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Morning Star conference salutes rising militancy among young trade unionists

FAST FOOD strikes offer a ray of hope to unions in engaging with young workers, speakers at a Morning Star conference said yesterday.

Delegates at the Scotland’s Youth conference heard that walkouts at McDonald’s, TGI Friday’s, UberEats and Wetherspoon’s were a sign that precarious workers can fight back.

Labour National Policy Forum member Caitlin Kane said that last week’s co-ordinated action marked an end to the “period of the political centre, when you couldn’t tell the difference between the two [main] parties.”

She said the transformation of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn made it more possible than ever to “dump neoliberalism into the dustbin of political history.”

Ms Kane told the conference: “The strike filled me with hope because I think it’s indicative of change.”

But Unite Community organiser Jamie-Max Caldwell, who also draws cartoons for the Morning Star, said the backlash that this week’s strikes faced also emphasised the scale of the hurdle facing unions.

Social media posts in support of striking workers had attracted dismissive comments asking why fast-food workers should be paid £10 an hour, he recalled. Some had identified themselves as working in other precarious sectors, such as social care.

“Pissing in my garden isn’t going to make yours any greener,” he said.

Aberdeen-based Unite industrial officer Tommy Campbell, who co-ordinates the union’s activities in the offshore oil and gas sector, urged the movement to return to a class-based analysis.

“The problem we have in our society is not one of poverty, it’s one of wealth,” he said.

Professor Ruth Dukes, who sits on the board of the Institute of Employment Rights, said Labour’s proposed shake-up of workers’ rights should not be seen as far left.

“Compared to what we have today, these proposals are radical and left wing,” she said. “[But] all this would do is bring labour laws back into line with international standards.”

Conrad Landin is Morning Star Scotland editor.

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