A Labour MEP is campaigning to stop migrant workers from other countries undercutting local labourers, reports the AD.

Agnes Jongerius, former chair of the FNV union and now a PvdA politician, told the paper she is hoping to win a majority in the European Parliament for a directive on ‘equal pay for equal work in the same place’ this summer.

She told the AD. ‘Everyone knows the stories. Drivers who camp for months in their cabs, the most visible form of exploitation. Road layers in Maastricht who can only pay for an expensive bed in a dorm of six, plus commuting costs, with their low salaries. Or, strangely, a shipyard that sacks all of its staff only to take on a busload of Romanians a week later. Eastern European governments are beginning to see that this cannot go on any longer, certainly Estonia, which succeeds Malta as European president this summer.’

The directive will be voted on in June or July, and AD claims Jongerius her French fellow rapporteur Elisabeth Morin-Chartier have scheduled 501 amendments, including ensuring the laws of the host country prevail over foreign workers after 12 months instead of 24, limiting temporary ‘postings’ to six months, and instituting transparent fees and wages.

She added that European countries reacted very differently to having new member states. ‘The Netherlands suggested work permits but Tony Blair immediately threw open the doors,’ she told the AD. ‘If he had not rolled out the red carpet across the Channel, there might have been no Brexit now. At the time, we did nothing to address this. As my mother said: if you stick your rubbish in a cupboard, you can’t see it. But if it stays there too long, it will still stink.’

Photo: via Wiki Commons, by Lex Draijer, Partij van de Arbeid