Reclaim Life - Fight Precariousness!

Reclaim Life - Fight Precariousness!
27 May 09 Posted under: Precariedad
A Campaign of the Summer University of the European Left
The Campaign Launched at The Summer University of the European Left:
Do you like working 65 hours per week, sometimes until you reach the age of 70?
Or do you wish to have a better life, a secure job and a decent salary?

Right-wing and social-democratic governments, EU authorities, financial markets and multinational enterprises “offer” you the first. We are proposing to fight together for the second.
Our present existence is getting tighter. What about our future? Precarious. Precariousness is not an exception, but the definition of life for millions of men, women, young people, who don’t see any future worth living for and are facing uncertainty in the present.
Being precarious is the result of neoliberal policies. It’s a new system of domination, based on people’s insecurity and their uncertainty about tomorrow: Work a lot and fast, only when you are called, only a few days a month. Or work all the time, day and night, fast, faster, and more. Work and be poor!
Women especially are the first victims of precariousness, because of the characteristics of their professional life: interruption due to pregnancy and raising children, lower salaries, part-time work, difficulties in finding a job after 50, and then significantly lower pensions.
Don’t wonder if you are able to resist. Ask yourself how to overcome precariousness! Reclaim a better life!
Reclaim:
- Guaranteed minimum wages all over Europe, which make it possible to have a life in dignity, participate in social and cultural life and get out of illegal or precarious work;
- Equal pay for equal work, and access to full-time jobs for everybody;
- Secure well-paid jobs in secure working spaces with full, guaranteed welfare, democratic and trade-union rights in the working place;
- Collective bargaining, reduction of legal working time and guaranteed, decent pensions for all;
- Public, free, high-quality and emancipatory education at all levels, university degrees that lead to full scientific competence and professional rights;
- Free access to, and unconditional public support for, all forms of knowledge, new technologies and culture;
- Guaranteed social benefits, low-cost and high-quality housing, universal access to public transport, access to a high-level public health system for all. Development and protection of public services as driving forces against precariousness;
- Gender equality concerning wages, pensions, permanent education rights. Harmonisation of women’s rights following the most progressive models existing in Europe. Protection of women’s rights (such as the right to abortion) from ideological and political attacks by conservative and fundamentalist forces;
- Respect of the social, cultural and political rights of immigrants. A true co-development policy based on democracy, respect of populations and social progress;
- Generalised adoption of anti-discrimination policies at all levels;
- We demand that the EU Budget takes into account the necessity of a new social and sustainable development in the new EU states, in order to improve living standards for people in Eastern Europe. The introduction of the Euro in the eastern countries cannot be the pretext to increase inequalities and dismantle social protections.
These are some objectives that have to be reached, in order to fight precariousness and construct a decent future.
In the last 10 years, 8.6% of GDP in Europe was transferred from the labour to the capital side. We have to activate all political and economic levers in order to change this logic. The NO of the populations (in the referenda in France, the Netherlands and Ireland) to the European Treaties and to their competition policies provoking precariousness and insecurity, proves that social and political protest is growing in Europe. We have to build a large movement, try to unite popular classes, unions, movements and left forces in a common struggle against precariousness. We need to do this now, and immediately.