Theo Sharieff
This year’s National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) conference will be the last before a general election likely to sweep Keir Starmer’s Labour Party into government.
The Labour Party leadership has backpedalled on previous pledges to strengthen workers’ rights during the course of the next government.
The trade union movement and the working class are going to have to keep the fight on, both before and after a general election, to defend our interests against the bosses’ attacks.
This year’s NSSN conference will provide a forum for trade unionists and shop stewards from across our movement to hammer out a workers’ manifesto for the run-up to the general election.
A workers’ manifesto for the first 100 days of the next government could include:
- Repealing not only the 2016 Tory Trade Union Act, but all the anti-trade union legislation dating back to the Thatcher era and left intact during the Blair years
- Renationalisation of key industries – mail, rail, water, steel and energy, under democratic workers’ control and management – not when franchises end to let the private lenders bleed more profits out of our public services, and for our wages and conditions to deteriorate further, but immediately
- An immediate £15-an-hour minimum wage and inflation-proof pay rises for workers
- Banning ‘fire and rehire’ and zero-hours contracts. And giving workers’ rights from day one of employment
