Please put one or both of these model motions, or versions of them, to your ward and/or CLP. To let us know you’ve submitted/passed one or to ask for help, email theclarionmag@gmail.com
McStrike! Supporting workers in struggle
On 4 October workers in the fast food industry – at McDonald’s, Wetherspoons, TGI Fridays, Deliveroo and Uber Eats – struck for better wages, union recognition and secure employment. This is potentially extremely significant. Against the grim background of austerity, insecurity and stagnant union membership it is part of a counter-trend which also includes, eg, cinema workers and cleaning and facilities workers at a range of institutions.
These workers, many of them young and many migrants, should be congratulated for their bravery and determination in standing up to hugely rich and powerful employers.
Conference 2017 called for an active Labour campaign supporting workers’ struggles. While we welcome leadership’s backing for the 4 October strike, such a campaign has not yet emerged. We will write to the NEC and leader’s office asking about progress. We ask the EC to discuss how our CLP can more actively support workers’ struggles, and report back for discussion. Meanwhile we will organise a street stalling using Bakers’ Union ‘Hungry for Justice’ materials.
We strongly endorse conference 2018’s view that “stagnant wages, crumbling services and the housing crisis” are caused by “the government and employers making the rich richer at working people’s expense, and not immigration”. Struggles uniting workers regardless of origin are needed; migrant workers are often in the forefront of such struggles.
Labour has a responsibility to change the anti-union legal framework which blocks and undermines workers’ struggles. We strongly welcome policies passed at the 2015, 2017 and 2018 conferences to repeal Thatcher, Major and Cameron’s anti-union laws and replace them with strong legal rights for workers and unions, including a strong right to strike. We will ask the NEC and leader’s office to ensure this is campaigned for and included in the manifesto.
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Urgent and radical action on climate change
We note with grave concern
• the new UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report arguing we have little over a decade to reduce emissions to a level which can prevent runaway global warming.
• the rise of a Brazilian far right committed to accelerating the destruction of the rain forest.
• the imprisonment of three non-violent anti-fracking activists in Lancashire. (We send solidarity; call for their release and for the party nationally to do the same; and affirm our opposition to fracking.)
We endorse the policy submitted to this year’s conference:
“Capitalism’s fossil fuel reliance is subjecting the planet to disasters… Radical international action is needed: we must take a lead by implementing democratic public ownership and planning for a ‘just transition’. We can slash emissions while raising living standards: creating millions of useful, public, high paid, unionised jobs, and transforming environmentally damaging ones through reskilling and planning.
“We commit to:
• A national climate service/strategy, manufacturing, installing and training in renewable technologies, facilitating a rapid shift away from fossil fuels.
• Nationalising energy supply/generation and the Big Six to create an integrated and democratic national energy system.
• Nationalising public transport, with bus, rail and tram part of an expanded and democratic system.
• A public program of insulation and building zero-carbon council housing.
• Ending fracking, fossil fuel extraction and airport expansion.
“The party will encourage CLPs to collaborate with climate change and environmental campaigners; work with unions to build links and campaigns with workers in relevant industries; produce model materials to help.”
We welcome the commitment to create 400,000 “good jobs” tackling emissions and climate change. To meet the scale of the challenge, those jobs must be the start of a larger program. It is also essential that they are public sector jobs in publicly-owned and democratically-run structures, on the lines set out above.
We will mobilise for the 1 December Together for Climate Justice demonstration.
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