Motion no: 3
Conference notes that in the Republic, the government and its allies are now portraying the current economic and social conditions as a this recovery, however, Creating a labour market permeated with precarious employment and in-work deprivation.Burdening workers and their families with high levels of public and household debt. Driving large sections of the population into deprivation and poverty. Reinforcing a low-tax model in which employers are exempt from social responsibility, undermining the state's ability to invest in people's living standards. Starving the economy of investment in social and economic infrastructure. Seeking to privatise, outsource and franchise large sections of our public service sector in an attempt to provide more opportunities for capital and profit. Conference rejects this new normal in which workers, who have already paid the price for the crisis, will continue to pay the price of the recovery. Conference notes that in Northern Ireland: The economy is only formally out of a prolonged recession lasting six years and is currently experiencing alternate bouts of contraction and expansion. For workers there is no real recovery - real wage rates are back to their levels before the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Northern Ireland is the weakest region of the UK economy with the lowest wage levels and productivity. The past seven years have seen continued joblosses in the productive sector with job creation in low-wage, temporary and casual employment. Northern Ireland continues to suffer an acute brain-drain but there is massive youth emigration due to the lack of jobs. Employment in the public sector â a mainstay of NI economic demand is being targeted by harsh austerity measures which will cut one in ten public sector jobs. Infrastructural investment remains below the levels necessary to address the legacy of underinvestment and there are mounting pressures for public sector asset disposal and privatisation. The NI Executive are seeking tax-varying powers to lower corporation tax with a view to replicating the global tax haven status of the Republic. Conference, therefore, calls upon on the incoming Executive to put special emphasis on the following policy elements that will ensure that this is a workers and democratic recovery, namely, in the Republic:Comprehensive modernisation of labour rights legislation, including the end to zero/ low hour contracts, the right to collective bargaining in the workplace, statutory right to Sunday premium and overtime pay, expansion of collective sectoral bargainingto all sectors dominated by low-pay and fragmented employment. Promotion of a wage-led growth strategy, in particular the Living Wage and strategies to end low-pay. A substantial increase in the social wage employers social insurance payments in order to expand public services such as free healthcare, and social protection measures such as pay-related benefits for the unemployed, the sick and the elderly, along with removing people out of poverty and deprivation. Promotion for a European Debt Conference that will the burden of debt on the Irish and European economies and radical debt resolution policies for the tens of thousands of households mired down in debt and are at risk of losing their homes. Opposition to tax-cutting strategies which are an attempt to increase the already massive subsidy to employers and capital. In Northern Ireland, conference calls upon the incoming Executive to place the emphasis on its Campaign Against Austerity and for Jobs and Peace: Develop the ongoing campaign against the austerity measures underpinned by the Stormont House Agreement, to oppose all cuts to public services and attacks to Social Welfare provision. Campaign against proposals to reduce corporation tax levels and instead promote a targeted, public-led investment approach that would underpin a meaningful economic growth policy, with a particular focus on a manufacturing strategy. Promotion of a wage-led growth strategy, in particular the Living Wage Campaign and strategies to end low pay. Campaign for the transfer of other tax-varying powers with a view to ensuring that additional revenue is obtained to sustain world-class public services. Promote the special circumstances of Northern Ireland and the need for this to be reflected in funding, for both revenue and capital expenditure, from HM Treasury. Campaign to demand the NI Executive repeals the anti-trade union legislation which restricts workers rights to withhold their labour, and to extend collective bargaining across additional sectors of the economy.
