voices at the heart of the process, needs urgently to be accelerated.
Congress calls on the General Council to campaign for:
a. rapid progress on reducing trade barriers
b. ongoing dynamic alignment of social protections and regulations
c. streamlined processes for essential cross-border movement of workers and equipment
d. renegotiation of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement as an overall goal.
Prospect
AMENDMENT
Replace bullet points a. to d. with:
“a. rapid progress on reducing trade barriers
b. ongoing dynamic alignment of social protections and regulations
c. streamlined processes for essential cross-border movement of workers and equipment
d. renegotiation of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement as an overall goal” Add new final bullet point:
“e. a cultural accord between the UK and the EU to reduce the processes currently in place that present barriers to cross border movements for touring musicians and associated creative workers, their equipment and goods.” Musicians’ Union