At the invitation of STATEC, the Luxembourg Statistical Institute, an “economic” seminar will be held on April 25th on the subject of “The importance of the trade unions in a changing Luxembourg economy”. On the agenda is a lecture by a university professor with the provocative title “Will they rise again? Four scenarios for the future of trade unions”.

Speakers will also include representatives of the OECD, an organization that has often expressed its hostility to employees’ representatives in the past. The speakers will present their views in detail over the course of 2 hours. Originally, the three nationally representative unions were to have only 15 minutes to respond to the statements.

Unions cancel In a joint letter, the CGFP, the LCGB and the OGBL have informed the STATEC director that they will not be able to participate in the seminar for known scheduling reasons. The STATEC seminar will take place at the same time as a meeting between the social partners and the government in the framework of the European Semester. In their joint letter, the employees’ representatives also disapproved of the fact that they were not involved in the preparatory work for the studies in question.

It is inexplicable that STATEC, for the umpteenth time, commissions its critical studies exclusively in cooperation with the trade unions and publishes the figures without consulting them. No other sector is highlighted to this extent. There is no detailed STATEC analysis of membership trends in political parties, employers’ associations or voluntary organizations. The real motives behind this one-sided, undifferentiated presentation, based in part on false assertions, raise questions about independence and impartiality.

A questionable undertaking In March 2002, a STATEC study was published under the catchy title “Unions in decline in a changing world of work”. It falsely claimed that the country’s three main trade unions had experienced a decline in membership between 2017 and 2019. Against this background, the question inevitably arises as to how the experts could have arrived at such a grossly inaccurate estimate. At the time, the CGFP and OGBL hotly contested the statisticians’ findings and methodology. Instead of wasting public funds on dubious and costly studies, the Ministry of Economy and its subordinate STATEC would do well to stick to the facts.

In many countries, people are reluctant to join trade unions for fear of reprisals or having their careers destroyed. For months now, people in neighbouring countries have been suffering the consequences of the failure of social dialogue: social conflicts, growing frustration, political disillusionment and work stoppages have become part of everyday life. In Luxembourg, too, attacks on trade union freedoms are on the rise. In the interest of the workers, the government and STATEC should consolidate the social dialogue instead of torpedoing it every year.

One suspects that STATEC’s recent economic seminar on the place of trade unions was also put under the spotlight of political influence. In this context, it is undeniable that there are personal links between the Statistical Office and the Observatoire de la Compétitivité. This organization also appears on the organizational chart of the Ministry of the Economy.