The year 1987 saw all sorts. Margaret Thatcher was re-elected; the first IKEA store opened in Britain; and workers at British Telecom (BT) held their last national strike.

Over three decades later, and having morphed into BT, Openreach, and EE, it looks like the last part of 1987 is happening all over again.

Despite the best efforts of the CWU and our members to resolve this dispute, BT Group’s vicious programme of compulsory redundancies and site closures has forced our executive to sanction a national official industrial action ballot.

The exact timing of this ballot will be set in the next few weeks, but we are now drinking in the last chance saloon in terms of the possibility of a pre-strike resolution.

Many people are quick to attack unions in moments like this, but let me be absolutely clear: this union has dealt with major change for decades. We have modernised the company – and not once have we needed compulsory redundancies.

This is about the ideology of a management team who have taken the decision to sideline the union, and prefer to act like a gig economy employer than the blue-chip one they sets out to be.

If BT, Openreach, and EE are taking the sustained period of industrial stability as a sign that our members will not support strike action then they are very much mistaken.

In a December consultative ballot, CWU members delivered a 97 percent Yes vote on a turnout of over 75 percent. We expect those same members to rise up and smash the anti-union ballot thresholds in a few weeks’ time.

Members of the public and businesses across Britain will be wondering how this strike, if it takes place, will impact on them.

Put simply, without our members, there is no home working or home shopping. There are no Zoom calls or video conferences. CWU members keep the country online.

Strike action is, as always, the last resort, and we want to reach a negotiated settlement with the employer. As a sign of our sincerity in this, we have offered the company a period of stability in which we enter serious negotiations, and they pause their programme of cuts. BT Group have dismissed this offer.

In the next few weeks, telecom workers up and down the country will mobilise like never before. In the absence of being able to call mass meetings, we will meet our members online, communicating via podcasts, videos and live broadcasts. The irony is that we’re fighting to ensure everyone gets to enjoy those forms of communication.

As key workers, our members have been let down badly by BT Group. This time last year, you clapped these workers who kept our country connected – it’s time to back them this spring.