Guides challenge TUC on freedom of movement
WORKERS, MAR 2006 ISSUE
The Association of Professional Tourist Guides (APTG), London members of Amicus, will be urging the union to intervene directly in support of their fight for standards, at their Regional Sector Conference in March. They will be calling for legislative change which will effectively protect professional standards and qualifications.
Inevitably, this will call into question the Treaty of Nice, which remains on the table, allowing parts of the EU Constitution, such as the Services Directive, to be implemented without referenda. This is the Treaty by which the Blair government surrendered national control over the professions and industries to the EU.
The guides want Amicus and the TUC to understand the implications for the profession of the law on freedom of movement, which the TUC promotes, against the interest of its members, and in favour of cheap labour for capitalists.
Confrontation
After 20 years of self-reliance, locked in confrontation with the European Tour Operators' Association (ETOA), without the direct involvement of the union, or its predecessor MSF, the guides want to celebrate their survival and step-by-step ascendancy by giving the employers a short sharp shock.
Guides want the union to tackle the employers as part of the its campaign against the Directive.
The ETOA is the worst kind of crude small business organisation, interested only in profit margins, and adamantly opposed to professional standards. It recently threatened to pull out of talks on guiding standards with the British Standards Institute, declaring: "Any chaining of the term 'tourist guide' to qualification, where no qualification is required by either the tour operator or the client, seriously curtails the industry's freedom to provide services and undermines the principle of the [EU] Internal Market".
APTG is a member of the Federation of European Tourist Guides Associations, founded 20 years ago to protect guides in the face of EU liberalisation. At first, guides thought that liberalisation sounded very nice (and liberal), but now they are seeing that they are not the ones being liberated.
The European federation was one of the professional organisations which recently secured the repatriation of powers to determine qualifications, under the Recognition of Professional Services Directive. ETOA considers this in breach of the Treaty of Rome. ETOA also knows that it will take up to two years or more for the Directive to pass into national law, and they intend to keep up the pressure.
APTG knows that it cannot let its guard down. Together with its standard-setting Institute of Tourist Guiding (also established in response to attacks on the profession), APTG will call on the government to ensure that the Institute is recognised as the only body within the tourism industry qualified to set guiding standards in England and Wales. The Scottish Tourist Guides Association will be seeking similar authority from the Scottish Executive.
Through the Federation of European Tourist Guides Associations, British tourist guides have been made aware of the current problems imposed by ETOA and the Commission on Italy. The Italian culture minister refused to shorten the government's list of 2,540 sites, museums and monuments (many of them Unesco World Heritage sites) reserved for interpretation by qualified tourist guides.
Up before the Court
Despite the fact that the Unesco sites constitute only 2% of all Italy's historical sites (Italy has the most in any one country), the Commission says this is infringing the law on freedom of provision of services. Italy now finds itself (not for the first time) in front of the European Court of Justice.
This could easily happen here in Britain, where there is no formal regulation in this field. There are already many foreign companies established here, employing tourist guides below national rates, especially Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and East European.
The Services Directive gives an added boost to the establishment of European firms, with the promise of barriers to trade removed. Tourist guides are accordingly stepping up their vigilance and liaison with British site authorities to ensure continued support for qualified guiding, despite accusations of 'guide cartels'. Guides will also argue for higher fees, in part to avoid being seen as an attractively cheap labour sector.