The first ever conference of the Working Women's Charter Campaign on 10-11 April attracted 270 delegates and a further 100 visitors and observers. The delegates came from every part of the country - from 45 trade union branches (representing 15 different unions), nine trades councils, nine Labour Party and LPYS branches and 17 Charter groups.
The weekend marked the first crucial steps towards uniting all the experiences of fighting for the Charter on a national scale. Particularly notable was the stress laid by most speakers on the need to link the fight for women's rights embodied in the Charter into the struggles against Labour's cuts in public spending, jobs, and wages.
A delegate from South London explained that the latest Budget proposals, for instance, will set back women's fight for financial independence even further. Married women make up a quarter of the workforce, on an average wage of £25 For tax purposes their income becomes their husbands'. Healey's proposals would simply reinforce women's dependence on their husbands by denying them tax concessions in their own right - and anyway, what use is 3 per cent of peanuts when inflation is running at 15-20 per cent?
Healey's savage cuts in public expenditure will further strengthen the noose of family responsibilities as care of the sick, elderly and children are thrust back onto the family; as women's rights to abortion are whittled away; and as women's jobs come under the chopper.
A visitor from Ireland to the conference explained how the Government of the 26 Counties is threatening further unemployment if women pursue the fight for Act New Pampniet, Top plus op pap, trom: Socialist Woman, 97 Caledonian Rd, N1 Celia Pugh reports on the steps taken to unite the struggle at the recent FREE ON While the conference recognised The limited gains rethe mass of the workcome.
The conference agreed to set up finally written into it. facing women workers: low pay.
After intense debate, the conference agreed that the existing demand for a trade union negotiated national minimum wage should be extended to ensure that these wages are protected by automatic increases based on a working class cots of living index. The conference also agreed to tighten up the demands for childcare provisions and pregnancy leave, so that the barriers to equality exposed in recent Woman s own and cabour Kesearen Department studies can be overThe most controversial item at the conference was the question of GOnS the procedure for amending the Charter. After a thoroughgoing debate, conference agreed with delegates from the IMG, the Coventry Charter group, the Hackney nursery group and the Civil and Public Services Association that there should be a period of discussion and consultation with all organisations who have endorsed the Charter before amendments are reality. CPSA delegate Len Lever-his union's proposai to set up a trade union advisory committee to work alongside the Charter Campaign was welcomed by the conference Photo: CHRIS DAVIES (Report)
Many trade unions, Labour Party branches and trades councils are not affiliated to the Charter Campaign itself, and were therefore not represented at the conference. To amend the Charter without their participation would cut across the possibile unity around the Charter between them and the Campaign A working party was set up to organise a campaign for the amendments proposed by the conference Already delegates like Campbell Christie of the CPSA (who moved support for the Charter at last year's TUC) have agreed to take this discussion into their organisaThe CPSA delegates also proposed the setting up of a trade union advisory committee to work alongside the Campaign. This was wel. comed by the conference as a real move towards strengthening the unity which is necessary to turn the tide of attacks on women's rights and make the demands of the Working Women's Charter a living
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