Women s Fightback Trade union conference

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Time and again women trade unionists har to fight the Tory onslaught on their rights dards. And each time they have run up ag tions or outright treachery of the existi ignored the issues and problems faced by wi Women's Fightback is designed as a focus to change the unions and challenge therr pre or as delegates from any group, workpta branch or women's group at local, regro topics under main groups: Pay: public sect jobs; fighting sexism; racism and the Third V unwaged hon-delegates). Credentials fror MARCH 27 conference.

*In your own trade union, LP branch, etc. Put a resolution (stressing we want a demonstration, not just an event) to go to regional and National Executive, etc.

Ask them to take and circulate leaflets, advertising local and • national events.

Sponsor local meeting or confererice on women's right to work.

Book transport for June *Public meeting: try to get other organisations to jointly sponsor, if not, still go ahead and call one as a Women's Fightback meeting. Invite speakers from local struggles who are actually fighting for a woman's right to work-jobs struggles, anti-cuts, nursery closures, etc. there must be discussion on the lessons of those struggles which have attempted to stem the tide of cuts and closures, and defend jobs against the Tory offensive.

Indeed the struggles of 1981 became almost synonymous with the battles fought for by women: on the industrial front, there was the Lee Jeans occupation, a beacon for those defying closures in the textile industry; in the health service, the occupations at Longworth and'St. Mary's hospitals set the pace for those fighting the cuts; and in Coventry thousands of council workers, the majority of them women, spearheaded the year's biggest struggle against speed-up and outright wage-cutting.

Their experiences shed light on why such struggles are isolated amidst a 0 707 militant action to a single, isolated area as part of their effort to press-gang the women into ACAS arbitration.

The fact is that the union bureaucracy -which is in every case reluctant to embark upon struggles against the Thatcher government-is. particularly reluctant to engage in struggles which bring to the fore some of the most oppressed and exploited sections of the working class.

They exploit every weakness f women's shop floor organisation, the lack of trade union experience and self confidence as a means to divide, stifle and obstruct women looking for a way forward against the the offensive to defeat the Thatcher government.

Only a workers' government can implement sucialist policies to create the 4 million new jobs needed to end unemployment among women and youth and utilise to the full the productive capacity squandered under capitalism.

For this reason, the struggle is not simply for the replacement Thatcher with • a Labour government like that of Wilson or Callaghan, but a light for a new, revolutionary leadership revitalised labour movement, responsive and answerable to the men and women on the shop flour.

Women's Fightback, campaigning along these lines, has put forward the following • programme for action on jobs: *A woman's right to work. In a period of runaway capitalist crisis women's (especially black women's) jobs are the first to go. We must encourage unemployed women to organise in the unions of the unemployed workers, by establishing women's sub-committees in these organisations to focus on the special problems of women's unemployment. . We should build for the women's right to work demonstration by organising at the local level as well as nationally-turning the attention of the labour movement to the scale of women's unemployment and demanding to know what is going to be done about it. the books to prove real "bankruptcy' or not in the industry, in its suppliers and distributors. We should demand the nationalisation of bankrupt industries, e.g. textiles.

*Health cuts. We need occupations to defend hospitals. We must demand supporting strike action to stop occupations being threatened and brutally ended. Women's health care is being eroded as clinics, wards and beds are lost. We should build campaigns involving women in the community, to join with health workers to fight the cuts, to black private medicine and to demand of the unions that they organise no cover of unfilled vacancies.

*Local authority cuts. School meals and other staff have organised local campaigns in many areas to defend services against the cuts. Their actions have been left isolated by union leaders and kept to SpOradic, selective action. Fight for necessary direct action to protect jobs and services.

*Child care cuts. In Oxford, London, Coventry, Leicester ane • Glasgow women have occupied threatened nurseries the fight to prevent closures. Beale Street in Leicester was a great victory in the fight against such cuts.

Follow this lead and campaign for labour movement action to defend and extend state funded childcare. Women's Fightback should join with the Nationleaders.

And they have found a movement whict The March 27 Trade Union confer The conference is open to woren eift level.

There will be an all day creche. Works The conference fee jr £3.50 (£2 for Street, London N7. re come forward i and living stanjainst the limitaing bureaucratic 1 has for decades omen. ence called by for a movement ›sant leadership. er as individuals wie organisation, inal or national ¡hops on various or and the cuts; Norld. r low-waged or n 41 Ellington

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Organiser, Thursday 1982

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PUBLI UNION OF A MARROW HOSPITAL BRAMCH