With a perfect storm of low wages, insecure jobs, and few training opportunities, it’s little surprise that young people aren’t joining trade unions. It’s not that we aren’t political or are anti-union, but most of us don’t interact with unions in our day-to-day lives and therefore don’t really know what they are for. The campaign for fair pay, tips, and work in the hospitality sector is changing all of that. It shows that the labour movement is beginning to prepare the ground for a new wave of trade unionism among young people.

I’m a waitress, and have been a leading activist in the fight by workers in TGI Fridays to be treated fairly at work. What it’s taught me, and my trade union Unite, is that recruiting and organising young people really does mean starting at the bottom. My parents are teachers, and have trade union backgrounds. I grew up knowing what trade unions were. But for most of my colleagues, generally younger than me and born almost a decade after Thatcher resigned as prime minister, they didn’t have a clue. Thatcher’s vicious anti-union laws and the deindustrialisation of our communities left a generation that grew up without trade union members in their families.