During this week, tens of thousands of trade union activists and members will be outwardly celebrating the role of unions up and down the country. We are doing so to show trade union members and non-trade union members just how important it is to have trade unions and to highlight the trade union bill. A piece of legislation, spawned from a bunch of Thatcher’s children hellbent on picking a fight where one did not exist. To reinvent the scenes of the last century, without noticing everybody else had moved on and forged new, progressive industrial relations that were fit for this century. When I did a television interview for a regional news programme, they told me that the VT to run with the story was a strike in a car plant back in the late 1970s – which just summed it up for me.
When the priorities facing our economy are productivity, in-work poverty, insecure employment, youth unemployment, what does this government do? Brings in legislation to deter strike action when strike action is at a historic low. You can hardly accuse the unions today of somehow holding the country to ransom with outlandish strike action. Even the government’s own watchdog has said this bill is not fit for purpose.
It is a vindictive, concerted effort to reduce the influence of organised labour and financially attack both the trade union movement and the Labour party. The opt-in as opposed to the opt-out of the most transparent political funding in this country, is an attack at the very heart of political opposition in the United Kingdom. Coupled with the announcement to ‘outlaw’ check-off in the public sector, unions will be burdened with on-costs of millions of pounds in getting members re-signed into membership. Deliberate and calculated, but nonetheless we will not only survive – we will get stronger.
It is when we are under such an attack that we should rightly turn outward not inward. The trade union movement is essential in a free and democratic society. A force for good which if it were not here today would be created tomorrow, fighting injustice wherever it exists and standing up for the communities we serve and the workplaces we represent.
Unions make a real difference and change the rules to get better terms, conditions and pay for their members. Creating safer workplaces, campaigning against pay inequality, fighting the dogma of outsourcing and privatisations, working with others for better public services and calling for a fair share of the wealth when we help to create the economy of the future. If we build a world-class economy then with it we want world-class terms, conditions, jobs and job security. Through a strong and confident trade union movement we can deliver these and make them a reality along with exposing the bad employers, the precarious pathways into employment, particularly for young people, and ensuring the enforcement of a real living wage.
The reason this week is so important is because so many of us have forgotten how to tell others the good we do as a movement. How we stand up for those who need us the most, how we give a voice to those who do not think they are being heard and how we give those a hand up when they take a fall. It just seemed to me that the only people speaking up for us during the trade union bill campaign is: us!
We need to get out more, tell the public about trade unions more, celebrate our achievements more. We cannot leave it up to the media as it does not make them a good headline. We need to do it.
And we need to make sure that this week is the first of an annual week that we use to celebrate trade unions in the UK. Let us do this not just for the trade union bill or just for this year, let us do this every year where we hold a week specifically to come together as a movement and tell those who are not members how they can be better off, better protected and have a better work-life balance if they join with us to stand up, shout out, make some noise, and: be union – be proud!
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Lee Barron is regional secretary of the Midlands Trades Union Congress. He tweets @unionbarron