OVER the summer we have seen thousands of workers take to the picket lines to fight for decent pay, safe conditions and to fight for dignity. For once our TV screens have been filled with comrades such as Eddie Dempsey, Mick Lynch and Dave Ward telling journalists, in no uncertain terms, that the unions will stand up for the rights of their members and for workers across the country.

As “the summer of solidarity” draws to a close we head now towards an autumn of action. We are going to see even more strike action from rail workers, postal workers and communications workers — and we have got even more to come with firefighters, nurses and teachers being balloted too.

They are realising that Liz Truss doesn’t have any answers for them, Keir Starmer doesn’t have an answer for them either, and they are saying “We aren’t going to wait for Westminster any longer.”

To see so many people taking action on the picket lines, to see unions getting massive turnouts and wins in strike ballots is inspiring — and it is easy to believe that we are seeing a renaissance of the labour movement.

After years of putting its hopes in the ballot box, the working class is understanding its own power again and having the confidence to go out and take its destiny into its own hands.  

Two million people are using food banks in what we have been told is a developed nation. We are told we are a rich country but inequality is through the roof. We’re seeing pay freezes — pay cuts in real terms — and inflation is soaring. People have had enough and they’re showing this in the only way that they can — by withdrawing their labour.

What we are seeing is the anger that has built up over the past decade since the working class was forced to pay for the financial crisis in 2008, for the mishandling of Brexit, for Covid — and now being forced to pay for Nato adventurism in the Ukraine. We aren’t going to take it anymore.

We hear a lot about this wage-price spiral; people are trying to blame us for the current levels of inflation — but we have not seen pay rises in Britain at such a low level since Victorian times.

They warn that a pay rise for workers will only make things worse. Be under no illusion, this is being used as an excuse to keep down workers’ wages when we’re also seeing record profits.

Royal Mail made £758 million profit for its shareholders this year. Ariva has given £560m in dividends to its parent company, Deutsche Bahn, which is owned by the German government. We need to stop talking about working people taking pay cuts to pay for another crisis and start talking about these obscene profits — about using them to help the working people who have kept this country running through one crisis after another.  

We should be under no illusion about the scale of the challenge ahead of us. Trade union membership, while on the rise, is still low. In fact, the proportion of employees who were trade union members fell in 2021 meaning that at that point, membership was at its lowest rate on record, before the Covid bounce back.

What we lack are the institutions and capacity to help workers take the first steps to organising. All workplaces have their specific challenges and barriers to getting organised and there are very few places where workers can get advice and support at an early stage.

In an environment that is hostile to unions, it can be hard for new campaigns to get going. There are few routes to supporting new workers getting involved. Through inactivity, the structures and strategies of unions can become rusty too.

This is why we launched Strike Map, why we encouraged over 1,000 people to pledge to visit a picket line and why with the support of the BFAWU, we are launching Organise Now.

Organise Now is a new worker-led campaign for mass organising workplaces. Using the skills and experience of reps and activists across our movement, we aim to kick start organising in workplaces across the country.

The idea behind Organise Now is inspired by EWOC (the Emergency Workplace Organising Committee) in the US, which has been supporting new worker organising at Starbucks, Amazon and more. Workers and reps across the US are connecting through EWOC.  

Like the US, most workers in Britain are not — and have never been — members of unions. We want Organise Now! to be part of rebuilding power in the workplace. While many things may have changed since the height of union membership in Britain, workers still have power when they come together collectively.

Organise Now’s idea is simple: workers go to our website to complete a sign-up form and an experienced organiser from their sector will talk them through organising.  

If you have experience and want to help, we also have a sign-up form for that too. You can become part of our growing group of experienced organisers and we will put you in touch with workers who sign up. We provide training, resources and support.

We already live under the “most restrictive trade union laws in the Western world” — and even worse is in the pipeline. Workers have to follow strict rules to strike officially and there is talk of making this even harder.

We have seen protesters arrested this week for opposing the monarchy, for holding signs saying “not my king” — this is a practice run for the state to see what they can get away with, to see what we will put up with. As the cost-of-living crisis gets worse, now is the time to stand together. The best time to organise is now.

Robert Poole and Henry Fowler are co-founders of Strike Map.

Sarah Woolley is general secretary of the BFAWU.

Jamie Woodcock is an editor of Notes from Below.