COMMUNISTS committed to work to build a militant shop stewards’ movement at their 57th Congress today, resolving that “the strength of the trade union movement can be linked directly, though not exclusively, to the collective power of workers on the shop floor.”
Merseyside delegate Nigel Flanagan warned that trade unions, “despite a summer of outstanding action and some successes, are still suffering from long-term trends of decline.
“Even during the strike wave, trade union membership declined by another 200,000 — 122,000 of them were women workers in the private sector,” he stressed.
Incoming Usdaw general secretary JOANNE THOMAS talks to Ben Chacko about workers’ rights, Labour and how to arrest the decline of the high street
KEVAN NELSON reveals how, through its Organising to Win strategy, which has launched targeted campaigns like Pay Fair for Patient Care, Britain’s largest union bucked the trend of national decline by growing by 70,000 members in two years



