A YEAR ago almost to the day, over 1,000 workers from the GMB and Unite flooded from Fife to the streets of Edinburgh for a march and rally outside of the Scottish Parliament. 

It was a show of strength which saved the yard. In the face of such worker power, the Scottish government acted decisively, taking a sizeable stake in the company. 

Along with new majority owners Canadian firm DF Barnes, which took over BiFab in a rescue deal in April, they continue to work for a viable future for the Burntisland, Methil and Arnish yards. The yards may be currently idle, but there is real hope for a viable future.

Last month, 8,000 Glasgow striking workers from Unison and the GMB, the vast majority of them low-paid female workers, marched on George Square in Glasgow. 

Most of those marching had come from the hundreds of picket lines across facilities in the city, including refuse facilities where workers had refused to cross picket lines in solidarity.

These two actions appear different at first. Most notably, BiFab wasn't a strike. It was a private-sector work-in and a reaction to a shock announcement. 

Workers were organised and mobilised in less than a week. Contrast that with Glasgow's decade-long equal pay dispute. 

There were long-running legal battles as the then Labour council squirmed and wriggled to avoid paying the workers what they were due. 

That the BiFab workers were (mostly) men and the Glasgow workers were (mostly) women suggests that for all our socially liberal leanings in Holyrood, Scotland is a country divided by sex in the workplace, much like everywhere else. 

However, the BiFab men and the Glasgow women have a common and powerful unity. 

When they became organised in a union with their colleagues and co-workers, their power and leadership transformed the disputes. 
Union organising strategies are vindicated. Apprentices from BiFab, not union officials, led the sea of orange overalls in Edinburgh. 

Female workers, not paid staffers, got the biggest cheers at the equal pay rally. Through union organising, workers are finding their own voice and I like the sound of it. 

This new wave of workers' power doesn’t stop there. Two weeks ago, the EIS march and rally for teachers’ 10 per cent pay claim attracted up to 30,000 demonstrators. This was largest single industrial issue demonstration organised by a union in a generation.  

So now Scottish teachers join the BiFab men and the Glasgow women — the workers themselves are leading the charge. The EIS pay ballot, which could very well lead to industrial action, opened two days later. A conservative estimate would be that a third of those being balloted were actually in George Square on that Saturday.

That is a very high proportion of the votes required for action. 
There is clear evidence that unions in Scotland are succeeding in channelling anger and organising for hope. 

In summer 2018, a major organising effort from local government unions in East Dunbartonshire secured an industrial victory. 

Offshore, GMB and Unite members covered by the Offshore Contractors Association (OCA) agreement have recently voted for industrial action over pay.

Betrayal is a powerful emotion in politics and Scottish Labour is still being punished for Better Together and its record in government. 

I still meet firefighters who speak with total bitterness at Labour’s role during their dispute in 2003 and with members of Civil Service unions still disgusted at Labour’s role in undermining them while in dispute. 

Labour has rightly backed all of the recent industrial events and Richard Leonard was right to belatedly apologise for Labour’s role in the Glasgow equal pay debacle. 

As for the SNP membership, with some honourable exceptions, reaction to the rise in worker power has ranged from bewilderment to outright hostility. 

At the extreme end of this reaction were a barrage of accusations levelled at the workers and their unions.

This included the accusation that Glasgow’s women are being duped and don’t know the history or nature of their dispute. Social media was filled with accusations of “English unions” busing up workers from down south to the rallies. 

The EIS was accused of having a “Labour” and “Unionist” agenda despite it being non-affiliated, having taken a neutral position on the referendum and with many of its activists being forced onto social media to remind people that they were Yes voters. 

The GMB, one of the unions which led the UCS work-in on the Clyde, was derided as an English union rooted in the east of London, where it was formed over a century ago. 

But political leadership is emerging from the schools, the offices, the yards and the classrooms. There’s a new confidence in Scotland among working people. 

This is good news for trade unions and both government and political parties will have to take note.

Dave Moxham is deputy general secretary of the STUC.