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Star fringe hails Workplace 2020 as key to democracy

by Ben Stevenson

in Liverpool

MOBILISING working people in unions and workplaces is the next big challenge following Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election as Labour leader, the Morning Star’s Workplace Democracy fringe heard on Tuesday.

The newspaper’s editor Ben Chacko underlined the importance of Mr Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party and said that if people’s anger at their disempowerment wasn’t challenged, then “we could see an upsurge of the far right.”

He said: “Workplace 2020 isn’t a blueprint — it’s an effort to get working people in unions to start providing the answers to these questions.”

But Mr Chacko was quick to point that the success of the renewed Labour Party relied upon the labour movement more successfully mobilising working people in unions and workplaces.

Unite assistant chief of staff Adrian Weir welcomed the commitment from the Labour leadership in support of the Institute of Employment Rights’s Manifesto for Labour Law and said that the trade union movement had to ensure the return of an unequovical right to strike and “without that right collective bargaining is reduced to collective begging.”

PCS NEC member Zita Holbourne pointed to the disproportionate effect of job and pay cuts on workers who face discrimination, highlighting a local authority in London where black and minority ethnic workers make up 3-4 per cent of workers but 23 per cent of redundancies.

“It’s critical for both the Labour Party and unions to understand the nature of discrimination today whether because of race, disability, age, gender or sexual orientation so everyone can participate in an inclusive environment,” she added.

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