European trade unions urge EU plan against crisis

* European trade unions agree common platform

* Demands include wide-ranging EU recovery plan

* Crisis is opportunity and risk for labour activists

PARIS, May 28 - Trade unions from across Europe on Thursday agreed to push for an EU recovery plan to fight the economic crisis, which they said presented both risks and opportunities for labour activists.

Members of the European Trade Union Confederation called on Brussels to draw up a stimulus plan worth 1 pct of GDP to support employment and promote innovation in sectors with a promising future such as green technologies.

Gathered at a conference in Paris, the unions also rejected wage freezes or cuts imposed by some employers, especially in hard-hit new EU members, and warned member states against cutting social spending at the first signs of recovery.

"We are demanding the same kind of support for the real economy as banks have obtained. Firms doing useful things must be kept going and helped towards more sustainable technologies," said John Monks, the ETUC's general-secretary, in an address.

The ETUC includes unions from 36 countries from Ireland to the Baltic States and from Norway to Turkey.

Monks said the correct strategy for them to emerge stronger from the crisis was "pragmatic militancy", or constructive dialogue with governments and employers to obtain concrete victories for workers, and strong protests when necessary.

Unions said the crisis was a chance for them to gain clout as their long-held objections to the unbridled free market had been proved right and there was deep worker anger to harness.

But the crisis also posed two major risks for unions. One was that fears of losing their jobs could inhibit workers from taking part in labour action, while shrinking workforces also meant a dwindling pool of people to enlist.

RISK OF LOSING CONTROL

The other risk was that workers could take action outside the union framework -- as seen in Britain with wildcat strikes against foreign contractors, and in France with workers detaining bosses -- leaving the unions to play catch-up.

Javier Doz Orrit of Spain's biggest union, Comisiones Obreras, said membership had grown by 10,000 to more than 1.2 million since December as rocketing unemployment encouraged those still in the workforce to seek union protection.

"But if unemployment keeps rising at such a pace for much longer, at some point there is a risk that things will get out of hand. That would be bad for the government, for the employers, but also for the unions," he told Reuters.

Frank Bsirske, head of German services sector union Verdi, told Reuters the momentum for labour action varied widely from sector to sector, depending on job losses.

For example, he said Verdi was having success in organising strikes among public sector workers whose jobs were relatively secure, such as kindergarten teachers, but in ravaged sectors like media, union branches were almost powerless to act.

Francois Chereque, head of France's CFDT, said French unions needed to be self-critical and challenge their own inertia or they would miss the opportunities of the crisis.

Chereque said union membership, which is low at about 8 percent of the workforce, was mostly made up of people in their 40s and 50s with secure jobs whom unions protected at the expense of younger, more precarious workers.

"We have to confront the facts. Young workers on insecure contracts are used as a pressure valve to preserve jobs for more established workers when companies are struggling. We unionists have to fight for those precarious workers too," he said.