THIS weekend, young workers from across Scotland will meet in Clydebank for the 85th annual Scottish TUC Youth Conference.

The theme this year is Unity Over Division: Young Workers Defeating the Far Right. The importance of this theme will not be lost on most Morning Star readers. The Morning Star has been one of the few, if not the only, daily newspapers expressing not just the dangers of Reform UK dominance at the ballot box, but also the solution.

The trade union movement has been clear from the start; words from politicians only count for so much. Talk is cheap. It’s not enough for politicians to spout words of condemnation against the right — we need action.

Action that secures dignity for Scottish workers. Action that makes it harder for the right to scapegoat migrants. When every one of the quarter of a million people on the waiting list for social housing gets what they need, it’s much more difficult to say that the reason for the housing shortage is migrants.

The situation for young people in Scotland is somewhat bleak. Zero-hour contracts, lack of graduate jobs, and failing public services have plagued us for almost two decades.

A young person leaving school can no longer expect to get a fulfilling job for life. They can no longer expect that any employment they do find will be secure enough to support their future family. They can no longer expect simple necessities like being able to get a GP appointment or to have an affordable council gym nearby.

We’ve had decades of governments that are ideologically committed to inserting the market into every sector of our lives. Our relationships are dictated by dating app algorithms, there are few social spaces to spend time with friends without having to spend our limited money, and we’re sold the pipe dream of home ownership.

Increasingly, young people are becoming jaded with the Establishment parties, which have more regard for profits for the rich than the wellbeing of the majority. Reform UK’s stated intention of pursuing younger voters is a dangerous one when the case to be made against the prevailing order is one that everyone can see and feel.

The example set by the Enable Scotland workers who are currently in dispute over pay should be a beacon to any anti-racist campaigner. This is a diverse group of workers in the care sector: those beginning their working lives, those nearing the end, migrant workers, and workers who have lived their whole lives in Scotland.

Their demands are explicitly political, challenging the lack of funding from the Scottish government for third sector social care and calling for sectoral bargaining. The Enable workers are clear, there is more than enough wealth in this country to afford carers a decent living, it’s simply in the wrong hands.

Often, Scottish workers find politics alienating, that it’s something that happens once every four or five years down in Westminster or Holyrood: “Politics isn’t for people like me.” This strike, and indeed any strike, shows that ordinary workers can take politics back into their own hands.

Enable Scotland workers on picket lines often say things like “I just want to be able to afford food” — this becomes explicitly political when they see who it is denying them that right, when the Scottish government say its simply a dispute between Enable and Unison Scotland, when they wash their hands of the fact that it is the government that holds the purse strings.

All Enable Scotland workers are inspiring; however, the young workers on strike and leading the dispute are an example to us all. They’ve been part of a growing section of young workers who have squashed the notion that a union is something your grandad was in, that they’re a thing of the past. They’ve given credence to the assertion that young workers aren’t the future of the movement, but the here and now.

Their demands to be paid their worth is the latest in a long and proud history of workers demanding dignity. Their pride in their work and their devotion to their service users has the ability to resonate in post-industrial Scotland, where demands made by Upper Clyde Shipbuilders for the right to work are still in living memory. The UCS workers, like those at Enable, had pride in their work and also intimately understood the political aspect of their demands. Another group of workers that fought and won, across generational divides.

This is the antidote to far-right rhetoric. Workers in struggle. Uniting against the odds. Realising that there’s more that unites us than divides us.

At this STUC Youth Conference, young workers are throwing down the gauntlet to the far right and establishment parties. We are saying that the hand we are given isn’t good enough. It’s more than a reshuffle that’s needed; we need a whole new card game. Young workers, as they have at Enable, will lead that charge.

Josh Morris is an STUC Youth Committee member.