The Commission no longer says laid-off workers but surplus workers
(B2) What a blunder by the Commission. In proudly announcing the first decisions of the brand new Globalisation Fund, which is supposed to come to the aid of workers who are victims of globalisation, the European Commission and its Commissioner for Employment, Vladimir Spidla, carefully avoided uttering the fateful word "dismissal". As if this term were a swear word, a taboo word.
In his presentation made to the press, the Commission preferred to use the term "surplus workers", without realizing the pejorative connotation of this term. "The two requests are intended to help workers who have become surplus", it is written. Commissioner Spidla himself repeats this terminology, indicating that the Fund could be used "to help workers who have become surplus to quickly find their way back to employment". Further still, it is the idea of the President of the Commission, José-Manuel Barroso, to create a "solidarity instrument to help workers, victims of a surplus of personnel caused by changes in global trade structures, to find their way back to employment".
A surprising terminology
1° the criterion of surplus personnel does not appear at all in the regulation on the Globalization Fund. Only the notion of "redundancies" appears. It is strange not to have used this term. As if they were trying to hide the reality.
2° The notion of surplus personnel tends to reduce any employment problem to excess personnel. In addition to its pejorative side, it also evokes the idea that the market, the management carried out by the company, the general economic context, the competitiveness of the product... Adaptation to globalization, this would therefore just be a problem of excess personnel such as excess baggage or weight that we must clear before the summer. Simplistic?
When questioned, the Commission spokesperson defends himself against this state of mind. For him, the term "surplus personnel"... "reflects the reality that there are more workers than business opportunities for the company. We must not attribute an ideological charge to this notion". In other words, he does not deny the first impression, in fact he confirms it.
Behind the scenes, Commission officials detail this denomination, it is very clear, if there are job losses, it is because the worker is not adapted to the new conditions….
Curious conception of the labor market and globalization…
(NGV)