THE bread and circuses will soon reach fever pitch: the world’s biggest sport chasing the world’s biggest trophy. Yet some will want to miss out.

Chicago refused to host when Fifa demanded a blank cheque, sparing itself the heavy financial burden that Fifa and the Olympics often place on host cities and their taxpayers.

New York, meanwhile, has tried to charge more than $100 for local train fares that usually cost under $20, cancelled a fan fest because people cannot afford to attend, and seen Mayor Zohran Mamdani launch a lottery for “affordable” World Cup tickets for New Yorkers.

Not only cities. Some of the great footballers also missed out on a World Cup, by fate not by choice. Brian Clough, a prolific striker for Middlesbrough during his playing career, scored 267 goals in 297 games, one of the highest goals-per-game ratios in English football history.

Andy Cole, at Manchester United and Newcastle, was repeatedly overlooked in favour of Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham. The great Irish midfielder Liam Brady missed Italia ’90, Ireland’s first World Cup, having retired just as the qualifying campaign began.

Ian Rush of Wales, Eric Cantona of France, and George Weah of Liberia all missed out too, despite Weah’s prolific record with AC Milan and his place as the first African player to win the Ballon d’Or.

After many years of activism in higher education, I have seen countless unsung trade unionists do the daily work of organising with little recognition of what they achieve. They may never be considered for a TUC Congress award, and that takes nothing away from those who have, but many unnamed activists have given huge amounts of unpaid time, energy and resources, often at real cost to their jobs and family lives.

One rep I know was disciplined for accompanying outsourced members to meetings across London, far from his own workplace; another faced similar treatment for challenging a senior facilities manager who refused to address inadequate PPE.

One rep was hospitalised from exhaustion after regularly rising before dawn to meet cleaners on campus at 5.30am, before starting their own job at 9am. An outsourced security rep won enhanced overtime and regular health assessments for a team working 12-hour shifts to offset low pay.

Another, a highly capable rep of Bangladeshi heritage, wrote detailed negotiating papers and secured improvements to maternity pay, paternity leave, paid carers’ leave, menopause policy, learning funds, and safeguarding protections for female staff and students facing harassment from academics and fellow students.

Will these local gains become more widespread now the Employment Rights Bill has passed into law? Delegates at Unison national delegate conference this week will welcome the Employment Rights Act and the protections it offers individual workers. But the Act focuses mainly on individual rights, with little legal reset for trade union rights, which remain severely restricted. In effect, it takes us back only to 2010, leaving many problems of outsourcing unresolved.

Anti-trade union laws did not begin in 2016; restrictive legislation stretches back to the Thatcher and Major governments, which pushed unions into workplace-by-workplace organising by removing key legal routes to collective rights.

Solidarity and collective pressure were limited, ballots made secret, union power fragmented, union leaders vilified, and strike mandates weakened by protections for workers who chose not to take action.

This helped pave the way for the deindustrialisation of the 1980s, followed by privatisations and outsourcing as key parts of public services were handed to start-up facilities companies that later became huge global groups with ex-Tory and New Labour MPs on their boards. When workers were transferred to these firms, many lost union recognition; where workers retained collective strength, employers had time to weaken it or minimise the impact of industrial action.

The ERA, welcome though it is, falls far short of what is needed to correct these historic injustices and grave attacks on working people. Labour has caved to reassure business interests, perhaps reflecting the influence of the McSweeney team, which was central to policy-making under Starmer’s leadership.

Trade union rights must be restored and extended equally to all workers, whether permanent, outsourced or supposedly self-employed. Yet the ERA omits the promised single “worker” status, which is vital if everyone who works is to have equal legal protection and a clear route to challenge employers. Basic gains should not depend on months or years of organising by workplace lay reps.

Sectoral bargaining could set fair, enforceable standards across whole industries. Without it, reps will be left to organise workplace by workplace, bring individual tribunal claims, and use their unions collectively to expose employer wrongdoing and share hard-won knowledge.

Easing the strain on employment tribunals is unrealistic while workplace remedies remain so weak. Cases keep piling up because employers face little pressure to make measurable improvements. David Lammy appears to see justice reform as the quicker route, including greater efficiency through removing jury trials in some cases. That sets a dangerous precedent and employers will be watching closely.

Labour’s New Deal for Working People promised stronger collective bargaining rights and sectoral fair pay agreements to tackle insecurity, inequality, discrimination, weak enforcement and persistently low pay. But the Act offers only weakened versions, particularly for school support staff and adult social care. These fall short of genuine collective bargaining because ministers can control the agenda, panel membership and final decisions.

The government could instead have replaced fragmented bargaining with a single sector-wide forum. Thank heavens still for lay reps.

Paul Whitehouse is a Unison steward at the London School of Economics. He is also on the Unison Greater London Region higher education committee