Motion no: 27
As part of the overall ICTU campaign to halt the attack on the welfare system and public services North and South, Conference resolves that we make the smartest and most strategic use of the tools available to us on equality and fundamental human rights. This includes not only strategic challenges on Governments' non compliance with their own equality and human rights laws, but also international challenges on the blatant breeches of international Conventions, Charters and Treaties to which they are signatories. It is clear from the analysis conducted by bodies such as the Institute of Fiscal Studies and the Fawcett Society that cuts to public services, and the overall drastic reduction in entitlement to the welfare benefits system, cause greatest adverse impact to women, working class women in particular, and the most disadvantaged in our society in general. These strategies deepen discrimination on the basis of gender, religious opinion, political belief, sexual orientation, age, race, disability, marital status, and for people with dependents. This impacts across society, but has greatest adverse impact on working class people. The deliberate widening of inequality also has a direct and negative effect through all aspects of society; The attack on the poor has dangerous consequences for the rich; There is global evidence for this whether Governments accept this or not ;Our public services are the main vehicle for enshrining fundamental human rights in general and social and economic rights in particular; Attacks on those services constitute direct attacks on; the right to work ;the right to an adequate standard of living ;the right to health and social care; the right to education &the right to housing ;The collective actions of central and devolved Governments have combined to deny the people their fundamental human rights Conference commends ICTU involvement in the civil society submission to the first UN Periodic Country Review involving the Republic of Ireland later this yea. Conference calls on the Executive Council to lead in the development of a strategic programme of action in co-operation with our allies in civil society. This should involve the awareness and use of all possible equality and human rights tools to challenge the erosion of fundamental social and economic rights in particular ; thus creating the widest possible engagement of the people in support of the trade union alternative.
