Meaningful employment is a right for all
Useful work well done for collective benefit brings personal fulfilment. A society that can't provide such work to its members is not fit for purpose.
The following motion was passed unanimously at the party’s eighth congress in September.
This congress recognises that all adults have a duty to work in a useful fashion, according to their talents and abilities, and that society has an equal duty to ensure useful employment is available to all, part-time or full-time according to the domestic, health and lifecycle constraints of the worker.
Congress also recognises that useful work well done for collective benefit gives personal fulfilment.
In the circumstances prevailing in Britain today, this congress resolves to advance the following demands in the immediate interests of the working class:
1. All employers should provide a safe and dignified environment, with wages and benefits that allow all workers not only to have the necessaries, but to live a culturally fulfilling life.
2. All jobs should ensure access to suitable vocational or academic education, either within or without the workplace, and all apprenticeships should provide a wage to apprentices, which not only provides the necessaries, but allows a culturally fulfilling life.
3. All jobs should be made accessible to the working class based on ability, rather than class or other characteristics.
4. All jobs should ensure that time is given to workers not only for education and training, but also for family and cultural pursuits, as well as for leisure and holidays.
5. An end to zero-hour contracts and an end to fake self-employment, which are used to deny workers job security and many other employment rights, including sick and holiday pay.
6. Councils to return to in-house or direct labour employment to end the anti-worker and safety-cutting practices inherent in contracting work out to profit-motivated companies.
7. The abolition of anti-trade union laws, including the postal ballot and the laws against secondary ‘flying’ pickets and sympathy strikes.
8. The reduction of the age of retirement to 60 for all workers.
This congress instructs all branches to forward these demands, to build strong ties with local workers and provide support during local as well as national disputes.
To this end, branches must be informed and understand the particular forces and characters at play not just in national, but in local business and industry, and to produce propaganda and agitate amongst the broadest sections of the working class as well as the advanced workers.
