It is hardly uncommon for trade unions to get bad press.
Some within government and the media are keen to paint us as constantly at being at odds with employers and the public. They focus on the inconvenience of strikes and portray us as antagonistic. This is the toxic narrative they have built up to pass the trade union bill.
The truth is different, however. We work very closely with employers throughout the country to improve working conditions and to boost productivity.
Part of that is through education: over 200,000 people are given training and learning opportunities through their union every single year. I recently visited Hinkley Point, where the GMB, Ucatt, Unite and Prospect trade unions are working with management to run a learning centre, creating hundreds of quality apprenticeships.
As well as helping workers to become more skilled and productive, unions make workplaces better environments to work in.
Take the example of Mary Sherwood, a Prospect member at the Met Office in Exeter.
After a union training course in 2014, Mary set up a dementia carers’ network at her work to provide support and advice for colleagues whose loved ones were suffering from the condition.
The project was so successful that other large employers in the region, such as IBM, are now looking at introducing a something similar.
Mary is one of many unsung union heroes that you will not hear much about in the media, but thanks to her and countless others, people have a better experience at work.
As I write, the TUC is running ♥unions week, a set of activities throughout England and Wales to showcase the amazing work union members like Mary do.
And she is not the only one making a positive difference.
The Professional Footballers’ Association, for example, is working in partnership with Reading FC. They’re using football as a way of reaching out to Muslim and Asian communities in particular, and providing educational opportunities to people who may have missed out.
This is just one of many pioneering projects currently being run by unions in the UK. And it is not only football that is bringing people together.
At the Prison Officers’ Association in Dartmoor, As well as running a learning centre for prison staff, the POA provide IT facilities for local farmers to manage their livestock.
These are not the kind of stories you hear much about in the news or parliament, but they demonstrate how much unions contribute to the communities they serve.
I wish more politicians would visit these kinds of projects before pledging their support for the trade union bill, which we believe is a deliberate attempt to shackle unions. The bill has been strongly opposed by the Labour peers and members of parliament, and groups as diverse as Liberty, the CIPD and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation have criticised large elements of the bill.
You do not have to belong to a union to be affected by the government’s plans. The pay deals unions agree often set the going rate for workers in many industries. And the health and safety precautions they negotiate help keep millions of us safe at work every year – union members and non-union members alike.
But to get a good deal for workers you need power on both sides of the table.
The government’s proposals are about loading the dice in employers’ favour and penalising those who try and defend their rights.
The power to bargain collectively as a whole workforce over issues like pay has never been more important. Research published over Christmas revealed that richest 10 per cent now own nearly half of the United Kingdom’s wealth.
Eight years on from the financial British workers are still earning £44 a week less, on average, than before the crisis.
The economy is paying people too little for their hard work, and too much just for sitting on wealth. It is making Britain more and more unequal, with those who are already rich moving even further ahead of the typical family.
This is why we need stronger unions to help people get a fairer share of the cake. Even the International Monetary Fund (hardly known for its leftie radicalism) says the decline of union collective bargaining with employers has increased wage inequality and reduced wages for ordinary people.
This is why unions are so important, and why the trade union bill needs to be defeated. Workers across Britain need stronger labour representation, not less. Attacks on the union movement do not only undermine democracy, but make Britain a less equal place.
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Paul Nowak is assistant general secretary of the TUC. He tweets @nowak_paul
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Check out all the #heartunions articles on the Progress website this week