With so many workers outside the protection and power of collectives, unions need to respond, writes Roz Foyer, STUC General Secretary.

One of the main criticisms thrown at trade unions by our detractors is that, apparently, we are no longer focused on workplace issues. That campaigning on climate change, international solidarity, supporting disadvantaged and minority communities and standing up for the rights of refugees is somehow damaging to the needs of working class people and to growing the trade union movement.

That’s nonsense, of course. We do all of those things and, as the latest ONS statistics have shown, our movement in Scotland is growing. It’s up by 10% with more than 683,000 union members in Scotland. We do all of those things and, in 2024, we revealed that workers had won a staggering £4.4 billion in pay and pension settlements over the previous 24 months.

That money did not come from the generosity of employers. It came from workplace organising, collective action and solidarity across our movement to ensure workers received a fairer deal. It is money that bosses, billionaires and bureaucrats simply said did not exist until workers organised themselves in their trade unions and took, or threatened to take, industrial action.

We should celebrate those victories. But we should also recognise that too many workers remain outside the protection and power of collective organisation. Thus, there is a more fundamental question that we need to ask ourselves. The workplace has changed. How do we respond to it?

Rights as a Step to Action

Scotland is no longer the industrial heartland it once was. Workers are increasingly spread across fragmented workplaces, hybrid working patterns, insecure employment and sectors where traditional forms of workplace organising are increasingly difficult.

That does not mean that workplace organising is less important. Quite the opposite. It means that we need to think differently about how we reach people, build confidence and develop collective power.

For too long now power has remained in the hands of those with wealth, assets and resources. It’s this emphasis of the neo-liberal – the grab what you can, while you can – attitude that has led, in part, to the alienation of the working classes within their communities. It’s those workers we must redouble our efforts to reach and, what’s more, we must meet them where they are.

The balance of power in the workplace and our communities has shifted significantly towards those with wealth and resources. Too many workers are in jobs where they have little or no access to collective bargaining, where insecure contracts and poor conditions are normalised and where the knowledge of their rights is limited. For those workers, knowing their rights – and knowing where to turn when those rights are breached – can be the first step towards collective action.

That is at the heart of Our Rights in Action, the STUC project now starting in South Lanarkshire, Fife and East Ayrshire. The project is about building the capacity of workers and communities to understand their rights, identify the issues that matter to them and develop the collective power needed to change them. For those who don’t think that’s a space for us – they’re wrong. This is a raison d’être of trade unions.

Our Rights in Action is about finding the people who want to make a change in their workplaces and communities and giving them the tools, knowledge and support to organise. Crucially, the project can be for those both in and outwith work. It is about mapping where people are, understanding the pressures they face, identifying the organisations and individuals already trying to make a difference and building the relationships that can turn isolated concerns into collective action. It is community organising but stripped back to its most basic principle. Find people who care. Listen to them. Understand the problems they face. Build confidence. Organise and then change things.

The far right understands this and are, regrettably, stealing a march. More to the point, they’re quite literally on the march. They understand that there are communities where people feel abandoned. Where decent work has disappeared. Where services have been cut. Where housing is unaffordable. Where people feel that the political system no longer represents them. It takes that legitimate frustration and directs it towards the most vulnerable people in society. It tells working people that their problems are caused by migrants, refugees, minority communities or people who have even less power than they do.

We understand all that too, but we must offer people something different. Because when you rob a community of prospects, people will turn to apathy. When you steal a person’s vision of hope, the space that lingers can turn toxic.

A Shot in the Arm

Our response cannot simply be to tell people that they are wrong to be angry. People are right to be angry about poverty and poor housing. They are right to be fuming about insecure work, low wages and public services that are increasingly unable to meet their needs. The question is who organises that anger and towards what end?

Our Rights in Action answers it by ensuring people know their employment rights. It means connecting workers and community members with trade unions and trades councils. It means working with community organisations and local leaders. It means identifying the people who are already active and giving them the skills and confidence to bring others with them. It means recognising that a trade union is not simply a place where people go when they have a problem at work. It is a vehicle through which people can build power and improve their lives collectively.

Further, the new Employment Rights Act can give our movement a shot in the arm to ensure workers get access to their rights from day one and that unions can request access to a swathe of, as of yet, unorganised sites to recruit, train, upskill and, above all else, empower workers.

Workers are no longer concentrated in the same factories, services and industrialised workplaces that defined the boom years of our movement. But they are still here. They are in our communities, our towns, our cities and our workplaces. We must go meet them where they are rather than waiting on them to come to us with a passing interest about unions. When we do that, we instill the knowledge that solidarity is worth more than hatred, and that the union, not disunity, is what makes us strong.

Roz Foyer is the General Secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress.