“The very idea of the weekend is a trade union idea. Public holidays. Sick pay. Holiday pay itself. Pensions…
The General Secretary of the RMT, Mick Lynch, has perfectly summed up why trade unions are so important, amid attacks from the Tory party and their friends in the right-wing media.
While the Tories spent over a decade in power demonising trade unions and ordinary workers and ignored their demands for better pay and conditions, allowing strikes to continue, after the Labour party came into power, agreements have been reached with unions representing train drivers and junior doctors following two years of industrial actions.
Not interested in solving industrial disputes, the Tories have accused the Labour government of ‘giving in to the demands of their trade union paymasters”.
In a video posted on X, RMT general secretary Lynch hit back and set out just why trade unions were so important.
He said: “What we’ve got to remember is that trade unions exist in every society, they’re almost an organic development.
“And if you look at where we’ve progressed from, we had a world where we were virtually serfs.
“We’ve developed an idea where we have regulations at work. So health and safety regimes itself were brought in through trade union campaigning.
“The Factories Act, the ending of children’s exploitation and the ending of many deaths at work. Thousands of people used to be killed in Britain at work every year.
“The very idea of the weekend is a trade union idea. Public holidays. Sick pay. Holiday pay itself. Pensions. Statutory education for our children. And then the jewel in the crown, of course, is the National Health Service.
“So all of that stuff stems from the trade union movement, and we can’t afford to lose it as working class people.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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