A Carers' Charter ?

Campaigning for carers' rights in this society is not easy, Carers are usually seen as a mixture of the deserving and the undeserving poor. Of course, carers and caring situations do vary somewhat. The apparatus of state and charity organisations is there to organise, contain and control the situation. Carers are nourished, advised, scolded, encouraged, discouraged, placated and told how wonderful they are in their dedicated incarceration. They are serious charity cases. They deserve their pathetic allowances. Well, the deserving ones do. The others are well........

What they are not is employees recognised as authentic workers, doing an essential job which the state would have to pay for if they were not there to do it. It's true that their exploitation is partly of their own making. These are decent people who can't just walk away from the often desperate needs of their much loved carees. Is their inherent decency a good reason to exploit them ?

Carers organisations, like Carer Watch, are there to demand and campaign for the rights of carers. They are indeed authentic workers. Just like other workers they need a trade union to represent their interests. Unfortunately, the official trade union movement seems very reluctant to recognise their status. There has to be a reason for that. They need a wage based on the work they do. Let's have an end to the farce of allowances. The terms and conditions of employment of carers should be freely negotiated in a formal collective bargaining situation, just like other workers.

Our society owes much to the brave sacrifices of the historic Chartist Movement who fought so hard to establish many of the democratic rights we all enjoy today. The pathetic creeps of New Labour, of course, no longer value the struggles on which our movement was built. Is it now time to establish a charter of rights for carers ? A basis on which the carers' movement, divided and weak as it is, can come together and campaign for the recognition and rights which carers so richly deserve ?

At this stage, I just ask the question.