UK: Jailors claim right to strike under EU treaty

The Times ^ | 10/22/07 | David Charter and Francis Elliott

[bruinbirdman]

Gordon Brown faces his first legal challenge under the new EU Charter of Fundamental Rights days after claiming to have won a watertight opt-out from the document for Britain.

Prison officers are preparing to use the charter to win back their right to strike in what will become a key test of its force in this country.

The Prison Officers Association is building a war chest to bring a case against the Government at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg after receiving legal advice that the charter will help their claim. The case is expected to be heard as soon as the charter, part of the EU reform treaty agreed by European leaders in Lisbon last week, is ratified next year.

Ministers have insisted repeatedly that the charter creates no new rights in Britain. But senior EU figures have claimed that judges, not politicians, will have the last word on a protocol that Britain attached to the treaty, which was meant to exempt it from applying fundamental rights such as the ability of all workers to strike.

“We are not bothered about blue lines, red lines or yellow lines,” Brian Caton, general secretary of the union, said. “Our members know a lot about liberty and freedom because they deny it to others – and they know they are being denied it themselves here.” Prison officers had the right to strike removed from them by Michael Howard when he was Home Secretary in 1994.

In August the Ministry for Justice threatened a court order to ban the union from a 24-hour strike over pay, saying that it would have “ramifications for security”. Mr Caton said that his members had started paying a monthly levy to fund the court action.

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, sought to reassure Eurosceptic Conservatives that reversing EU integration would be a political priority for a Tory administration. David Cameron is under pressure to commit his party to holding a referendum on the treaty even after it has been ratified by Parliament.

Mr Hague said: “We don’t rule out a referendum in the future. Our discussions will take place against the background that this treaty, if passed without a referendum, will lack democratic legitimacy and it will mean that the process of European political integration has gone too far.”

Both candidates for the Liberal Democrat leadership said that they were opposed to a referendum on the treaty. Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg accused Tory Eurosceptics of using the debate over the treaty as a smoke-screen for their real goal of British withdrawal from Europe.

— The Conservatives have released a document from the House of Commons library that they said shows that Gordon Brown’s pledge to create “British jobs for British people” is illegal under EU law. “Both direct and indirect discrimination against migrant workers is prohibited,” the document states. Offering jobs exclusively to benefit claimants could be challenged in court if it was found to discrimate against foreign workers, it adds.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Would they have guts to fire the prison guards who go on strike.

How about locking the ring leaders up with the people they are supposed to guard?

[bruinbirdman]

"Would they have guts to fire the prison guards who go on strike."

It is no longer up to the people or government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The sovereignty of the British legal system, along with even defence of the Realm has been surrendered to the European Union bureaucracy by the UK Labour Party.

yitbos