Our Policies

Policies

We should be stronger, feel safer, and we can, with fundamental change:

Transforming a top down union, run like a business, to a bottom up one where members decide, the union provides. Bridging the massive divide between the leadership and the members by returning the union to where it belongs – with the members.

Draft Platform:

a) For regular elections and right to recall of all officials and reps, who should be paid no more
than the average workers’ wage

b) For rank and file control over all negotiations and industrial action through mass meetings and
elected strike committees

c) For militant action, strikes and occupations, to stop all cuts - with the backing of the officials
when possible, without them where necessary, for recognition and strike pay for ‘unofficial’
strikes

d) For defiance of the anti-union laws, wherever they are invoked to prevent workers' action, for solidarity strike action with any group of workers or union that is prosecuted under these undemocratic laws

e) For the right of the rank and file to veto all management decisions and workers' control
over all aspects of production, including hiring and firing, for workers' control over and
nationalisation without compensation of all firms sacking workers in the interests of profit

f) For a mass unionisation drive, drawing migrant workers, casual, part-time, low-paid workers and the unemployed into the trade unions, against immigration checks and raids, papers for all and freedom of movement: no one is illegal

g) For the right of all women, black, lesbian, gay, disabled, migrant and undocumented workers to caucus in the trade unions and voice their own demands, against any discrimination at work, fascists out of the unions and off our streets

h) For a rank and file movement, rooted in the workplaces, across Unite and the whole trade union movement, for cross-European rank and file organisation, for industrial unionism and the democratisation of the labour movement





There is an alternative to cuts, for example a Tobin tax' on bank transactions, or reducing tax avoidance, raising £25 to £49 billion each year, or clamping down on tax evasion could double that, or scrapping the 50% pension relief on salaries over £100,000 (which includes our General Secretary and the Assistant General Secretaries!)


.. Spend £25 billion on schools, hospitals, houses, providing100,000 jobs, the first 3,200 to blacklisted workers. £25 billion on green energies creating a million jobs, £25 billion on pensions. Bring the troops home from Afghanistan saving lives and £billions.


¨ Exceptional times will require extraordinary responses and confronting anti-union laws, whether UK or EU, and backing unofficial action when necessary.


¨ Making the Equality and Diversity structures a model for genuine involvement.


¨ Ensuring retired members, a prized asset, have equal rights in the union.


¨ We should only support Labour MPs and councillors who support our policies.