Stand Up for Your Rights

dublin | worker & community struggles and protests | event notice Saturday April 09, 2005 14:10 by Gregor Kerr - WSM - 1st May branch kerrgregor at yahoo dot co dot uk

Meeting 2

2nd Meeting of Stand Up For Your Rights will be held on Thursday 14th April

The second meeting of the ‘Stand Up For Your Rights’ campaign will be held in the WSM offices on Thursday 14th March at 7pm. The minutes of the first meeting are below, please try to get along to the next meeting and help to take this initiative forward.
Stand Up For Your Rights
Minutes of meeting held in WSM office on Wed. 6th April
Present:- Gregor (WSM), James (WSM), Oisin (WSM), Ray (IWU), Stephen (ISN), Dave
Minutes taken by Gregor

· It was agreed that we would organise as broad a campaign as possible under the general theme of ‘Stand Up for Your Rights’. It was also agreed that it would not be a ‘one-off’ but would be an ongoing campaign.
· This will involve the production of a leaflet detailing workers’ rights under a number of headings – minimum wage (pointing out that this is a minimum entitlement but that workers should be demanding more); break entitlements; holiday entitlements etc.
· The leaflet will encourage people to join a union
· The leaflet will have ‘Stand Up For Your Rights’ in several languages – Polish, Turkish, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Portugese, English, Arabic, Romanian, French.
· The main text of the leaflet will be in English but we aim to hopefully produce the main text in other languages shortly.
· There was discussion about whether social partnership should be mentioned on the leaflet but in the end the feeling was that it was not necessary to specifically mention it as it is not really relevant to people who are not even members of unions. Without specifically mentioning it, the thrust of the leaflet would obviously be anti-partnership.
· There was also discussion about what unions should be mentioned on the leaflet – should we confine it to anti-partnership unions (IWU, ATGWU) or should we include SIPTU and MANDATE (the main shopworkers’ unions) – this is to be decided at the next meeting
· The Campaign will be kicked off at Mayday – 2 options, we will probably go for a combination of both. Option 1 – organised bloc on DCTU Mayday march which will peel off at some stage and leaflet workers in shops in town in loud, colourful way. (It was suggested that we produce a short leaflet to be distributed on the DCTU march, encouraging people to join us). Option 2 – link to RTS event on Bank Holiday Monday.
· It was suggested that we do a showing of ‘Precarity’ - a movie about Flexploitation struggles in Europe – a couple of weeks before Mayday as a way of encouraging more people to get involved (James to organise this, Ray to speak)
· Leaflet to be drafted by Stephen and Gregor
· E mail list to be set up by Oisin
· Ideas for publicising to be looked into by James
Next meeting Thursday 14th April, 7pm, WSM office, 5 Merrion Row