About Grass Roots Left
GrassRoots Left is an organisation within Unite the Union that takes a different approach to organising our members than other “Broad Left” groups within union. We believe the rank and file should be controlling the union not bureaucrats or appointed officials.
This platform is the property and statement of political intent of those members. All those elected as representatives of the Grassroots Left are obliged to uphold its platform, constitution and policy documents, and we offer our support only to those who do, and continue to do so.
OUR PLATFORM
- For regular elections and right to recall of all officials and reps, who should be paid no more than the average workers’ wage
- For rank and file control over all negotiations and industrial action through mass meetings andelected strike committees
- For militant action, strikes and occupations, to stop all cuts – with the backing of the officials when possible, without them where necessary, for recognition and strike pay for ‘unofficial’ strikes
- For defiance of the anti-union laws, wherever they are invoked to prevent workers’ action, for solidarity strike action with any group of workers or union that is prosecuted under these undemocratic laws
- For the right of the rank and file to veto all management decisions and workers’ control over all aspects of production, including hiring and firing, for workers’ control over and nationalisation without compensation of all firms sacking workers in the interests of profit
- For a mass unionisation drive, drawing migrant workers, casual, part-time, low-paid workers and the unemployed into the trade unions, against immigration checks and raids, papers for all and freedom of movement: no one is illegal
- For the right of all women, black, lesbian, gay, disabled, migrant and undocumented workers to caucus in the trade unions and voice their own demands, against any discrimination at work, fascists out of the unions and off our streets
- For a rank and file movement, rooted in the workplaces, across Unite and the whole trade union movement, for cross-European rank and file organisation, for industrial unionism and the democratisation of the labour movement
