Andrew Cooper from Unite the Union heads a march against bus cuts in August

SINCE the financial crash of 2008 the real value of pay has fallen more sharply for workers in Britain than in any northern European state.

Some estimates suggest only Greece and Cyprus have witnessed worse falls in real wages than the UK between 2009 and 2020.

Why has this been the case?

A crucial reason, albeit one rarely highlighted in media coverage, is the impact of decades of attacks on trade unions and their bargaining power.

When Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in May 1979 more than half of all employees belonged to unions, while an even higher proportion – over 80 per cent – received wages based on collective bargaining agreements.

The comparable figures for 2021 were both below 25 per cent.

The Thatcher / John Major years left Britain with some of the tightest legal restrictions on union activity in the western world.

The Labour governments between 1997 and 2010 refused to repeal that legislative framework and the Tories’ 2016 Trade Union Act made it still tougher to have lawful strike action as CWU members at Royal Mail were reminded this past weekend.

Given that nearly five-and-a-half million people belong to unions affiliated to the Trades Union Congress and thousands more to unions outside the TUC, unions receive remarkably little media coverage; and when featured in mainstream news the coverage is often unabashedly hostile.

But the past few months have shown that, however battered, trade unionism in Britain has proved resilient.

Since late spring tens of thousands of workers on the railways, London Underground, Royal Mail, the telecommunications sector, in further education colleges and elsewhere have staged strikes against the backdrop of the worst inflationary crisis in five decades.

From civil servants to NHS staff and teachers, many more union members have voted, or soon will be voting, in strike ballots.

Whatever the eventual outcome of these votes unions will clearly be central to organising resistance to the further round of austerity, which Rishi Sunak’s government is set to unleash.

And unionised workers are winning some real gains in the here and now.

The threat of an all-out, indefinite strike by bus drivers in the Unite union at Arriva London North secured an 11 per cent pay rise from mid-October with a 10 per cent increase backdated to this April.

At a hospital trust in north west England 26 days of strike action over four months by UNISON-organised cleaners and porters on a privatised contract recently won a 14 per cent rise along with occupational sick pay comparable to directly employed NHS staff.

Of course, there are wide swathes of the economy where unions are still marginal at best and membership among young workers aged 16 to 24 remains far too low. But even the notoriously anti-union Amazon has seen walkouts and canteen sit-ins at several warehouses in England.

A GMB union ballot at Amazon’s Coventry complex returned a 99 per cent vote for strike action but fell just three votes off the legally required 50 per cent threshold for participation.

Across the Atlantic campaigners have won nearly 250 ballots for union recognition at Starbucks stores in 38 US states in less than a year against an even more challenging background than Britain’s.

So where does Camden Trades Council fit into this picture of union revival?

A trades council exists as an umbrella body for TUC-affiliated unions in a borough or city with the aims of co-ordinating campaigning activity across its affiliates, promoting solidarity with union members mounting industrial action and, ideally, building bridges between organised workers and wider communities in the locality.

Admittedly, our local trades council is a much weaker force than in the 1970s and early 1980s when there were dozens of affiliated branches and sometimes scores of delegates attending.

But Camden Trades Council’s leading role in organising one of the first major protests against the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s austerity drive in October 2010 highlighted both its continued relevance and its potential to serve as a lightning rod for resistance to attacks on the public sector and its workforce.

Fourteen local branches are currently affiliated to the trades council.

If your branch is not yet an affiliate, then please do contact Camden Trades Council (by post: c/o Camden UNISON, Crowndale Centre, 218-220 Eversholt Street, NW1 1BD or email camdentradescouncil@gmail.com) and find out about joining our ranks. The affiliation process is inexpensive and simple.

Camden Trades Council supported the November 5 demonstration called by the People’s Assembly as the first opportunity to show mass opposition to the latest Tory government under Rishi Sunak, which is certain to launch a new round of austerity and further attacks on trade unions and workers’ rights.

Trades Council activists certainly intend that its banner will feature more frequently on picket lines and protests ​over the coming weeks and months.

• George Binette is vice-chair of Camden Trades Council and former secretary of Camden UNISON.