WORKERS have seen a decade of austerity with thousands cut in real terms from pay packets.

Those same workers have seen us through a global pandemic with poor-quality or non-existent PPE. They have seen £37 billion given to the private sector for failed contracts and 126,000 dead.

Now the government is telling NHS workers they are deserving only of a 1 per cent pay rise.

It’s no surprise that NHS workers are readying themselves for the possibility of industrial action — everyone has their breaking point and NHS staff are angry.

As a member-led, democratic trade union, GMB hears them loud and clear, as we hear our members in social care too.

Social care is a fragmented sector that has struggled under the weight of the pandemic with little government support. 

Some 18,000 organisations now deliver care in the UK across local government, and the private and third sectors.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the UK’s largest providers of social care announced it is selling 42 care homes and closing four. HC-One is doing this on the basis of “investment priorities.”

It is a glaring example of the marketisation of a public service where companies bid to deliver services on a shoestring, offering the most basic of terms to their workers while surviving on the “come in early, work through breaks, stay late” goodwill of the workforce.

It’s a broken system, but in private and domiciliary care it’s a system trade unions have yet to get to grips with. We must do better.

Unions are often strongest where they are needed the least. That’s because decades of union strength have delivered good terms and conditions for our members.

Often where we find the greatest attacks and poorest pay and conditions, we simultaneously see the weakest union structures and lowest density.

Whether there is an organised, active trade union in a workplace makes a difference to the pay, terms and conditions of workers.

2021 must be the year where we take a renewed and serious approach to organising in the low-paid private sector.

Of course our fight is also with government — its lack of funding and its drive for privatisation — but blaming it alone allows the bosses off the hook. 

Millions in profit has gone to care company shareholders in the last year — that’s money that could have been in the pockets of care workers.

Yes, this organising is hard. The law is against us, employers are often hostile, there is often little release time for reps, but we didn’t exactly have it easy when we won weekends and the eight-hour day.

No excuses, we have to do things differently while staying true to our founding values.

We need to build leadership and trust overnight in a sector where workers have been demoralised and kept down, and many of those workers are women.

Changes to working and organising that we’ve seen throughout the pandemic offer us new routes to organise and support working people.

For workers who do 12-hour shifts on minimum wage with no release time for union activity, who then have to rush home to sort the kids out or look after elderly parents, digital platforms can be used to build networks, support and engagement.

There’s no substitute for the face-to-face organisation we do, but we can find more ways towards getting people active and taking on those organising roles to mean more face-to-face activity happens when we have a rep on every shift.

On-the-ground organising combined with a new collective space where workers are when they are able to engage and when they need us.

For example, we are building networks of night-shift and “sleep-in” workers so where there is no rep (yet), someone is still there to help. 

If our members are awake and at work, we should be there as a movement.

This last year has been the toughest many of us can remember, but it’s given us a new resiliency and determination. 

Workers whose economic value has been placed at rock bottom by the market have reasserted their worth to a grateful nation.

Our job now is to turn that into real power in the workplace.

Rehana Azam is GMB national secretary — public services.