This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BRUSSELS 001122 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT FOR DRL/IL; DOL FOR ILAB; FOR LABOR REPORTING OFFICERS 
AND ATTACHES 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ELAB SOCI PHUM SMIG EUN USEU BRUSSELS
SUBJECT: USEU LABOR/SOCIAL AFFAIRS HIGHLIGHTS FIRST QUARTER 
2004 
 
REF: A. 2003 BRUSSELS 5469 
 
     ¶B. BRUSSELS 916 (NOTAL) 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary: This quarterly report provides readers with 
analysis, priorities, and outreach/meetings related to EU 
labor and social affairs January-March 2004.  We examine EU 
efforts to recast its employment goals debate and EU concerns 
on the impact on enlargement on EU labor and social 
objectives. Key outreach, since ref a, include meetings with 
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) head 
Guy Ryder on Iraq, with AFL-CIO international affairs head 
Barbara Shailor on transatlantic labor relations, and USEU 
participation in an European Social and Economic Committee 
(CESE) working group on improving transatlantic relations. 
USEU also attended a moving joint EU/European Jewish Congress 
(EJC) Conference on "Anti-Semitism in Europe." Looking ahead, 
we are interested in increased communication and cooperation 
among the ICFTU, the European Trade Union Confederation 
(ETUC) and the World Confederation of Labor (WCL). End 
Summary 
 
Guiding debate from "firing" to "more" employment 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
¶2. (SBU) Commission labor market experts believe the EU-15 
will fall short of meeting their intermediate 2005 Lisbon 
Process employment goals (notably getting more females, 55-64 
year olders, and able-bodied workers into the labor market). 
As this is a politically sensitive topic, a top cabinet 
advisor to now-departed European Commissioner Diamantopoulou 
told us that the EU is finding it convenient to couch the 
debate as a "response" or a "wake-up call" to the November 
2003 Kok Employment Taskforce report "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" (a 
study funded and published by the EU but only "reflecting the 
opinion of the Taskforce). Our Commission interlocutor argued 
that this "outside" report gives the EU some room to maneuver 
by helping it recast the debate from the politically 
unpopular "hiring and firing" issue of the 90's to the more 
politically palatable need for EU member-states to get more 
workers into the workforce and out of the long-term 
unemployed, under-employed, or early retirees or what 
Commission likes to call the EU "full employment policy." 
 
Enlargement: Social and Labor concerns 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶3. (SBU)  Many of our Commission colleagues in DG-employment 
are noting with concern, that with the 10 new  members 
entering May 1, overall EU unemployment will increase from 
about 8 percent to over 9 percent and that overall EU 
performance on meeting its Lisbon goals will be set back. 
For example, with older workers the Lisbon goal is to have 50 
percent in the workforce by 2010; currently among the EU-15 
slightly over 40 percent are in the work force; with 
enlargement, this number will drop to 39 percent.  Similar 
backward steps are expected not only on the other employment 
goals but also on reducing the EU's poverty rate and the 
fight against "social exclusion."  Of particular concern to 
DG-Employment is that they fear an increase in "social 
exclusion" and discrimination against the Roma . With the ten 
countries, the Commission estimates that the Roma population 
in the EU increases from about one million to an estimated 8 
million making them the largest ethnic minority within the EU. 
 
¶4. (SBU) There has been much recent media and political 
attention to the most outwardly dramatic impact of 
enlargement, the flow of workers from the new member-states 
to the current EU members (ref b). Ref B cited a recent 
Commission study suggesting that even without currently 
planned temporary restrictions by virtually all current 
member-states on labor mobility from the 10 new members, the 
maximum movement would have been about 220,000/year over the 
next year - not a huge impact in a population of 450 million 
workers. However, one DG-Employment official told us that 
what worries the Commission even more is the overall impact 
of enlargement on the EU total employment rate (defined as 
the percentage of the working age population with 70 percent 
being the Lisbon Process target).  The Commission has 
estimated that enlargement will drop the EU-15 employment 
rate from 64.3 percent (using a 2002 statistic) to an EU-25 
rate of 62.4 percent -- the lowest rate of employment since 
¶1998. The European Employers Group (UNICE) has calculated the 
rate of employment for the EU at 25 at 62.8 percent, slightly 
higher than the Commission but still the lowest since 1999. 
 
Ongoing priorities 
------------------ 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Over the longer-term, we are following with 
interest ICFTU/ETUC "rapprochement" and some tentative 
cooperation between the ICFTU and Christian-Democrat World 
Confederation of Labor (WCL) - two international trade unions 
that have been competing with each for decades.  At the next 
ICFTU executive board meeting at the end of March, ICFTU 
relations with the WCL are likely to be discussed. 
 
ICFTU concerns and challenge in Iraq 
------------------------------------- 
 
¶6. (SBU) After months of careful talks between the 
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions ICFTU and 
Arab trade leaders, the ICFTU -- nudged by the AFL-CIO and 
the UK Trade Union Congress (TUC) -- sent in a multinational 
trade union team into Iraq in February to assess  the 
situation on the ground. ICFTU head Ryder told us that he 
sought to avoid having the ICFTU being seen as a "Western 
Imposition" and believed that it is necessary to have the 
support not only of Iraqi workers but also the trade union 
movements in nearby Arab countries.  Complicating the ICFTU's 
efforts in Iraq is the fact that the old Ba'athist pro-Saddam 
trade union movement was never affiliated with the ICFTU; 
rather it was a member of the old Soviet-dominated World 
Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU).  While the Ba'athists 
unionists remain tainted by their long history of supporting 
Saddam Hussein, they are an established and recognized labor 
union.  How to deal with them, and newly emerging post-Saddam 
trade union movements, remains one of the ICFTU's biggest 
challenges. 
 
CESE Review of Transatlantic Relations 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶7. (U) We note a recent increase in colloquia and thinktank 
activities in the last year focused on transatlantic 
relations. The European Social and Economic Committee (CESE) 
has created a working group to examine  transatlantic 
relations and to come up with recommendations on how to 
improve them.  Supported by the EU, CESE is made up of 
employer and worker representatives, i.e. the so-called 
"social partners," to examine all aspects of European Union 
activity (not just economic, labor, or social affairs). At 
CESE's invitation, we discussed transatlantic relations March 
1 with them where we highlighted the importance of the New 
Transatlantic Agenda (NTA) in helping guide US/EU dialogue. 
One interesting aspect of the CESE study group has been its 
recognition that disagreements over political and security 
issues "spill over" and affect economic and social relations 
that are directly relevant to the more "bread and butter" 
priorities of the social partners. 
 
AFL-CIO: Cooperating with European counterparts 
--------------------------------------------- -- 
 
¶8. (SBU) AFL-CIO international affairs Department head 
Barbara Shailor called on us March 2 to talk about AFL-CIO 
relations with the ETUC and the ICFTU. She said that AFL-CIO 
is very pleased with ICFTU's performance under SYG Ryder. She 
noted that for the first time in years, the AFL-CIO is 
working well with the European Trade Union Confederation 
(ETUC); the new ETUC president, John Monks, (former head of 
the UK Trade Union Confederation - TUC) is also a 
long-standing close friend of AFL-CIO President Sweeney. 
Shailor was also interested in being briefed on transatlantic 
relations after Iraq and during the Irish Presidency. On her 
mind was the possibility of resurrecting the now largely 
dormant transatlantic labor dialogue (TALD). While she 
wondered what might benefit from putting greater ETUC/AFL-CIO 
cooperation in the TALD framework, she did take the point 
that there is a great deal of interest in reexamining 
transatlantic relations to see if they might be better and 
that the labor movements, like the business sector or 
consumers, might have a greater role to play. 
 
Canadian Labor Ministry's EU Priorities 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶9. (SBU) We met with Thomas Townsend, Health and Social 
Affairs Counselor, for the Canadian Mission to the EU.  He 
spends most of his time analyzing EU labor market and 
employment trends for the Canadian Ministry of Labor (his 
home office).  His highest reporting priority is EU efforts 
to meet its Lisbon Process goals, particularly in the 
Employment area.  Even though his home Ministry lacks the 
kind of memorandum of understanding that the US Department of 
Labor has with DG-Employment, the EU and Canada try to do two 
educational exchange programs per year on topics of mutual 
interest. This spring, Canada and the EU will do a 
"Roundtable on Labor Market Employment."  (Townsend, who is 
new to Brussels, expressed his personal amazement by the 
amount of time he spent with his EC colleagues over whether 
to call the event a seminar, a workshop, or a roundtable.) 
The major topics to be covered are likely to be the three 
main Lisbon Process employment targets. 
 
SEIU Courtesy Call 
------------------ 
 
¶10. (U) Taking a break from their public relations efforts to 
enlist support from the ETUC and European Parliament (EP) for 
their campaign against Group 4 Falck and its US subsidiary, 
Wackenhut, Service Employers International Union (SEIU, the 
largest union in the AFL-CIO)) International President Andrew 
Stern and International Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger paid 
a call on USEU to introduce themselves. They noted their 
efforts with the EP have found some resonance as the Group 4 
Falck is the EP security contractor. At their request, we 
reviewed US/EU labor cooperation on the role of the disabled 
in the workplace as well as US/EU relations writ large. 
 
EU/EJC Anti-Semitism Conference 
------------------------------- 
 
¶11. (U) USEU attended the February 19 EU/EJC Conference on 
Anti-Semitism in Europe. A virtual consensus emerged that 
there is a "European dimension" to anti-Semitism and that it 
is not only a member-state problem. Given this, there was 
also general agreement that "Europe" has to respond to it on 
a Europe-wide basis. Another important and related 
"breakthrough" of sorts was a clear recognition that the 
debate of whether anti-Semitism exists in Europe is over; one 
participant dramatically said the February 19 conference 
"marks the end of denial in Europe of anti-Semitism." 
Speakers included EC President Prodi, German FM Fischer, EJC 
head Benatoff, and writer Elie Wiesel.  We reviewed the 
conference with an EU Council Secretariat human rights 
experts who told us that the next big step in this dialogue 
on anti-Semitism will be the special OSCE session in Berlin 
-- an event that Fischer said Germany was proud to host. 
 
Foster