THE STUC was mandated by delegates yesterday to campaign for a Remain position in the upcoming European Union referendum after a fiery debate at conference.
Usdaw delegate Jean Hession warned that “many jobs and hard-won rights” were at risk from an EU exit, adding that the “interests of Scottish workers are best served by remaining in the EU.”

But Dundee Trades Council delegate Raymond Mennie rejected these claims, arguing that many rights supposedly protected by the EU had already been won by the trade union movement and that the EU had actively been eroding these rights.

He said that the European Court of Justice had handed down “judgment after judgment which undermines collective bargaining,” adding that the founding principle of the EU “is to put the interests of capital before the interests of labour.”

Mr Mennie called on the movement to “make a stand against the real threats posed to our people” by the EU’s “neoliberal policies which are ruining our economy and our communities.”

RMT delegate Sean Hoyle slammed “unelected commissioners” in Brussels for driving privatisation of the railways and warned that it was a “contradiction” to be against the privatisation threat from TTIP and support the EU.

However, Unison delegate Gordon McKay warned that union members were faced with the choice of having a Tory government “forced by the EU to keep workers’ rights or a

Tory government out of the EU who can bundle workers’ rights onto the funeral pyre and set them alight.”

Responding to the debate, STUC general secretary Grahame Smith called for action to “work with our brothers and sisters throughout the EU to reform it.”

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