In 1995, temporary workers made up 7.2 percent of the jobs in Italy. Today, according to the Financial Times, that figure is 13.2 percent, and 52.5 percent for Italians aged 15 to 24. It is extremely difficult to organize temporary workers, and their growing presence in the workforce has eroded the power of trade unions to fight for better wages, working conditions and benefits.
In spite of promises that tight money and austerity would re-start economies devastated by the 2007-2008 financial crisis, growth is pretty much dead in the water continent-wide. And economies that have shown growth have yet to approach their pre-meltdown levels. Even the more prosperous northern parts of the continent are sluggish. Finland and the Netherlands are in a recession.
There is also considerable regional unevenness in economic development. Italy's output contracted 0.4% in 2014, but the country's south fell by 1.3%. Income for southern residents is also plummeting. Some 60% of southern Italians live on less than $13,400 a year, as compared to 28.5% of the north. "We're in an era in which the winners become ever stronger and weakest move even further behind," Italian economist Matteo Caroli told the Financial Times.
That economic division of the house is also characteristic of Spain, While the national jobless rate is an horrendous 23.7 percent, the country's most populous province in the south, Andalusia, sports an unemployment rate of 41 percent. Only Spanish youth are worse off. Their jobless rate is over 50 percent.
Italy and Spain are microcosms for the rest of Europe. The EU's south -- Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, and Bulgaria -- are characterized by high unemployment, deeply stressed economies, and falling standards of living. While the big economies of the north, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany, are hardly booming -- the EU growth rate over all is a modest 1.6 percent -- they are in better shape than their southern neighbors.
Geographically, Ireland is in the north, but with high unemployment and widespread poverty brought on by the austerity policies of the EU, it is in the same boat as the south. Indeed, Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told the annual conference of the leftwing, anti-austerity party Sinn Fein that Greece considered the Irish "honorary southerners."
Austerity has become a Trojan horse for multinational corporations, and a strategy for weakening trade unions and eroding democracy. But it is not popular, and governments that have adopted it have many times found themselves driven out of power or nervously watching their poll numbers fall. Spain's rightwing Populist Party is on the ropes, Sinn Fein is the second largest party in Ireland, Portugal's rightwing government is running scared, and polls indicate that the French electorate supports the Greeks in their resistance to austerity.
The Troika is an unelected body, and yet it has the power to command economies. National parliaments are being reduced to rubber stamps, endorsing economic and social programs over which they have little control. If the Troika successfully removes peoples' right to choose their own economic policies, then it will have cemented the last bricks into the fortress that multinational capital is constructing on the continent.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
