The recent leaked news regarding a proposed public sector pay cut, disguised as a ‘pay freeze’, shows the disdain with which our government treats workers. Rather than focusing on supporting those who have lost their jobs and livelihoods during Covid-19, the Tories’ priorities are instead directed towards punishing those who have risked their lives to protect others on a daily basis.

Alongside their reluctance to feed hungry children during the holidays, to fund the costs of lockdown in the North, or to invest in our NHS at a time of acute crisis, this decision further highlights the inequality that the Conservatives choose to preside over – particularly when you consider that there always seems to be money available to increase the defence budget, or to hand their mates public contracts that fail to deliver.

For the trade union movement, this crisis focuses the mind. It emphasises the importance of unity — the idea that an injury to one is an injury to all — among all our sections, whether public or private, whether in frontline or at-risk jobs. Throughout the pandemic, unions have acted to keep workplaces and communities safe. They have done this by coming together, and by building their strength and organisation.

My union, the National Education Union, has grown by some 50,000 members this year as initiatives which brought education workers together to protect their workplaces, their students, and their communities reinforced among all staff the importance of collective action. Significantly, we have recruited over 4,000 new workplace reps and doubled our number of Black and LGBT+ reps. The union continues to grow, and we are well on our way to translating this new density into sustainable power.

For the last ten years, we have been focused on building strong workplace groups and recruiting a rep in every workplace – which is no mean feat when one considers that we organise in approximately 30,000 workplaces across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. As the pandemic arrived, we doubled down on that strategy.

We mobilised huge numbers of workers to call every workplace rep in the first few weeks of the crisis, initiating conversations that would help them to build capacity and develop bargaining structures. Workplace groups rolled out key safety initiatives, including the delivery of our Five Tests campaign to keep school and college openings to a safe minimum during the first wave of infections.

In many ways, it would have been easier to bypass these groups and speak to members and employers directly. However, by focusing our activity on forming workplace groups and training up workplace reps, we have shown in practical terms that we can build strength on the ground, and that leadership can exist at every level of our union.

We also developed our strategy and tools to deliver our new power. Covid-19 has forced many unions to re-evaluate their organising methods, and to embrace new technology; early on, the NEU adopted tools like Zoom and hosted online video conferences of 20,000 union members, led by our joint general secretaries.

At the same time, grassroots initiatives like the Celebrating Education project have sought to raise the voices of classroom educators on issues around pedagogy and curriculum, and the organisers of those initiatives have also hosted meetings with thousands. And rather than cancel our annual conference, we reconvened it as an online event, in which a unique app – NEU Democracy – allowed instant vote-counting based on the membership database.

This use of digital technology has been important for our union administration. Early in the crisis we also developed a checklist app to allow union groups to rate Covid-19 safety in their workplaces. Another new app was NEU Escalation, which takes workplace reps through the process of discussions with members and negotiations with management over workplace issues. The app prioritises collective approaches to dealing with issues, and allows groups to request branch support at any point during the process.

The crisis has been devastating for many communities, and we have a government which seems set on compounding the damage done. Within that damage, though, lie the seeds of trade union renewal. It’s our job to nurture these seeds and to grasp the opportunities presented by digital organising, while remaining firmly rooted in workplaces and communities. Despite the pandemic, we’ve made significant gains as a movement, and started the process of improving the lives of working people: we shouldn’t stop here.