LAST week, the 126th STUC in Dundee was a real showcase of worker solidarity.

At the 2023 Congress in the Caird Hall, speaker after speaker spoke of an industrial mobilisation on a scale not witnessed for over a decade, since the pensions disputes that followed the financial crisis.

Of course, the current cost-of-living crisis is hitting workers deeply. Food, fuel and transport prices are escalating, while wages stagnate.

Public-sector workers have suffered systemic below-inflation pay for years but now can take no more.

Whether employed by the local authority, education, health, communications, Scottish or UK governments, the workers who were hailed as pandemic heroes have stood up, fought for better pay and in some cases won it.

Congratulations to those union members who, following sustained threats and actual industrial action, won a better deal for members in their sector.

It was great to hear success stories at the Congress, knowing that these gains were only won by organised workers coming together to demand better.

By this Friday April 28 in the Civil Service sector, over 120,000 PCS members will have taken all-out strike action on three occasions this year for better pay, pensions and redundancy rights.

Thousands more have undertaken targeted sustained action disrupting airports, borders, passports, driving licences and tests, rural payments, coastguard, highways and central government communications among others.

With an increasingly reactionary right-wing Tory government in power at Westminster, there has been no offer for 2022-23 beyond the imposed 2 per cent, and the Treasury pay remit for 2023-24 pay limits civil servants to 4.5 per cent to 5 per cent, with no back pay or no lump sum offered to other public-sector workers.

Under the watch of the new First Minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, PCS members across Scottish devolved sector employers are currently balloting on an offer to settle 2022-23 pay, but the dispute will continue in the devolved sector for a real pay rise for 2023-24.

Meanwhile, the inquiry finding bullying of civil servants by former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab is the latest sordid story of contempt for their own workforce by many at senior government ministerial level.

On the ground, though, there is a new generation of civil servants coming through.

The PCS picket lines throughout this dispute are populated by young, diverse union members, many of whom have never been on strike before and are now keen to get involved in their union.

In some places, up to 80 striking members have turned up to support picket lines.

In Glasgow, where the Passport Office staff are on a five-week sustained strike, striking members have received widespread solidarity visitors from other trade union members in the city.

Breakfast deliveries, trays of coffee and homemade cakes are brought along. Music, dancing and pet parades are now a regular fun feature for this new generation of picketers.

The union organises regular online strike schools, “welcome to PCS” events and union advocate sessions for those who wish to get more active before becoming reps.

And the union is growing at a rate unseen since the Tory government withdrew our means to collect membership dues via check-off from the employer.

However, under the anti-union legislation, we now must reballot over 120,000 members to vote to continue the dispute over the next six months — but we are not going away, and PCS members are determined more than ever to win.

And as a movement, whether pay has been settled or, like civil servants, workers are still in dispute, we must stand together in solidarity.

In this cost-of-living crisis, no worker should be left behind — and that means we must always support the strikes.