equal pay. A Coventry delegate reported how local authority canteen workers came up against the same blackmailing tactics over the £6 limit - only to find their jobs in the firing line when the Council started to impose the cutbacks in spending.
The Charter conference resolved to meet these assaults on women's rights by stepping up resistance to Government policies; by demanding that the trade unions and Labour leaders break with these policies and throw their weight behind this movement; and by developing alternative solutions based on working class need rather than profit.
In addition to calling for an immediate programme of socially useful public works, nationalisation under workers control of companies declaring redundancies, and the opening of the books to lay the basis for a fight for a workers solution, the conference outlined the necessary steps to organise for these deDEFEND JOBS It pledged itself to struggle for the defence of women's jobs and the social services by supporting and gaining representation on action committees and other labour movement bodies fighting the attacks on working class living standards. In partiçular, the conference decided to strengthen the resistance to nursery cutbacks and abortion rights, and to support the 25 April demonstration against the NHS cuts and private practice.
The conference also agreed to work for representation on action committees against unemployment set up from the 27 March National Assembly; and to build contingents for demonstrations on the 26 May Day of Action demanding the right of women to work and calling on the trade union leaders to break with the Government's policies restricting women's rights.
The organisation of a conference later this year on Women, the Cuts and Unemployment' was also agreed, to ensure that women's needs are not dismissed as 'luxuries' but are taken up as an integral part of an undivided movement.
that the main focus of struggle on women's rights must be the demands of the Working Women's Charter - and its defence against the hammer blows of Government pol1CV - - it also acknowledged that the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts offer a springboard for this activity. presented by these Acts must be seized upon ing class will only be drawn to the Working Women's Charter by experiencing in struggle the limitations of Labour's solutions.
MONITOR local investigatory committees based on trade union and Labour Party branches as well as women's organistation and sabotage of the legislation and to prepare a fight around it. It was decided to hold a national mass rally in December to draw together these experiences and project the Working Women's Charter.
The final afternoon of the conference was devoted to discussing the adequacy of the Charter demands. The conference agreed that it should be seen as a banner for women's rights to rally behind it the widest forces in this fight, rather than as a watertight prog ramme covering every aspect of women's oppression.
While the existing Charter provides a firm foundation for this united fight, delegates felt that recent attacks on women's rights, together with Labour's legislation, highlighted important omissions in the Charter. The conference therefore agreed to propose amendments recognising the needs of the thousands of women threatened by unemployment; part-time wo men workers with inadequate benefits and protection; and lesbian women open to discrimination and The passing of the Equal Pay Act has exposed a major problem
Red Weekly 22 April 1976 FESTIVAL ar