AS trade unionists from across the country meet in Brighton for this year’s TUC Congress, there’s a good chance that by the time we leave here on Wednesday evening a general election will have been called. 

Even if it hasn’t, it feels almost certain that we will have one before the year is out. And for the movement this is a huge opportunity. 

There is no doubt in my mind that Labour is in a position where it is promising the single most ambitious programme to grow trade unions, and to enhance collective and individual employment rights, that this country has ever seen. 

Sectoral collective bargaining, new access and recognition rules, a ban on insecure employment, a genuine living wage and the repeal of anti-trade union laws are just part of a bold agenda from Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell to deliver an irreversible shift in wealth and power. 

For all of the focus on the politics of Westminster, I am clear that trade unions have to come away from Brighton talking to our members about Labour’s programme and how it will transform this country. 

Fed by corporate greed and bandit capitalism, the defining issue of our time is the rapidly growing social and economic inequality faced by millions of people across Britain every day, and what has happened in the world of work over the last few decades is, without a doubt, at the root of this.

But Congress must also be about putting forward our strategy as trade unions, irrespective of who is in government. 

The CWU’s two motions this week again build on our call for a new deal for workers and set out the campaign for the movement to deliver this. 

The first motion calls upon the TUC to re-evaluate its priorities and get behind the new deal for workers as a major public campaign, co-ordinating co-operation between all unions to end inter-union competition, promoting recruitment of new members, building towards a national day of action on May 1 2020, and agreeing cross-union common bargaining agendas at a sectoral level. 

The second motion outlines core demands for the campaign, and includes ambitious but achievable aims including a four-day working week with no reduction in pay by 2025; the introduction of worker ownership funds, giving a stake of private companies to their workers; and maximum pay ratios of 20:1 across all employers to tackle inequality.

Campaigning for a new deal was made TUC policy at conference last year — now it’s time to make it happen. 

Fewer words, more action. We know that trade unions will only survive, and win, by working together. 

A charter has already been agreed on what constitutes a good deal for workers and while this is fantastic progress we need to do more to sharpen our demands and reassert our strength as a movement. 

This country needs, and deserves, a truly radical cross-union campaign. We cannot sit by and wait for political change; we must mobilise now to challenge unacceptable levels of in-work poverty, rampant job insecurity, the growing intensification of work and increasing pressures that workers now find themselves under. 

Never before in my lifetime have I seen workers doing so much for so little. We’ve had the biggest squeeze on wages since the Napoleonic wars, we’ve got the longest working hours of any European country bar Greece and Austria and some 14 million people live in poverty, 60 per cent of whom are in working families. 

And as CWU members know all too well, technology is being introduced in a way that leaves workers feeling like common criminals under permanent surveillance. 

So while we’ve never had a better opportunity to secure the change we want under a Labour government, there has never been a greater need to fight for it and for unions to come together with a proper strategy whatever happens politically. 

A new deal for our country starts with a new deal for workers. Join the movement, back this campaign and make sure your union is involved. 

Winning a bold new deal for workers starts with each and every single one of you.

Dave Ward is general secretary of the CWU.