UNIONS have welcomed the fourth consecutive annual rise in membership, announced today by the Office for National Statistics.

The 120,000-member increase last year brought total union membership to 6.6 million, 400,000 more than in 2016, but half the 13.2 million peak reached in 1979, when the notoriously anti-union Thatcher government was elected.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said that the Covid pandemic had “brutally exposed the terrible working conditions and insecurity many workers face,” and that thousands had turned to unions during the crisis to protect their jobs, safety and rights.