Revolting Europe
unemployment
Spanish unions, opposition slam ‘barbaric’ IMF recommendations for ‘reform’
The IMF has urged Spain to continue its neo-liberal reforms, in an indication of concern that elections in the fall could deliver a more progressive government than the current regime of Mariano Rajoy. It is calling for the part-privatisation of health and education, through ‘co-payments’ for services. It also wants to see further deregulation of … Continue reading
Spain’s jobs crisis will endure as long as we are in the euro
By Juan Torres López A crucial question for the Spanish economy is why we suffer a level of unemployment that is much higher than the rest of the economies that surround us. Obviously, it is a question with no simple unequivocal answer, for surely there are many factors that make our unemployment so high and … Continue reading
Austerity suicides rise in depression Italy
Italy’s dire economic crisis has led to a 60% rise in suicides, underlying the heavy price people are paying for austerity policies designed to benefit the 1%. In 2012, there are 402 suicides linked to economic problems. This includes 184 business people and 168 unemployed, 35 employees and 8 pensioners. This year alone, in the first … Continue reading
After Saturday’s massive show of force, where now for Italy’s CGIL union?
As many as a million took to the streets of Rome on Saturday in a protest at the Renzi’s government’s labour counter-reforms, dubbed the Jobs Act. Giorgio Cremaschi analyses the strategy of the country’s largest union confederation that led the mega rally and suggests what is needed to defeat this latest neo-liberal attack on the Italian people The CGIL … Continue reading
Spain’s labour reforms are still not working
The Spanish economy, no sooner declared one of the bright spots in the Eurozone economy, is again struggling. The Eurozone’s fourth largest economy grew at its fastest pace in six years in the second quarter (the third consecutive quarter of growth) but this week the Bank of Spain sounded pessimistic, pointing to a slow down in … Continue reading
Does Italy really need another labour reform?
No sector in Italy has been more ‘reformed’ than the labour market. Yet there’s talk of the need for reforms every day, as if labour rules had remained unchanged for a century. Carlo Clericetti on why PM Matteo Renzi should desist from his Jobs Act It is repeated in almost every newscast: “structural reforms”, especially of the … Continue reading
Abandoned in austerity Spain: no job, no benefits
Read the news and it’s all upbeat about Spain. The Spanish economy grew 0.6 percent in the second quarter, the fastest rate since 2007, before the country slipped into recession. That’s the fourth consecutive quarter of growth. And Spain’s unemployment rate has fallen to a two-year low – of 24.5% in the second quarter. Of course at … Continue reading
Coca Cola workers’ struggle for jobs bubbles over into Italy
The struggle against job cuts by Coca Cola shifts to Italy where workers were striking Thursday in protest at cost reduction plans by the American multinational. The eight hour stoppage is in response to the announcement earlier this month that the company, producer of one of the world’s most popular soft drinks, will make 249 redundancies across Italy, adding to … Continue reading
The IMF and bosses’ war against Spanish youth
By Jose Antonio Arias Again, for the umpteenth time the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has attacked Spanish youth and their wages, while the Spanish business lobby shouts “we told you so”. This is the scenario: over 50% youth unemployment, the minimum wage at €645.30 (virtually frozen since 2011) and almost non-existent labour rights. Faced with … Continue reading
94 reasons why French trade unions have boycotted Hollande’s job summit
Francois Hollande’s jobs summit is becoming a farse. Unemployment in France has risen to a new high of 3.4 million. The socialist President is desperate to be seen to be doing something about it. But Monday yet another union walked out of the two day ‘social summit’, an unprecedented desertion by organised labour for any administration in Paris, … Continue reading
Social services axe 57,000 jobs as Spain moves towards workhouse welfare model
Spain’s social services have axed 56,700 jobs over the past three years as part of a drastic austerity-driven downgrading of the country’s welfare state. In what will be seen as further evidence that workers and society’s weakest are being made to pay the price of crisis originating in the banking sector and the EU’s draconian budgetary rules, … Continue reading
Italy: the problem with Renzi
By Giorgio Cremaschi* A few months ago all the Italian media reported with great sympathy the struggle of the Greek state television journalists against the cuts decided by the government in the name of austerity. Now they point the finger at the strike at Italy’s state broadcaster Rai, characterising it as a revolt of bureaucracy … Continue reading
How austerity has widened Italy’s North-South divide
Austerity policies have accentuated a North-South divide grounded in a distribution of public spending and the tax burden that is skewed against the Mezzzogiorno, argues economist Guglielmo Forges Davanzati “It is well known what kind of ideology has been disseminated in myriad ways among the masses in the North, by the propagandists of the bourgeoisie: the South … Continue reading
From expansionary austerity to expansionary precariousness: the latest doctrine is another European illusion
Interview with economist Emiliano Brancaccio / Micromega The deregulatory labour reforms of Italy’s new PM Matteo Renzi will fail because it is proven that “more casualisation does not mean more jobs”, argues economist Emiliano Brancaccio. Indeed, ‘the wager on the race to the bottom could bring the wage deflation to the whole of the EU, and deflation … Continue reading
550 days, 29 Workers, Zero Job Losses
The story of how a few determined Italian women stopped their factory closing and protected their livelihoods has become the subject a powerful film. “My name is Rose Giancola, I am a worker at Tacconi Sud and this is the second night of the occupation of the factory.” Thus begins the documentary, ‘Atlantis’* directed and … Continue reading
DATA
WAGES SLIDE
Wealth Inequality in Europe
RADICAL VOICES
Italy’s Healthcare Crisis
550 days, 29 Workers, Zero Job Losses
Filthy Rich
SANTA DRAGHI’S COMING
POPULAR FIGHTBACK
FLORENCE’S BUS LUMACA
Popular resistance delivers results
FRENCH FACTORY OCCUPATION
Watching Corporate Europe
- The Trade Secrets Protection Directive Is Still Dangerous For Freedoms and Rights
- Ombudsman's ruling: Stoiber’s appointment process constituted ‘maladministration’ and was misleading
- Lobbying over croissants and coffee
Fight discrimination in Europe – Amnesty Int’l
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