07/05/2009
Employment Summit - No serious action to safeguard or create jobs
Commenting on the outcome of the Employment non-Summit PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen said "The summit failed to agree any serious action to safeguard existing jobs or create new jobs. Instead the message from this non-summit is that it is working people who will pay the price for this recession. The summit recommends more labour market flexibility, but there already too many people in precarious employment. The summit recommends a reduction in non-wage labour costs but what this means in reality is less pension contributions or lower health insurance".
Mr Topolanek says he wants to create jobs but he is not willing to invest the resources needed to create them. He says creating debt is no solution, but paying for millions of people to remain unemployed creates even higher debt - and without any return in tax revenues. We believe that reducing non-wage labour costs is a subsidy for business that does not necessarily create new jobs".
"The summit concluded that improving the business and investment environment is the way to create new jobs, but that just means the old neo-liberal recipe of deregulation and squeezing employees rights. It means Governments do very little apart from making it easier to exploit people who are desperate for a job".
"Europe needs a new stimulus and one that is focused on creating new jobs. It is a tragedy that this conservative-dominated European Union is so unwilling to do enough to fight the crisis".
he Party of European Socialists has proposed that in the first hundred days following the European elections, seven steps are taken to fight the recession and mass unemployment including a new, strong recovery plan for Europe and a European Employment Pact to safeguard employment, create new and better jobs, and strengthen workers' rights, working conditions and equal pay.
Responding to media reports that Topolanek said that anyone could find a new job, Rasmussen said "Next year there will be 27 million people out of work in Europe. Is it possible that the President of the European Council really thinks that it is the unemployed only have themselves to blame? I am shocked that he could suggest such a thing".
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Julian Scola, Communications Advisor - Media & Campaigns
Party of European Socialists, Rue du Trône, 98, B-1050 Brussels
Mobile +32 486 117 394
julian.scola@pes.org
