Socialist Worker

The Workers Charter

Issue No. 2027

For more than a generation workers have faced an onslaught on their jobs, wages, conditions and trade union rights. Privatisation and deregulation have been implemented by both Conservative and New Labour governments. The early 21st century has seen a rebirth of radicalism on a global scale. Now is the time for trade unionists to rebuild their organisations and recommit themselves to defend working peoples’ livelihoods and rights.

The Workers Charter:

  1. The right to a job that pays a living wage and gives us time with our families and communities. The automatic right to union recognition and full employment rights from the first day or work.
  2. The right to equal pay and conditions for women, ethnic minorities, youth, migrant and casual workers. The right to a living minimum wage.
  3. The right to free public healthcare, welfare and education, and to a liveable pension.
  4. The right to decent public housing or to private housing without crippling mortgages and rents.
  5. The right to public control of all vital public service and utilities.
  6. The right to protect our own health and safety and our environment from corporate greed.
  8. The right to strike in defence of our interests and to campaign for the repeal of the Tory anti-union laws, including support for the defiance of those laws. The right to be able to take secondary, solidarity strike action without the threat of legal action.
  9. The right to organise for the transfer of wealth and power from the haves to the have-nots, partly through severe taxation of multinational corporations or their dismantling.
  10. The right to unite with workers worldwide against corporate globalisation and war.

Our immediate campaigning priorities will be:

  1. To organise lobbies of MPs in favour of the Trade Union Freedom Bill. To support any group of workers who take action which is in defiance of the anti-union laws and call on their trade unions not to repudiate their action.
  2. To organise in support of the Public Services not Private Profit initiative.
  3. To campaign in defence of the NHS free of private finance initiatives and contracting out. To demand the TUC name a day for a national demonstration in defence of the NHS to take place early next year and, if they fail to do so, to support initiatives for a national demonstration from grassroots health activists.
  4. To organise a Trade Union Solidarity delegation to Venezuela

