'Permalancers' walk out in US

There was an interesting article in the New York Times today about the "permalancing" concept so popular in the US which I wrote about in my blog entry last week about the new EU protections for temp workers. "Permalancers" are people who work regular full-time hours, but are classified as "freelancers" by their company so they don't have to give them benefits.

Yesterday a large number of freelancers at MTV networks walked off the job to protest the company's cuts to healthcare benefits for the 'permalancers.' The permalancers already have an extreemly low level of healthcare coverage and the new cuts whittle them down to almost nothing.

I have a number of friends who work for MTV as 'freelancers,' one friend has worked there full time under thsi status for 4 years. But they're all tucked away with visions of sugar plums dancing in their head right now so I can't ask if they took part in the walkout. But what's really interesting about this is that it seems to be the first instance of people working udner this status undertaking collective action.

Incidentally, no MTV office in Europe has anything even resembling the "permalancers" system, I'm told.

Secular society in the UK

As an American living in the UK, people often ask me what some of the biggest differences are between living in the two countries. Always eager to please, I usually list the positive differences first. For instance, for me, quality of life here is better. Music is more to my taste. Nearby places to travel are more interesting and London is more international than New York City. And of course, free healthcare!

But beyond all these things, there’s been an underlying difference which I wasn’t able to really put into words until recently. And it's historically one of the biggest differences two societies can have between one another: religion.

As an Atheist, I feel much freer to express my religious beliefs in the UK than I ever did in the US. In America, I usually felt that I had to keep my religious affiliation to myself, and I knew few others who also openly identified as atheists. Here in the UK, most people I know identify as atheists. For me, it means I feel a greater degree of religious freedom in the UK.

Europe’s temps set for full benefits

It looks like the UK is going to lose the battle in Brussels over a new law that would give temporary workers the same rights as full-time staff.

A government source told The Times today that the issue is being linked in with the working-time directive restricting employees’ hours, and that given the fact that only four EU countries oppose the measure as a whole, Britain will be forced to accept the change under qualified-majority voting rules at a council of ministers meeting tomorrow.

Business interests in the UK have been vocally against the measure, saying that the law could force companies to get rid of as many as 250,000 jobs if they were forced to give full benefits to their temporary employees. However British unions have been busily debunking this argument and have been pressuring the government to drop its opposition to the changes.

Europe gets its own GPS

After much hand-wringing and negotiation, the EU has finally agreed on a framework to go ahead with the ‘Galileo’ program, a $5 billion satellite navigation system which it says will give it “strategic independence” from the US.

Friday in Brussels ministers announced that work on the system, which is designed to rival the US-owned Global Positioning System (GPS), will finally begin after five years of delay. The announcement caught some off guard because many had assumed the project was dead on arrival. According to the ministers, the system will be operational by 2013.

The decision is important for a few reasons. The fact that GPS, which is the only satellite navigation system now available to consumers, businesses, militaries or governments, is controlled by the US government meant that the US can deny other country’s access to it at any time. As the world’s militaries have become more and more reliant upon global positioning, the potential problems of this system being owned and run by the US military have become glaringly obvious.

Did Sarko win?

It was a long battle, but looks like French president Nicolas Sarkozy may have won this round in his war with the French left. Or did he?

The past weeks have seen a broad range of unions take to the streets to protest Sarkozy’s attempted reforms of the French social system. Public transit workers, civil servants, teachers, nurses, tobacco shop owners, air traffic controllers, fishermen and even opera stagehands have taken to organized action in attempts to resist the changes. Last week nearly half of all universities in France were shut down by protests, and there are reports that soon lawyers and judges are also going to have a walk out.

Now of course such things are not unusual in France, it’s a nation quite fond of revolutions and street protests. But there’s been something very different this time around, found notably in the lack of public support for the strikers. This feeling that the public was not behind them was probably what convinced many of the transit unions to vote to return to work late last week. Sarkozy, it seems, isn’t prepared to blink any time soon, and the unions may be starting to do so.

This current battle is just the first of many that will come in the coming year, and the French people knew it was coming. Sarkozy’s entire election campaign was centred around his central slogan, “work more to earn more,” and was filled with promises to break the power of the unions and drastically alter the French social system, which many people see as crippling France’s productivity, making it impossible for the country to compete in the modern global economy.

But no one said it would be easy, and history has not been on the capitalist reformers’ side. Former President Jacques Chirac tried to take on the transport workers and their pensions in 1995, only to be forced to surrender after three weeks of industrial action. But Nicolas Sarkozy is a very different man than Jacques Chirac. He has been very direct and clear about the radically new direction he plans to take France in, and the public voted him in (relatively narrowly), thereby giving him a mandate for change. So far, the public seems to be sticking by their vote.

How long will their patience last? We are still in the early days of this fight, and long protracted strikes like those seen in France in the 60’s and 70’s may be too much for the public to take. Clearly, its too early to tell who will win this fight, but it’s clear that both sides are prepared to dig in their heels. The question is, who will blink first?

Poland changes its tune

The effects of the election in Poland that ousted the Kaczynski stranglehold on power is already being seen, with the new government saying it wants to be the first to ratify the Lisbon Treaty.

The speaker of the Polish parliament Bronislaw Komorowski said yesterday "I hope that Poland will be the first country to ratify the treaty. This would be a symbolic gesture, signifying Poland's return to the heart of Europe."

At the same time, that signature is going to have one notable caveat - Poland will still be exempt from the the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Komorowski said that to try to undue the exemption worked out by the country's previous far-right regime would be too much of a risk, saying "We won't run the risk of the president not ratifying the treaty (..) That would be the worst for Poland and for Europe."

That document, which outlines citizens' rights and is technically legally binding by the treaty, is seen in conservative circles as a backdoor to allowing abortions, euthanasia or gay marriages.

The fear is that the older Kaczynski twin, who is still president, would refuse to sign any agreement which embraced the human rights declaration, throwing the whole treaty into jeapordy. Poland, as wella s all of Europe, he argues, can't risk it.

Interestingly, the new government is also signalling a change in its relationship with Russia and the US, possibly softening toward the former and hardening toward the latter. He says Warsaw is also willing to "open dialogue" with the Kremlin on two thorny issues – the US ambition to place parts of a missile shield in Poland. That project, which the US desperately wants, may now be in jeopardy.