Delegates at the opening session of the STUC congress in Dundee yesterday condemned the continuing attack on workers’ rights and trade union freedoms.

It was “a litmus test” for government at all levels — including Holyrood — STUC vice-president June Minnery said.

“Either they seek to support an agenda for collective bargaining or they cease with the platitudes about inequality, low wages and decent work.”

GMB member Ms Minnery told delegates: “In the independence referendum campaign we have heard an awful lot about the superior economic and social performance of the Nordic nations.

“But this rarely includes reference to the high levels of trade union membership and very wide collective bargaining coverage which are at the very centre of their social model — with up to 90 per cent of workers covered.”

Unite delegate Jackson Cullinane warned of dangers in the SNP’s white paper proposal for a “national convention on employment and labour relations.”

He said Grangemouth petrochemical plant owner Ineos “prided itself on employee involvement” yet still “unfairly dismissed conveners of shop stewards and mounted attacks on trade union facility time.”

Mr Cullinane called for industrial democracy and collective ownership to rise up the bargaining agenda.

He said Holyrood must ask itself if Scotland can “afford a situation where one of our biggest industries is in the hands of one man, sitting on a yacht of the coast of France and holding the country to ransom.”

Unison delegate Jane Carolan called for a new bargaining manifesto.

“We should not accept half measures,” she said, slamming the “obscene spectacle of the ‘working poor’ — in a job but without decent pay.”

John McInally of PCS condemned Tory Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude’s attack on “check-off” — deducting union dues directly from workers’ wages — as a blatant attempt to undermine PCS’s finances.

And delegates unanimously backed the STUC’s campaign against zero and short hours contracts and called for a ban across the public sector and at companies doing public-sector work.

Unite delegate Agnes Tolmie slammed the “national disgrace” of 85,000 Scots on zero-hours contracts.

“It’s the denial of human rights, our labour and trade union rights that really irks me,” she said.