Member

As a former trade union negotiator, I spent more than 20 years of my working life standing up for people in low-paid jobs. As a former head of local government for UNISON Scotland, I was proud to represent the bin collectors, the carers and the school support workers, all of whom are the bedrock and the backbone of our local communities, and on whom we relied so much during the covid pandemic. When their bills went up, they turned to their trade unions, asking us to negotiate for nothing more than a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Yet under laws introduced by the previous Government, fighting for those workers too often felt like fighting with one arm tied behind our back, within a legal framework that allowed bad businesses to ignore trade unions and the voice of workers; allowed businesses to flood a bargaining group to prevent trade union recognition and weaken workers’ voices; and allowed employers to impose minimum service levels—an attack on workers’ rights that did nothing to address the reasons why our public services were struggling.