  The antifield formalism is extended so as to incorporate the rigid symmetries
of a given theory. To that end, it is necessary to introduce global ghosts not
only for the given rigid symmetries, but also for all the higher order
conservation laws, associated with conserved antisymmetric tensors. Otherwise,
one may encounter obstructions of the type discussed in [13]. These higher
order conservation laws are shown to define additional rigid symmetries of the
master equation and to form -- together with the standard symmetries -- an
interesting algebraic structure. They lead furthermore to independent Ward
identities which are derived in the standard manner, because the resulting
master ("Zinn-Justin") equation capturing both the gauge symmetries and the
rigid symmetries of all orders takes a known form. Issues such as anomalies or
consistent deformations of the action preserving some set of rigid symmetries
can be also systematically analysed in this framework.
