Any campaign is doomed to socicty women are competing on equal terms with men, and all that is needed is legislation to force employers to recognise this fact.
the main responsihilities for child bellies and in a reasonable state of health.
full part in the struggles that le ed. Time and again men discourage women from going to union meetings, ignore them when they are there, and make it impossible for them to take an oqual part in struggles by doing such things as the family during occupations.
such as nurseries to ensure that women can work and struggle on equal terms, the trade union movement has not even done much to enable women to take a full part in detail the trends whick havo emerged, one can state clearly:
*The CCT shoes hostility to any firm control. On the other hand it is prepared to push forward, even strongly, struggles where it has complete control. (This can he seen, for exople, in the strike at Rateau in a Paris saburh where electricul workers have occupied the factory and are continuiny production. The CP wants to use this as a counterexample of its own leadership to the example of Lip.)
* The CGT is now opposing all sectional strikes within'factories strikes which it has mote than once organised in the past. Thus for example in the mines in Lorraine it has opposed a strike hy coal procesens which was met by a lock out. The CT did this because it was scared of the genoralisation of the strike rearing (ie ensuring that the capitalists have future workers) and for seeing that the present generation of workers Is sent off to work each day with full If women workers are to play their ahead, at least three things are absolutely essential. First, the attitudes of fellow trade unionists must be chang asking them to go home to look after Far from fighting for facilities throughout the industry.
Nourel Observateur:
The urgent task is to ensure that the aims of the Working Homen's Charter are taken up as widely as possible within the labour movement, inviting active participation of all those who are prepared to support its The first step has been taken in London, where a campaign on the Charter is to be launched at a public meeting to be held on Saturday, 20 April, at 11 am in London University Union, Malet Street, WCI.
This already has the hacking of a large number of those who attended the London Trades Council meeting at which the Charter was presented.
In every area-in trades councils, at union branches, and at places of work a discussion should be opened up on the Charter, Local conferences should be organised to bring together everyone willing to organise a campaign around the demands of the Charter.
Haringey Trades Council is one of the first to take the initiative in calling a conference on working women, to be held next month. Its adoption of the Charter, together with a programme for on-going activities, would be an important step forward Committees set up from such conferences would have the crucial lask of providing support for equal pay, equal opportunity, or redundancy struggles women are involved in- including forming a flying squad of pickets ready to reinforce the picket lines. They could also help publicise and win support for strikes outside their aren, so that experiences gained in other localities are built upon.
* The CGT is very hostile to all move ments which lead to the creation of strike committees and other organs of broad workerg democracy. The CFDT, on the otber band, appeurs prepared to adjest to them, although, of course, the CFDT's position is not a revolutionary une.
The point of view of the CGT was put clearly by one of its secretaries, Berteloot, in a footal inturview in the We arp entering into a period of mounting Social struggles: In such a situation the attitude of the CFDT seems to us very dangirous.. - Whar was accepled in the past cannot be too at how..
The comrades of the CDT profer to support minority movements in which elements from cunide the trade unions ar oven from conside the tires are frequently involved.. The CFDT involves itself in disarganised agitation with spontaneist olements, encourages initiatives without suing if they have noy chance of success and Ben says to the CCT "if you had supported us we would have woo". It is not a serious way to gu about things, The more difficult conditions of strugge wanst the Government and the employor that the present situstion OL ME LIFETIC SHES DRUCEDE ca does out have z clear palitical [ project of the samne type as the OCT-CP, cut across the plans of the CGT leaders because they want, at all costs, to avoid coming to power on the crest of mass striggle of the May 1968 type, That perspective would be loo favourahle for the 'attra-ledt". The CP-CGT wants an entirely different type of victory a boratal electoral one, Now that the clectoral campaign leading to the elections of 5 and 19 May is under way, it is clear that tho trade unions and the traditional workers parties will use the excuse of not trightening the electors' to put the brake on all the struggles and demonstrations.
If Mirtermand is clocted Thosituation will take a new turn, with coosequence not only for France bur for the whok of Wester Europe. If the right wins, the mass movement will not find itself paralys ed any more than it was after the right won a majority in the legislative elections of Just MarciL Whatover the variant, the combativity and politicisation of the masks in Frans:-in the are of wrint Unions agitated fascist and roachonary currents are regrouping-b leading more or los rigidly towards an enormous social crisis, The recolutionary sanguaril, in the Liest place the Trotskyists, have, in the course of the Presidential campaign, lo propare both the masses and rhemsalves for this crisis.
PIERRE FRANK Fad Weskly 19 Apri: 1974 Fage 5
by an insistence on the working class character of such a front (emphasis in