IT'S NOT TRUE that Tory Euro-sceptics are opposed to any European link-up.
They have their dream of a single Europe market in which capital is free to roam in search of cheap labour, where welfare spending is forced down to the barest minimum, and where wages are forced down to the lowest possible level.
They have done their best at home to reduce British workers to the paupers of Europe, and now oppose any proposals that might support or improve pay and conditions in Europe.
In pursuit of this vision of a 'Europe without benefits', hard right Empioyment Secretary Michael Portillo has now formed a bizarre alliance for low pay with Irish and Portu guese opposite numbers.
Their common objective is to block an EU directive that would prevent foreign building workers undercutting local pay and conditions in member states.
The directive is strongly supported by France, Belgium and the Netherlands where national laws lay down that local pay rates should apply to outside labour from day one, and by Germany, Sweden and Austria, where prevailing wages are high.
At the same meeting, Portillo also rejected proposals to insert a social clause in EU international agreements that would require countries trading with member states to recognise trade unions - and ban child labour.
Although the Euro-row has been shelved until June - after the French elections - Portillo's stubborn stance underlines the Tory commitment to low pay, which has found such a weak response from the trade union and Labour leaders.
All of the figures show the extent to which the relentless Tory onslaught on pay and social benefits has thrown millions into poverty.
More than a million people in work in Britain are earning less than £2.50 an hour. A third of a million are on less than £1.50 an hour. Cheapskate employers exploiting this sweated labour are being subsidised by the Tories to the tune of f2.5 billion a year in top-up benefits for the lowestWage-cutter Portillo paid.
Poverty in Teesside is so widespread that councils are pumping cash into providing free school breakfasts to counter malnutrition among children. 3.7 million children are now living in families dependent on skid-row state benefits or receiving income below benefit levels.
Yet Labour leaders, their eyes firmly on the votes of the prosperous middle class, have been frantically back-pedalling from any specific commitment to legislale minimum wage of f4.15.
Now it seems the TUC, too, is in retreat, and could offer a concession to Tony Blair by slashing back its target to just £3.60.
Exactly what advantage this would offer to Labour's timid front bench is not clear, since the Tories and hard-line employers will oppose any minimum wage on principle, claiming that if employers cannot hire workers for next to nothing they may not hire them at all. On the right lines: striking German rail workers Yet in Germany and other European countries booming capitalist enterprises pay far higher average wages than in Britain's crumbling industries.
Unlike the British unions, whose half-hearted NHS lunch-time protest on March 30 spelled out a refusal to mount a serious fight on pay, European workers are demonstrating increased confidence in their wage demands.
German engineering workers led the way, with the 4 million members of of the IGMetall union making important gains from a 12-day selective stoppage backed up by the threat of national action. Other big German unions are now in the queue for pay increases of up to 6 percent.
In France, too, massive pay strikes last week halted planes, trains, and Paris bus and Metro services as well as Renault car plants.
British workers, however are saddled with a deadly combination of a class-conscious government, and a cowardly, ineffective union leadership.
As Portillo sets his sights on replacing the Social Chapter with a Cowboy's Charter, reducing pay to sweatshop levels across Europe, the British rail unions, health unions and others are debating whether or not to fight for a pay increase that matches inflation.
With the Tories so weak and isolated, a serious fight now could deal them a decisive blow - and that would be a huge step forward for workers throughout Europe.
Jtv ÖT BARN. STREIK!