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by Liz Payne
Women are the primary victims of
the cuts and privatisation agenda of
the Con-Dem government.
This is not necessary, whatever they may tell
us. £1,350 billion of public funds has been
siphoned off into the banks and money
markets, while £203 billion is cut from public
spending. Tax corruption defrauds us of £100
billion a year, while we pay for the crisis,
forced by an unelected government of and for
the rich.
There is ample evidence that women will
pick up the tab for at least 70% (£142
billion) of cuts to public spending. This will
be through job loss - 473,000 women’s jobs in
the public sector alone - wage cuts, the
slashing of benefits and subsidies and the
decimation of the caring services on which
women so much depend.
But we must never accept that isolation,
impoverishment, marginalisation and
disempowerment are our lot. Now is the time
to stand together not only to oppose the cuts
but to fight for something different–- a society
in which women are no longer exploited and
poor, in which we have a voice and in which
we can access without barriers the services
we need.
An Alternative Economic Strategy, as
adopted at last year’s TUC would boost the
productive economy, create jobs, enhance
public services and improve the lives of
millions of workers and their families. Such a
strategy, which complements the People’s
Charter, provides a basis for this struggle.
The Peopleʼs Charter was overwhelmingly
endorsed by delegates at the 2009 TUC and
affiliates include 16 national trade unions
and a growing number of trades councils.
The Charter was adopted by last yearʼs
trades union councils conference into its work
programme and a joint campaign on the fight
for sustainable jobs, skills, industry and
services is being developed.
Onto this agenda we must firmly place the
demands set out in the Charter for Women for
an end to gender-based oppression and
exploitation. We are not only against what
those in power are doing to us now, we are for
an achievable and fairer future.H
Liz Payne is the Communist Party’s
national women's organiser
http://thepeoplescharter.org/
Unity!
There is analternative!
We need a radical agenda to counter ConDem destruction
Communists at the TUC Women’s Conference March 2012
Lies and statistics by Joanne Stevenson
Unemployment has been rising
amongst woman at a faster rate than
that of men. 9% up for women in 2011
compared to a 6% increase in male
unemployment.
Women form 46% of all employed. But
60% of those economically inactive are
women. Over 74% of part-time workers and
52% of temporary workers are female and this
concentration is escalating. A significant
increase of 4.3% of female temporary workers
was recorded between October-December,
compared to a mere 0.5% rise amongst men.
Women are more likely to have to hold
down more than one job, with 57% of those
with a second job being women.
Women form the majority of part-time,
temporary, and precarious workers but this is
not mainly because women want only this type
of work as it is ‘more conducive to child care’.
In 2011, 11% of all females stated that they
had taken a PT job simply because they
couldn’t find FT work – a 14% increase in
one year. Although over 75% of women part-
timers say it’s because they didn’t want a FT
job. However this does not appear to be the
case for female temporary workers.
But the worst aspect relating to
unemployment and women must be the Lone
Parents’ Claimant Count. The step rise shown
on the graph above says it all.H
Joanne Stevenson is the women’s organiser of
the West Midlands Communist Party
by Anita Halpin
European Central Bank President
Mario Draghi has defined the current
direction of the European Union when
he declared last month that the
European Social Model has ‘gone’; the
economic priority was to make EU
markets fully flexible by ending labour
privileges.
So the myth of the ‘social’ chapter, the
reason so many trades unionists have loyally
supported the EU, is finally debunked and it
is now time for workers to call for Britain’s
withdrawal from the EU. It is the only way to
recover democratic control over our economy
to salvage manufacturing and prevent further
erosion of employment rights and the welfare
state.
Today the EU serves only the interests of
big business and the banks. That is why
Cameron supports the Single Market; it
enables the City of London to continue to
dominate EU finance and banking.
Obama’s successful stimulus to the US
motor industry would be illegal within the EU,
because all sections of the public sector must
be open to competition and privatisation thus
preventing government action to save failing
firms, such as Bombardier. The EU’s anti-
democratic and pro-big business character
has been fully exposed during the financial
crisis as it replaced elected governments and
imposed drastically deflationary policies on
one country after another. Withdrawal would
strengthen the position of all those in Europe
fighting to preserve to defend their
democracies and halt a race to the bottom.
Once outside, Britain could negotiate
bilateral trade arrangements with the EU on
the same basis as Switzerland. Like
Switzerland, Britain imports more from the EU
than it exports: in 2008 228 billion euros
imports as against 178 billion exports
(Switzerland is roughly the same with 98
billion imports; 80 billion exports).
A British government could then adopt a
truly internationalist trade policy and break
with neo-liberalism. It would once more be
free to implement Left-Wing policies and
workers would no longer be subject to the
anti-trade union judgements of the EU Court
of Justice – not to be confused with the non-
EU and much more progressive European
Court of Human Rights which Cameron is
currently attacking.
That is why we have a duty to say enough is
enough: we want to get out.H
Anita Halpin is the Communist Party’s
trade union coordinator
For the rightsof womenby Anita Wright
The National Assembly of Women has
a long and proud history of
campaigning for peace, equality and
internationalism.
Founded on the 8 March 1952 at St Pancras
Town Hall in London, the conference, chaired
by Labour MP Monica Felton, brought
together over 1,390 women from across the
country and from many walks of life
determined to fight for women’s political,
social economic rights and the conditions for
the happy development of all children and
future generations in a world free from wars.
These aspirations echoed the calls of an
international Congress of Women held in Paris
on 1 December 1945. Women from forty-one
countries, many of whom including British
delegates had worked together in the
International Women’s Day Committee, came
together to establish the Women’s
International Democratic Federation (WIDF).
Since its inception, the WIDF has enabled
women from all over the globe to come
together to share experiences and debate the
social, political and economic position of
women. Through its status as an NGO it has
also campaigned for women’s voices to be
heard in the UN.
The NAW continues to work closely with
women’s organisations nationally and
internationally and to fight for the principles
set out at its inaugural conference in 1952.
In this, its 60th anniversary year, it will be
sending delegates to the XV Congress of the
WIDF in Brazil in April as well as organising
a major conference in Sheffield in July 2012
with the aim of bringing together sisters in
Britain actively involved in the labour
movement and women’s campaign groups to
consider the impact on women of the austerity
measures being imposed on Europe and the
significant political changes taking place in
Africa and the Middle East. H
www.sisters.org.uk
Anita Wright is a member of the Communist
Party executive committee and the NAW’s
executive
EU no! Time to go!
Women workers from the militant
PAME union front striking against EU
austerity and the Greek plutocracy
28 March All out forpensionsjustice
Broadening the
Battlelines: the
pensions
struggle
by Bill
Greenshields
ISBN 978-1-908315-07-6
£1.50 from www.communist-party.org.uk
Money, money money H It’s just over
three years since the Bank of England set
interest rates at a miserly 0.5 per cent. And
‘miserly’ is no exaggeration. This low
‘emergency’ interest rate has cost (or lost)
savers £60bn. Research by Guardian Money
further reveals that banks removed interest
payments from millions of current accounts
and are now hoarding £108bn not returning a
penny. Not working for the individual saver
but, as Marx taught us money is a commodity,
so working capital for banks to continue to
rack up mega profits and pay bonuses.
Who represents us? H There is a crisis
of political representation for the Labour
movement. Recent statements from Labour
Party leaders confirm their broad support for
the rationale and approach of the Con-Dem
government towards public spending cuts,
public-sector wages and pensions and on
welfare benefits
Our labour movement needs to face up to its
responsibilities, in the knowledge that
millions of people look to its organisations for
support and solidarity.
As a contribution to the broad, inclusive and
intensive discussion that we believe is needed
on the left and in the labour movement, the
Communist Party has issued an open letter
http://tinyurl.com/6ude6gd
For a People’s Britain NOT a Banker's
Britain H The 31 March Morning Star
conference is shaping up to be one of the
biggest, broadest events of 2012 with full
opportunity to take part in debates
DETAILS http://tinyurl.com/79yty9a
Our civilrights underattack by Carolyn Jones
We all know that Britain has the most
restrictive trade union legislation in
western Europe, and the onslaught
continues.
There are more attacks on workplace rights
including banning strikes in more essential
services; further restrictions on ballot
procedures, and ending facility time.
And an even wider attack on access to
justice with proposals to increase the
qualifying period for unfair dismissal from one
year to two; exempting small firms from
dismissal regulation, and reducing protection
for strikers from 12 weeks to eight.
The worst curtailment of civil rights comes
with proposals that workers will have to pay a
fee of £250 to lodge a tribunal claim and a
further fee of £1,250 if the case goes to a
hearing. Every dispute involves two players,
but there are no proposals to make employers
contribute to the costs.
Set all this alongside further cuts of £350
million to the legal aid system and you can
see how workers are being regulated out of the
justice system and denied a collective voice at
work - all at a time when they most need
protection.
But how exactly are workers and their
unions expected to respond to austerity
measures that eat away at jobs, pensions,
standards of living and workplace rights?
Hard-working families didn't dig us into this
economic hole and trade union leaders are
simply trying to ensure their members don't
shoulder the burden of digging out the
bankers.
What is the point of a judicial system that
workers cannot afford? Be warned - if you
create a class of people disenfranchised from
civil justice then you leave them with little
choice but to engage in civil disobedience.
So, in our view, Unite leader Len
McCluskey was quire correct when he talked
of the possibility of ‘civil disobedience’ this
summer. His job is to look after the interests of
members, whether they be bus drivers or
health-care assistants; and that’s what he was
doing. He should be applauded not villifed by
the cap press and his own party.H
Carolyn Jones is a member of the
Communist Party’s executive committee
Effective solidarity action with the
Grunwick strikers set the bosses
on the road to anti-union laws
I want to join the Communist Party oPlease send me more information o
Name
Address
e mail phone
return to CPB Ruskin House 23 Coombe Road Croydon CR0 1BD
(or hand to a communist at the conference, you know who they are)
Join Britain’s party of workingclass power and liberation
A historylessonby Mary Davis
In 1975 the TUC launched the aims
listed in the leaflet reproduced above.
How similar are these to what women
want in 2012? Compare this to our
Charter for Women launched in 2004
and make up your mind.
In society
• Highlight the feminisation of poverty and
campaign to reverse cuts in welfare state and
public services.
• Expose the ideologies that are used to
perpetuate women’s inequality (for example,
the notion of ‘family values’ and the ‘family
wage’).
• Draw attention to the role of the media and
other cultural agencies in shaping gender
identities that reinforce the unequal
relationships between men and women.
• Campaign for greater support for lone
mothers, carers and women subjected to
domestic and other violence.
• End the oppression of Lesbian, Bisexual
and Trans women.
• Improve access and rights to abortion.
• Ensure that women and girls are entitled to
the full range of free and high quality
educational provision (from nursery to
university) and subject choice.
• End women pensioner poverty by paying
men and women equal State Pensions and
restoring the link to average earnings or
prices, whichever is the higher
At work
• Campaign to end institutional and other
forms of racism and ensure that the status
and pay of Black women workers is a
bargaining priority.
• Campaign to reduce the gender pay gap and
highlight its causes.
• End job segregation by improving training
and opportunities for women.
• Ensure that unions fight more equal value
claims.
• Campaign to change equal pay law to
permit “class action” (group claims) and
remove employer ‘get out’ clauses.
• Campaign to raise the level of national
minimum wage to at least half, and rising to at
least two-thirds of male median earnings.
• Demand statutory pay audits.
• Equalise opportunities and improve
conditions for women workers.
• Demand full-time right for part time
workers.
• Root out bullying and sexual harassment.
• End casualisation and especially zero hours
contracts.
• Reduce job segregation by providing
training opportunities for women in
nontraditional areas.
• Campaign for affordable child care
including pre-, after-school and holiday
provision.
• Campaign for a shorter working week for
all.
• Improve maternity leave and pay, including
paid paternity leave.
• Campaign for a change in the qualification
criteria in the Industrial Injuries/Disability
Benefit scheme, to end discrimination against
women and in particular to extend the list of
disorders in the prescribed disease schedules.
In the labour movement
• Tackle the under-representation of women
in the labour and trade union movement
structures by proportionality and other
measures.
• Ensure the accountability of women’s
structures to women.
• Maintain and extend women’s committees,
women’s courses and other measures to
ensure that women’s issues/concerns are
collectively articulated and actioned.
• Campaign to raise the profile of the TUC,
STUC and Welsh TUC’s women’s conferences
as the ‘parliaments of working women’.H
http://www.charterforwomen.org.uk
Morning Stardaily paper of the left £1 from your newsagentH