TTIP - Impact on Health and Safety At Work in The UK:

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Letter to Branches





No. 364/15
Ref: C1/15
Date: 5 June 2015


To: All Branches


Dear Colleagues

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership TTIP - Impact on Health and Safety At Work in The UK:
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a series of trade negotiations being carried out mostly in secret between the EU and US. As a bi-lateral trade agreement, TTIP is about reducing the regulatory barriers to international trade in order to make it better and easier for big business. It will affect many things, like food safety law, environmental legislation, health and safety law, chemical and dangerous substances regulations, banking regulations and the sovereign powers of individual nations. It has been described by one UK based charity as “An assault on European and US societies by transnational corporations.” Since before TTIP negotiations began last February, the process has been secretive and undemocratic. This secrecy is on-going, with nearly all information on negotiations coming from leaked documents and Freedom of Information requests. Alongside the EU-US Trade Deal, talks known as TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), a similar deal is under discussion with Canada and the Canadian–EU deal is known as CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement). Both deals give serious cause for concern. One of TTIP’s biggest threats is the introduction of Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS), which grants privileged powers to foreign corporations and companies, allowing companies to sue governments if those governments’ policies of legislation cause a loss of profits. In effect it means unelected transnational corporations can dictate the policies and legislation of democratically elected governments. ISDS arrangements in place in other bi-lateral trade agreements around the world have already seen Germany and Egypt sued for billions of dollars over decisions to improve nuclear safety and minimum wage increases. Many similar cases of businesses versus nations are going on around the world at the moment within Trade Agreements under ISDS ‘arbitration tribunals’ arrangements.

Two million people from across Europe have signed the European-wide petition against TTIP and CETA, including more than a quarter of a million from the UK. Numerous organisations, Charities and Trade Unions, including the CWU also oppose the TTIP in its present form. The Trades Union Congress meeting in Liverpool in September 2014 took the decisive step of ‘outright opposition to TTIP and CETA. Millions of people across Europe have said no to TTIP, in the strongest trade campaign ever seen. Yet MEPs have continued the talks, pressed and lobbied by big business in Brussels. The pressure on MEPs therefore needs to be continued and stepped up by European people, Unions and other organisations.

Whilst many areas are set to be affected, The Health, Safety and Environment Department has written to MEPs specifically on the threat to EU/UK Health and Safety Legislation and standards which are undoubtedly at risk of being attacked, watered down, weakened or repealed if the EU signs up to TTIP and CETA with ISDS included and without effective protection and exclusion of Health and Safety from those arrangements other than improving standards to the best that exist within any partnership deal rather than lowering them, equal to the weakest standards that exist. The best example of this is EU’s REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation & restriction of CHemicals) health and safety regulations which are far tougher on potentially toxic substances. In Europe a company has to prove a substance is safe before it can be used; in the US the opposite is true: any substance can be used until it is proven unsafe. As an example, the EU currently bans 1,200 substances from use in cosmetics; in the US its just 12 substances banned.

See attached letter that has been sent to all MEPs. Safety Representatives, members and branches may wish to write to their MEPs also.

Yours Sincerely


Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer

cwu no ttip.jpg

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Communication Workers Union
Dave Joyce National Health & Safety Officer
150 The Broadway, Wimbledon, London SW19 1RX
Tel: 020 8971 7365/7308 E-Mail: djoyce@cwu.org


Our Reference:  C1/DJ/lmp
 
3 June 2015


Dear Member of the European Parliament,
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership TTIP - Impact on Health and Safety At Work in The UK:
On 10 June you will have to decide on a resolution that could heavily impact the future of UK and European workers, namely the resolution on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership TTIP.
The draft resolution voted in the INTA Committee on 28 May does not completely reflect the deep concerns and clear red lines set out by UK and European citizens, many civil society groups, Trade Unions and indeed the Members of the European Parliament.
In our opinion either this text is deeply improved during the vote in the Plenary session or you should reject the resolution. We urge you to support amendments improving the resolution or vote against the whole resolution if these improvements are not achieved.
The ETUC, TUC, STUC, UK Trade Unions including CWU, UK Professional Safety Organisations and an EU-wide coalition of 375 civil society organisations share a deep concern about the various threats posed by the agreement and all have made submissions and sent letters to the EU Parliament.
We hope that all MEPs will agree on a strong resolution that makes clear that the European Parliament will reject any future trade or investment agreements that will not serve the public interest and threaten important rights acquired in long democratic struggles in the UK, EU, US and the rest of the world.
To the very least, this requires that the resolution must exclude, unequivocally,
1-      Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision or any system with similar anti-democratic flaws,
2-      Regulatory cooperation in its currently planned form
Like the ETUC and TUC, the CWU also has concerns over the way this treaty is being negotiated.
There are a number of aspects which could impinge on health and safety regulations and standards. The EU Parliament must not allow companies to sue governments in secretive courts. These investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules have already been used by corporations to sue governments in cases where they feel they have not had “fair and equitable” treatment – and this includes labour standards. In one recent example, Egypt is being sued by the French multinational Veolia for raising the minimum wage. We are aware that the Labour Group on the European Parliament is concerned about this aspect and it is vital that the European Commission must ensure the ‘right to regulate’ in areas such as employment law and health and safety, is respected and ring-fenced. The TUC Executive has made a submission in May on this.
TTIP has the potential to have a significant effect on health and safety regulations and MEPs must ensure that it is not used to undermine any existing EU and UK health and safety regulations, or prevent any further ones being passed.
The EU has, on average, one third of the workplace fatality rate of the USA. In part that is down to the stronger regulatory framework, underpinned by the 1989 EU Framework Directive. Europe has also, more recently, developed stronger Chemicals regulations in the form of REACH.
TTIP could result in the harmonisation of many health and safety regulations, including Chemicals, or introduce a system of mutual recognition which would have the effect of harmonising standards down to the lowest common denominator. At the very least TTIP might involve a process for examining current and future regulation at transatlantic level. A 2013 study by OECD into existing “International regulatory Cooperation” was extremely critical saying that it was “mainly guided by political considerations and not informed of a clear understanding of the benefits etc.” The emphasis on all previous attempts to harmonise regulation has been to benefit business and trade. If this were to happen to health and safety regulations as a result of TTIP this could, quite literally, be disastrous.
We fear that there is a real risk that existing standards could be undermined and certainly future safety regulation might be harder to get through at either UK national or EU level if TTIP goes ahead without proper protection built in.
We know from the December 2013 leaked EU Commission document that there is a proposed "Regulatory Cooperation Council” which would assess existing and future regulations on both sides of the Atlantic to work towards mutually acceptable standards, and a procedure where a comprehensive system of consultation would be triggered if new regulation is proposed, or if regulation is already in place has a “significant” impact on trade. This would hand control over to Big Business and Multi-National Corporations, enabling them to veto new Health and Safety Regulations and to repeal existing ones - THAT MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO GO AHEAD.
Many of the proposals seem to have come from the Chemical Industry who are mounting a campaign aimed at slowing down or stopping any new regulations on safety or environmental grounds, but they would cover all types of health and safety regulations.
The UK and EU must continue with its successful, well-established tripartite approach to workplace safety in any regulatory process, with involvement of Unions and Business interests right from the beginning.  TTIP should only be used to raise (rather than lower) standards of health and safety protection and health and safety law enforcement) on both sides of the Atlantic. Finally if ISDS cannot be prevented from  inclusion in any final agreement between the EU and US then the rules governing dispute resolution must fully endorse the existing EU/UK “right to regulate” on health and safety.
The authority of MEPs and the EU Parliament should not be given away to private interests.  The Commission must ensure that the adoption of national legislation continues to be performed exclusively by legitimate legislative bodies of the EU, promoting the highest standards of protection for workers in the areas of health, safety, the environment, consumer and workers’ rights, and public services of general interest. In the EU public consultation on ISDS  97 % of responses opposed  ISDS. That cannot be ignored by the EU Parliament that represents those people.
Yours sincerely

 
 
Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer
Communication Workers Union (UK)