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Common Market and Social Dumping. The Forgotten Dream of a European Status for Miners

par Verschueren, Nicolas
Référence Free trade and social charges in 20th Century Europe: a historical reassessment (Padova)
Publication Non publié, 2015-11-11

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

As we know, the project of a common market for coal and steel in 1950 raised the fear of an increasing competition between workers, especially in the coal industry where the price of German coal would be a possible threat for the Belgian and French productions. Therefore, the Treaty of Paris provided several transitional measures and giving time to national government to adjust their competitiveness with the other Member States. As underlined in the historiography and as many trade unions’ leaders observed at the time, the institutional framework of the ECSC was not planned to shape a social policy allowing to “promote the improvement of the living and working conditions of the labor force in each of the industries under its jurisdiction so as to make possible the equalization of such conditions in an upward direction” (Art 3. E).Therefore, this communication aims to study how some trade unions’ leaders, political actors and European institutions tried to institute an ambitious social policy compatible with the new economic situation partly initiated by the common market of coal: the European Status for Mineworkers. Indeed, in the second half of the 50s Belgian and French coal miners had more and more difficulties to obtain or even maintain social advantages and some of those in West Germany have been considered illegal by the Court of Justice of the European Communities. Therefore, the leaders of miners’ trade unions attempted to harmonize the working conditions in the Community, in spite of the weakness of the supranational industrial relations system, in shaping a common status for every miners in the ECSC, gathering 25.000 miners in Dortmund in 1964 for the very first European demonstration.