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FOOD workers’ leader Ronnie Draper called on the labour movement today to strive to double union membership.
In his address to the Bakers, Food & Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) conference in Southport, the union’s general secretary called on the movement to recruit six-and-a-half million more members.
The last time that union membership stood at 13 million was in 1979, before the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government.
Mr Draper slammed press attacks on unions portraying them as wanting to bring back the “winter of discontent” of 1978-9, a period of widespread industrial disputes prompted by pay caps imposed by Jim Callaghan’s Labour government.
He said that there was no mystery why that era was labelled the winter of discontent — “Because we were discontented!
“The Labour Party under Callaghan tried to play at capitalism and that is why the government fell.”
After lamenting Ms Thatcher’s aggression against the unions, Mr Draper pointed to recent industrial fights to highlight that much more could be done to build up the power of unions and to “struggle for the 24 million workers currently without a union.”
Tipping his hat to the McStrikers, Mr Draper also pointed to the example of Hovis bread workers who successfully fought zero-hours contracts in 2013.
“When they had their dispute, they were an inspiration not just to our union but to the nation,” he said. “Their struggle was something that captured the imagination.”
Union membership in Britain stands at about 6.2 million. Although membership dipped in 2016, the number of union members rose by 19,000 in 2017.
Mr Draper’s rallying cry followed publication in the Star the previous day of research by the Institute for Public Policy Research, revealing that a fall in trade union membership has seen a massive surge in pay inequality.
Concluding his address to the conference, the centenary meeting of the BFAWU, Mr Draper listed the victorious battles of the union.
From successfully lobbying the government to register asthma as an industrial disease to fighting for the minimum wage, Mr Draper reminded delegates that “these ideas of justice started their lives in our branches and at our conference.”
He urged delegates to take Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s message of hope from the conference hall and back into their workplaces and to fight to rebuild the working-class movement.
