Could someone explain the "Commission vs Luxembourg" case and its implications?

zeppe

OK, so I've been educating myself over the last week on the Lisbon Treaty.
Reading the Treaty itself, court cases, workers rights etc. I really want to understand it all before I vote.

I've been reading about the Viking/Laval cases and their implications. As far as I understand this happened in two countries, Germany/Sweden where they had no minimum wage. As I understand legal protections contained in the National Minimum Wage Act, Registered Employment Agreements and Employment Regulation Orders mean that this cannot happen here.

Now I'm in the process of reading the "Commission vs Luxembourg" case.
I'm having difficulty understanding it.
Can anyone explain in laymans terms what it is?
The verdict and its implications for workers rights?

Thanks

marco_polo

zeppe wrote: »

OK, so I've been educating myself over the last week on the Lisbon Treaty.
Reading the Treaty itself, court cases, workers rights etc. I really want to understand it all before I vote.

I've been reading about the Viking/Laval cases and their implications. As far as I understand this happened in two countries, Germany/Sweden where they had no minimum wage. As I understand legal protections contained in the National Minimum Wage Act, Registered Employment Agreements and Employment Regulation Orders mean that this cannot happen here.

Now I'm in the process of reading the "Commission vs Luxembourg" case.
I'm having difficulty understanding it.
Can anyone explain in laymans terms what it is?
The verdict and its implications for workers rights?

Thanks

The ETUC have good summaries of all four cases on their website. The one for the Luxembourg case is here.

Scofflaw

marco_polo wrote: »

The ETUC have good summaries of all four cases on their website. The one for the Luxembourg case is here.

I'm not sure whether that judgement has any particularly strong implications for workers' rights generally. It appears more to be the case that Luxembourg had a set of quite typically bureaucratic protectionist measures that had to be complied with, as well as some redundant rules - these were:

1. requirement for proper written contract, and the requirement for equal treatment of part-time and fixed-term workers - both of these are already a required minimum under EU legislation, and this is thus redundant.

2. automatic indexing of all wages to cost of living - above the minimum wage, this is unnecessary.

3. requirement that Luxembourg collective agreements are complied with - judged unnecessarily restrictive unless these are universally applicable collective agreements.

4. Luxembourg notion of minimum rest periods - the ECJ judged that the Luxembourg laws didn't grant sufficient protection to workers.

5. lack of clarity of the monitoring arrangements for posted workers - Luxembourg law requires companies to allow labour inspections, but the requirements to be met were vague, while the penalties were 'not inconsiderable'.

6. The requirement of an ad hoc agent residing in Luxembourg to retain the documents necessary for monitoring - the ECJ considered that appointing one of the posted workers to retain the necessary document would be sufficient.

I can't see where any of those have any implication for workers' rights generally in the EU. The case would certainly be important for businesses intending to post workers in Luxembourg, because a lot of the above looks like the removal of make-work regulations for Luxembourg bureaucrats. The requirement to have a local agent is quite archaic.

cordially,
Scofflaw

marco_polo

Scofflaw wrote: »

I'm not sure whether that judgement has any particularly strong implications for workers' rights generally. It appears more to be the case that Luxembourg had a set of quite typically bureaucratic protectionist measures that had to be complied with, as well as some redundant rules - these were:

1. requirement for proper written contract, and the requirement for equal treatment of part-time and fixed-term workers - both of these are already a required minimum under EU legislation, and this is thus redundant.

2. automatic indexing of all wages to cost of living - above the minimum wage, this is unnecessary.

3. requirement that Luxembourg collective agreements are complied with - judged unnecessarily restrictive unless these are universally applicable collective agreements.

4. Luxembourg notion of minimum rest periods - the ECJ judged that the Luxembourg laws didn't grant sufficient protection to workers.

5. lack of clarity of the monitoring arrangements for posted workers - Luxembourg law requires companies to allow labour inspections, but the requirements to be met were vague, while the penalties were 'not inconsiderable'.

6. The requirement of an ad hoc agent residing in Luxembourg to retain the documents necessary for monitoring - the ECJ considered that appointing one of the posted workers to retain the necessary document would be sufficient.

I can't see where any of those have any implication for workers' rights generally in the EU. The case would certainly be important for businesses intending to post workers in Luxembourg, because a lot of the above looks like the removal of make-work regulations for Luxembourg bureaucrats. The requirement to have a local agent is quite archaic.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Cheers, it was the only one of the four cases I wasn't really familiar with, I posted the link mainly because the other three were very clear and to the point. I was planning on reading the summary tommorrow. This post will do nicely instead

Scofflaw

marco_polo wrote: »

Cheers, it was the only one of the four cases I wasn't really familiar with, I posted the link mainly because the other three were very clear and to the point. I was planning on reading the summary tommorrow. This post will do nicely instead

In fact, the summary is barely longer - I only posted the above because people often don't go to read the links.

cordially,
Scofflaw

zeppe

Thanks. The summary by scofflaw really made sense of the ruling.
Knowledge is power;)

PopeBuckfastXVI

Haven't Ireland already implemented the directive with no problems? So the net effect of the Luxembourg ruling on us is zero?

marco_polo

Two papers discussing the impact of the judgements annd the relevant aspects of Irish law here if anyone is interested. One from the Joint Commitee on European Affairs, the other from the charter group.

http://www.thechartergroup.ie/assets/assessment_of_workers_rights_issues_following_the_european_court_of_justice_judgments.pdf

http://euaffairs.ie/JCEA-Report-Lisbon-reaty-Workers-Rights-Final.doc