GENERAL STRIKE AGAINST PUSHBACKS

UK

Borders staff threaten strike over Channel ‘pushbacks’

By Benjamin Fox | EURACTIV.com
Jan 5, 2022

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), whose members include around 80% of the Border Force officials who would be tasked with implementing the ‘pushbacks’ demanded by ministers, have applied for a judicial review against the plans by Home Secretary Priti Patel. 

[Shutterstock/Christine Bird]

UK Border Force staff could go on strike over the government’s “morally reprehensible” plans to turn back dinghies carrying migrants crossing the Channel, a leading trade union warned on Wednesday.

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), whose members include around 80% of the Border Force officials who would be tasked with implementing the ‘pushbacks’ demanded by ministers, have applied for a judicial review against the plans by Home Secretary Priti Patel.

The government plans to introduce tough new measures to restrict arrivals after a sharp rise in the number of people arriving via the Channel crossing in the UK. According to figures compiled by the PA Media news agency, some 28,300 people crossed the Dover Strait onboard small boats in 2021, triple the number for 2020.

The PCS argues that the ‘pushbacks’ policy breaks international law.

“The legality of the pushbacks policy is in serious question, and it is right that the court decides whether it is unlawful to turn back Channel boats,” said PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka.

“We cannot have a situation where our members could be open to potential civil and criminal action for implementing a policy that they do not agree with and know is not safe,” he added.

Even if UK courts deem the policy legal, the PCS has not ruled out the possibility of strike action.

(Benjamin Fox | EURACTIV.com)

‘BRITAIN NEEDS A PAY RISE IN 2022’, TUC WARNS

4th January 2022
Sarah Hughes

The Trade Union Council (TUC) has urged for a payrise across Britain, as real wages are “barely” set to grow in the next five years.

This comes as analysis conducted by the TUC revealed that real wages are set to rise by just 0.6% (£150) a year between now and 2026.

However, the TUC estimates that if real pay growth were back to pre-financial crisis levels, workers would be £500 better off a year and £2,500 better off by 2026.

READ MORE: Almost half of UK supermarket workers earn below the real Living Wage, research reveals

“If I have one message for this government at the start of 2022, it is this: Britain needs a pay rise,” TUC head Frances O’Grady said.

“Our economy will only recover when working people can afford to spend in local shops and businesses. That’s the way to boost demand, grow the economy and protect jobs.” 

With record high inflation rates in over a decade coupled with a cost-of-living crisis, supermarket workers are facing financial hardships with little support.

This comes as Organise revealed one in three Sainsbury’s workers regularly worried about putting food and drink on the table.

Additionally, International Food Aid Network reported an increase in supermarket workers using food banks.

O’Grady added: “This Conservative government has had eleven years to get wages rising. And they have failed, over and over again… unless ministers act now, the future looks bleak.”

As a result, the TUC has urged the government to “get round the table” with unions and employers to negotiate sector-wide fair pay agreements, and that every employer should be bound by them.

Directed to the Prime Minister, O’Grady concluded: “After decades of real wage cuts and falling living standards, no one can seriously say working people don’t deserve a pay rise.”

“That’s my priority, and the priority of the whole union movement, in 2022. The prime minister should shape up and make it his priority too.” 

NETHERLANDS

Collective wage increases lower than inflation

Euros in a wallet - Source: stevanovicigor at DepositPhotos - License: Deposit Photos

THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 2022 - 09:47

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Collectively negotiated wages in the Netherlands did not rise as strongly last year as in 2020. Employees did not benefit much, especially at companies hit hard by the coronavirus crisis. In addition, the increase in wages is dwarfed by the price increases consumers have been dealing with recently, much to the dismay of trade union FNV, among others.

According to preliminary figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), wages rose by 2.1 percent last year. In 2020, that was 2.9 percent. The most substantial wage increase in 12 years was mainly because most collective bargaining agreements on wage increases were made before the coronavirus outbreak when the economy was doing very well.

The picture for 2021 shows that wage developments are lagging behind inflation. According to the most recent data, daily life was 5.2 percent more expensive in November than a year earlier. The prices that Netherlands residents pay for goods and services have not risen so sharply since September 1982.

According to trade union FNV, employees are tired of having to renegotiate the inflation adjustment and the preservation of their purchasing power every year. Petra Bolster of FNV's daily board points out that employees' situation is deteriorating. "To prevent this, we demand that wages automatically increase in line with prices. This must be laid down in the collective labor agreements," she said. She referred to intentions announced in September for the collective labor agreement negotiations, in which the union already put this requirement on the table. 

Employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement benefited the least in the catering industry last year. In that sector, collectively negotiated wages rose on average by only 0.3 percent since the tables were adjusted for the development of the statutory minimum wage. The catering collective bargaining agreement was extended by one year in 2021 under the same conditions. Therefore, most employees in the catering industry received nothing additional at all. 

Reporting by ANP.

Polish miners threaten energy crisis if wage demands go unmet

By Kinga Wysocka | EURACTIV.pl
Jan 5, 2022

A possible suspension of coal supplies to the power plants may result in a difficult situation for the power system. [EPA-EFE/ZBIGNIEW MEISSNER]

Polish miners established a schedule for further protests, announcing a two-day strike referendum on 12-13 January and a blockade of coal shipping from 17 January until further notice.

Miners are demanding additional money for overtime earned from September 2021. Miners had to do overtime due to the high demand for coal for Polish power plants. Miners are also calling for their average salary to be raised from 7,800 to 8,200 PLN gross.

The list of striking unions is long, and the protesters include representatives of, among others, mining company Solidarność, the Trade Union of Miners in Poland, and the trade union Kadra.

The strikers met with the management of the Polish Mining Group (PGG) board last Tuesday. However, the talks failed. Another attempt, this time with the mediator, is scheduled for 10 January.

The PGG is not willing to meet their demands. According to unofficial information, the cost of implementing the wage demands would be around 130-140 million PLN (€28.3 million- €30.5 million).

A possible suspension of coal supplies to the power plants may result in a difficult situation for the power system. Deputy Minister of State Assets, Piotr Pyzik, called the protest “playing with energy security”.

Polish power plants are already exposed to coal shortages. In mid-December, the Energy Regulatory Office reported that many power plants reported shortages of raw material – including the two largest hard coal-based power plants in Opole and Kozienice.

German union steps up efforts to recruit Tesla workers with office near Berlin plant

IG Metall says automaker offers lower pay than German rivals

NATHAN EDDY
January 03, 2022

REUTERS

About 12,000 employees are expected to build up to 500,000 electric cars a year in Gruenheide, with production expected to start early this year.

BERLIN -- IG Metall, the dominant metalworkers' union in Germany, wants to represent as many employees as possible at Tesla's new factory in near Berlin.

The union has opened an office "very close" to the factory in Gruenheide, its district leader for Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony, Birgit Dietze, said.

Besides supporting the election of a works council, the union will be available to answer questions on topics including pay, working hours and employment contracts, Dietze told the German Press Agency (DPA).

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had a rocky relationship with organized labor in the past and was ordered in March last year to delete a tweet from 2018 threatening to strip U.S. employees of their stock options if they formed a union.

IG Metall has said job applicants have told them that the automaker is offering pay 20 percent below the collectively bargained wages paid by German automakers. Tesla is also shaking up conventional German contracts by offering packages with stock options and bonuses rather than predetermined holiday pay.

Musk has made his irritation for German laws and processes known, saying in a letter to authorities in April that the country's complex planning requirements were at odds with the urgency needed to fight climate change. The automaker has repeatedly had to push back the expected opening of the factory due to environmental objections and red tape.

In the future, about 12,000 employees are expected to build up to 500,000 electric cars a year in Gruenheide, with production expected to start early this year.

The union understands that 1,800 workers had been hired by Christmas, the DPA reported.

"We assume that the first production stage will start with about 6,000 employees," Dietze told the news outlet.

She also pointed out additional players in the automotive industry will be established around the plant.

"In terms of transformation, it is necessary to take the employees with us," Dietze said. "We are not the dinosaurs of the industrial age but are looking forward in a progressive way. We are actively intervening in the issues of shaping industrial policy."

Should collective bargaining one day occur between the union and Tesla, one point of contention would already be foreseeable.

According to her findings, part of Tesla's compensation should be achieved through stock options, Dietze told the DPA.

"Optionally, on top of a secured collective bargaining standard like that of the metal and electrical industry, we would have no objection," the trade unionist said. "But what generally does not work in our members' estimation is that parts of the remuneration are so thoroughly flexible that the employee does not know exactly what is coming out for them at the end of the month or the year?"

Tesla posted record 308,600 global deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2021, with the better-than-expected results pushing full-year deliveries to more than 936,000 vehicles.

The Tesla Model 3 is on course to be Europe's best-selling full-electric vehicle in 2021 amid strong gains in overall sales of battery-electric vehicles.

Tunisia’s UGTT criticises president’s road map out of crisis

The trade union says the president’s proposal will not guarantee Tunisia’s return to democracy.

Published On 5 Jan 20225 Jan 2022

Tunisia’s powerful General Labour Union (UGTT) has criticised President Kais Saied’s road map out of political crisis, saying it did not go far enough.

Last month, President Saied announced a plan to move past the political crisis that has paralysed the country since he suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister and assumed executive authority last year.

KEEP READING

list of 3 items

list 1 of 3

Tunisia launches national consultation on reforms

list 2 of 3

Tunisia: Calls mount for release of detained Ennahdha official

list 3 of 3

Detained Tunisian politician hospitalised ‘in critical condition’

end of list

It includes a constitutional referendum, to be held on July 25 following an online public consultation that will start in January, and parliamentary elections at the end of 2022.

“Setting a date for elections is an important step to end the exceptional situation, but it does not break with individual rule and exclusion”, the union said on Tuesday in its first comment on the president’s plan.

Saied, who is seeking to bolster his authority, has called on citizens to send suggestions through electronic platforms from January 1 to March 20 as part of a wide-ranging national consultation process that will help in drafting a new constitution.

The UGTT, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 as part of the National Dialogue Quartet and represents one million workers, said the online consultation may lead to a monopoly of power and the abolition of the opposition.

“We call [on the government] to resume social dialogue, launch negotiations on the wages of civil servants and begin to tackle basic issues in a participatory manner,” it said.

Last month, the UGTT called for early elections, saying it was concerned for the country’s democratic gains because of the president’s reluctance to announce a plan for political reforms.

In a speech on national television on December 13, Saied announced a reform package and promised to hold a constitutional referendum.

Saied’s one-man mission to rebuild Tunisia’s broken political structures has sparked accusations that he is establishing a new dictatorship in the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings.

The envoys of seven Western countries plus the European Union last month urged Tunisia to respect “fundamental freedoms” and set a timeline for a return to democratic institutions.

Saied’s power grab in July 2021 won support from many Tunisians tired of political parties seen as deeply corrupt and incapable of solving the country’s deep social and economic woes.

He has since faced mass demonstrations and growing accusations that he is becoming a new dictator.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

 A GLOBAL PROBLEM

IRELAND

'Absenteeism': Union officials hit out at use of term to describe workers out for Covid reasons

“Covid-related shortages are not the result of ‘absenteeism’, which is defined as an avoidable absence from work.”

Tue JAN 4,2022 

Image: Sam Boal

TRADE UNIONS REPRESENTING essential workers have hit out at the use of the term ‘absenteeism’ to describe members who are currently unable to attend work after either testing positive for Covid-19 or being named as a close contact of a confirmed case.

Thousands of workers in both the public and private sectors are out on Covid-related leave at the moment as the nation grapples with a surge in infections.

But Dr Laura Bambrick, head of social policy at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, told The Journal, “Covid-related shortages are not the result of ‘absenteeism’, which is defined as an avoidable absence from work.”

In recent days, employer’s group Ibec has called on the Government to reduce the Covid isolation periods for essential workers to avoid shortages and supply chain bottlenecks. 

Following a meeting between the three coalition leaders today, it is now expected that the Government will ask Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan to relax the isolation rules for fully vaccinated close contacts of confirmed cases of Covid-19.

Meanwhile, Irish Rail has had to cancel a number of services over the coming week due to “Covid-19 and close contact absences”.

Last Friday, the UL Hospitals Group announced plans to defer the majority of its scheduled surgery and outpatient appointments at five hospitals in Limerick, Clare and Tipperary due to staff absences.

But the term ‘absenteeism’ is inappropriate to describe the phenomenon, trade union officials have said.

“Workers are following public health guidance, not gaming the system as some throwing the ‘absenteeism’ word around like confetti at a wedding would have the public believe,” Bambrick said.

She added, “Staffing shortages are the result of the surging numbers of Omicron infections and the knock-on effect of tens of thousands of workers self-isolating as close contacts.”

Jonathan Hogan, assistant general secretary of trade union Mandate — which represents 40,000 workers in the retail, pub and administrative sectors — said the current wave of infections is having an impact on staffing, particularly in the retail sector.

“Because the transmission is so high, it has impacted on the number of workers available in the supermarket business, drapery — right across the retail sector,” Hogan told The Journal.

“But I mean, using terms like ‘absenteeism’ in the traditional sense, it’s probably inappropriate. Our members are out through no fault of their own — and most of the time they don’t get paid for that.”

The Government’s plans to introduce statutory sick pay from this month have been delayed, the Irish Independent reported last month.

• READ: ‘Explainer: Why it’s taken a pandemic to get sick pay back on the government agenda’

According to a letter sent by Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Leo Varadkar’s department to Chartered Accountants Ireland, the new rules will now be enacted later this year.

Workers can apply for the Covid-related Enhanced Illness Benefit if they are out of work due to illness, or if they have been instructed to self-isolate or restrict their movements for a period.

But Hogan added, “Many retail workers don’t get paid when they’re out.

“They can’t afford to be out so what we’re asking employer’s to do is to ensure that [if a worker is out on Covid-related leave], it doesn’t trigger normal absenteeism mechanisms.”

Hogan said this could lead to an investigation being launched into an employee who has been absent from work on different occasions.

“We’re asking all employers to deal with Covid-related absences in the most reasonable, fair way and to take everything into consideration,” he added.

‘Chaotic time’

Separately, a spokesperson for the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) — which has used the phrase ‘Covid-related leave’ throughout the pandemic’ — said, “The numbers of nurses and midwives on Covid-related leave is of huge concern to the INMO.

“Anecdotally, we are aware that it is incredibly difficult to fill rosters in many hospitals at the moment due to the numbers of staff who are on Covid-related leave.”

The union is calling on the Health Service Executive (HSE) to produce an “urgent capacity” plan and said the political system also has “a responsibility to an exhausted medical workforce to ensure their workplaces are as safe as they can be”. 

The spokesperson added, “There must be no tolerance for hospital overcrowding while a highly transmissible airborne virus is making its way around our hospitals. Improvements to air quality in our hospitals must be a priority.”

“As we head into what is traditionally a chaotic time in our hospitals, the normal January patterns of overcrowding in our hospitals should not be tolerated. Our hospitals cannot operate on the goodwill of staff alone, we need an urgent capacity plan from the HSE.”

INDIA

Trade unions protest against Central Govt’s bid to privatise PSUs

 4th January 2022


Hyderabad: The employees of public sector units have formed a Joint action Committee to protest against the government’s bid to privatize the public sector units (PSUs).

The Committee of various trade unions held its first session in Hyderabad which was attended by representatives from BSNL, LIC,BDL, HAL, BHEL, Railways HMT, Praga tools, Madhani, ECIL, DLRL and employees leaders of various banks.

The union leaders condemned the Central Government’s bid to hand over the PSUs to the corporate sector. They pointed out in the meeting that at one hand the central government is announcing “make in India” while in practice it’s following “the sale in India” policy.

The meeting was chaired by the state’s Planning Board Vice Chairman B Vinod Kumar. “It is necessary to safeguard the PSUs in order to safeguard the country,” Kumar said.

Kumar further said that the TRS supports the trade union agitation wholeheartedly. The Central government’s policy will deprive the SC ST and other backward classes of their employment opportunities,” Kumar warned..

The employees of PSUs have resolved to go to any extent in their agitation to save the PSUs.

“The Central Government is trying to benefit a few corporate houses through the privatization of PSUs,” Kumar alleged.

The Central Government is also trying to privatize Madhani, BDL and ordnance factory where Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and other scientists have done research.

Through the privatization of LIC lakhs of people will be rendered jobless, Kumar said.

Other speakers warned against the government’s bid to privatize the national banks

The prominent Trade union leaders who participate in this meeting included in addition to TRS labor cell, Rambabu Yadav, Roop Singh, Raja Ram Yadav, Satvinder Singh, DJ Chari, Yadav Reddy Venkateswarlu, Bhaskar Reddy, Shrinivas Gaus and others.

UK

Trade unions are more vital than ever - so why is the government attacking them?

 

Frances O'Grady

@FrancesOGrady

22 December 2021

As 2022 begins, a pandemic is raging, nearly a million workers are on zero-hours contracts, two million workers have no right to sick pay and five million earn less than the real living wage. And yet the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is making imposing new red tape on unions his workplace priority – and quietly tabling new anti-union legislation in Parliament.

The proposals would impose a levy on trade unions and allow five-figure fines for breaching complex trade union laws.

That’s money from the pockets of care workers, nurses and supermarket staff.

All the while, union members are on the frontline line of the coronavirus pandemic, working in schools, hospitals, shops, in public transport and in the services we all rely on.

Millions have turned to unions to protect their jobs, defend their rights and keep their workplaces safe.

Their unions have worked hard to support them in turn. But now valuable union time and money will be diverted, as unions are forced to jump through yet more hoops.

Now is the time to be working with unions, not undermining them

Let’s be frank. These reforms are based on ideology rather than being about solving the problems working people face.

Political parties don't pay a levy for the Electoral Commission. Charities don't fund the Charity Commission. Yet unions face a whopping seven-figure bill to pay for their regulator, the Certification Officer.

The government's own figures show that this levy will send dozens of unions into the red. And there is little to stop the Certification Officer hiking the levy year after year. Ministers have even dropped a promised review clause aimed at protecting unions from over-zealous regulation.

Then there are the huge financial penalties which could hit unions – fines of up to £20,000 for statutory breaches – which address a problem that doesn’t exist.

In the last financial year, the Certification Officer dealt with just 34 complaints. That's just one for every 200,000 union members. And not one of these resulted in an enforcement order requiring a union to take action.

That’s because unions are accountable to their members through their democratic structures and have a strong track record of complying with their legal duties.

What’s more, these changes would allow non-members to make complaints to the Certification Officer about trade unions. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the work of unions being hindered by vexatious complaints from hostile employers or campaign groups, particularly during legitimate industrial disputes.

The curious timing of these measures is underlined by the fact that this legislation is a relic of another age. Ministers at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have dusted off long-forgotten measures from the Cameron government’s 2016 Trade Union Act that were not enacted.

It begs the question – why now? This isn’t the case of simply tying up loose ends. If it was, ministers would have dealt with another outstanding issue from the Trade Union Act 2016: boosting union members’ democratic participation by trialling safe and secure electronic balloting for more union votes, such as the election of general secretaries.

It is telling of the government’s real concerns that they can spend valuable parliamentary time on new anti-union rules.

But the long-promised employment bill, intended to tackle insecure work and promote flexible working in the wake of Brexit, is still nowhere to be seen.

It’s time this government got its priorities right. 

Now is the time to be working with unions, not undermining them. Around the world – from New Zealand to the US – governments are recognising the power of collective bargaining.

Next year, Parliament will debate and vote on these explicitly anti-union proposals. When that moment comes, MPs and peers should reject them wholesale – and instead join with unions and their members in delivering better pay and conditions for working people in every corner of the country.

Frances O’Grady is General Secretary of the TUC

 

A woman’s place is her union – but women must be made to feel welcome there

Revisiting the work of Bolshevik revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai HELEN O’CONNOR finds that when genuine efforts are made to involve working-class women into the labour movement, this advances the interests of the entire working class

Alexandra Kollontai

WORKERS are under attack on every level but especially women. Women are more likely to be in part-time, low-paid work because the burden of caring still falls primarily onto our shoulders.

The impact of cuts and privatisation has negatively affected working-class women in terms of employment, where privatisation has cut pay, terms and conditions.

Women are forced to provide the services, particularly caring, that have been deemed unnecessary or unprofitable. As a result too many women are firmly relegated to the ranks of “the working poor” for the entire duration of their lives.

In spite of the fact that rising numbers of trade union members are women, there is still a struggle to consistently engage women in activity in workplaces or within the unions themselves, and we need to honestly reflect on the reasons behind this.

There is tokenism in the trade union movement which is often presented as “progressive.”

Of course we need policies, information and awareness on a whole range of “women’s health, social and domestic issues” but the danger is that this can be seen to be separate and even removed from the need to organise women to agitate and fight for the type of change that challenges the status quo.

Self-organising is a vital and necessary aspect of bringing attention to the struggles of marginalised groups, establishing demands and leading struggles that can be recognised by all workers to build working-class solidarity.

The pay gap between men and women is as bad as it has ever been and it will not be resolved just by requesting that employers publish their data or legal methods, but through the type of co-ordinated and militant struggle organised working-class women took against Glasgow Council.

During this and many other struggles throughout history women have shown themselves to be capable leaders and fighters.

There is no better time to look back on the the work of Alexandra Kollontai, one of the greatest revolutionary organisers, which can provide the modern-day labour movement with guidance, clarity and inspiration.

The work of Kollontai recognises the double and triple oppression of women but it is also uncompromising in defining what is the root cause of all this — class.

Kollontai observed that the pace of events in pre-revolutionary Russia changed consciousness quickly and this led the poorest and the most oppressed women into the vanguard of the class struggle.

She said: “At a time of unrest and strike action the proletarian woman, downtrodden, timid and without rights, suddenly grows and learns to stand tall and straight. The self-centred narrow-minded and backward female becomes an equal, a fighter and a comrade.”

In spite of all of the scientific and technological advantages that the march of time has offered human beings, it remains the case that the social class a women is born into still defines her life and the lives of her children.

Kollontai recognised that women’s oppression is not born out of antagonism between women and men but is firmly rooted in class society.

She saw how employers threatened working-class women with unemployment when they started to get organised and make the most simple demands to have enough food for themselves and their families.

Identity politics without a class analysis, however well-intentioned, can create divisions among working-class people.

Kollontai observed that when women’s organisations were set up with the false claim that they were “above class” they ended up adopting the limited demands of bourgeois women and as a result alienated the working-class women who quickly recognised that their own demands for better living conditions would never be taken up.

Kollontai recognised that working-class women’s demands were first and foremost practical and around work, wages, conditions and childcare.

Kollontai noted that while bourgeois women and working women shared some commonalities, the upper-class women’s demands for equality with men always sat within a framework that supported a political and economic status quo that exploited working-class Russians.

She reached the conclusion that a women’s movement could not indiscriminately embrace all women because that world of women is also divided along class lines.

Advances have been made through self-organising, but not all women have benefited from them. Women are more visible in the leadership teams of large companies and in politics and have a greater chance of accessing traditionally male roles but this has made little material difference to most working-class women.

In spite of all of the gains and the technological and scientific advances made over the last century, increasing numbers of working-class women still have the same need for fair pay, flexible working and affordable childcare as the women of revolutionary Russia.

Working-class women, like cleaners, nurses, care home workers and many others, are being plunged into poverty and they are denied the type of financial and practical support that would enable them to offer their children the best start in life.

If history teaches us anything, it is that women like Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel represent their own class interests and not the interests of working-class women.

The neoliberal cuts and privatisation agenda that strips working-class women of public services and social security is enthusiastically embraced by women occupying seats in the power structures.

In stark contrast with the successful drive to organise working-class women in revolutionary Russia, a modern-day woman’s reproductive function, combined with the necessity for her to work, leads to many experiencing insurmountable barriers to becoming actively involved in a trade union or in political life.

This in turn hampers the overall ability of working-class women to fight for the social and political changes that would enhance their life chances and those of their children.

Kollontai was guided by the principle that working-class women should be able to have children and also participate fully in the class struggle and she went to where the women were, listened carefully to their needs and then both inspired and enabled them to become involved.

Kollontai saw how quickly working-class women moved to the vanguard of the class struggle and she worked tirelessly to build mass solidarity and support for the strikes of women workers in the textile factories and the laundries.

The political conclusions Kollontai drew guided her organisational work and enabled her to bring large numbers of the poorest and most oppressed women into political life.

By 1921 more than three million Russian women, some of whom started out without education or literacy skills, took up the opportunities to develop themselves and they became involved in Russian politics.

They elected their own representatives from the women of the factories, the laundries and the peasantry who would then go onto the committees to push their own demands forward through the Bolshevik party.

The politics of revolutionary Russia was directly relevant to the day-to-day lives of working-class people, nothing was abstract and Bolshevik party policy was formed around women’s needs which included getting control over their fertility and ending their super-exploitation.

Revisiting Kollontai’s work shows that when genuine efforts are made to involve working-class women into the labour movement this advances the interests of the entire working class.

It is important that the labour and the trade union movement redouble our efforts to hear the voices of working-class women and respond to concerns in a respectful and serious way.

Abuse, hostility and the failure to listen risks driving good women out of the movement and towards organisations that are fundamentally opposed to the interests of the working class.

The level of misogyny that still exists in the labour and trade union movement must be opposed by both men and women alike in order to end it for good.

Women are 50 per cent of the population and it remains the case that the majority of working-class women will be found in the lowest-paid jobs while still shouldering the burden of childcare and domestic tasks.

Even in 2022 the lion’s share of the care, support and wellbeing of the next generation still rests with women.

As we enter 2022 and a deepening cost of living crisis, working-class men, women and children will be crushed by capitalism unless we co-ordinate effective resistance.

Even greater numbers of children will grow up in poverty and have their life chances utterly destroyed by the deliberate destruction of the welfare state, the abolition of social housing and the bottomless greed of exploitative employers.

Liberating working-class women will not be achieved by latching onto the latest trends in post-modern ideology that have no material basis.

Liberation for any marginalised group starts with tackling the real material causes of oppression which are always rooted in class antagonisms in spite of false claims that the ideas of Marx and Engels are “outdated” or “irrelevant” in the modern world.

The fight for our own liberation is part of the wider struggle of the entire working class — something recognised not only by Kollontai but by Eleanor Marx and Sylvia Pankhurst too.

In order to advance the interests of our class, it is crucial for women to get more active than ever before in the largest democratic organisations of the working class and to fully utilise our trade unions as a vehicle to fight for society to be changed.

Helen O’Connor is Southern Region organiser for GMB.