SCOTLAND is a nation proud of its industrial heritage. We should be. Dundee, one of our leading cities, has played a prominent role in the struggles of our country, with workers leading front and centre. It is those workers who have shown over the past two years that where they lead, the politicians follow.

That’s why, among other reasons, we’re proud to have brought STUC Congress back to the city for 2024. At the Caird Hall we’ll make our case. When workers unite, we win. And believe me, workers have won and won big for the movement.

Whether it’s the local authority workers winning £600 million more than Cosla were willing to pay them after taking strike action.

Whether it’s in education where we’ve saw EIS-Fela members fighting back against savage further education cuts and, after three months of strike action, securing no compulsory redundancies within their institution.

In higher education, UCU members stood firm and won their battle, over a painstaking five-year period, to defend their pensions and conditions by — you guessed it — taking strike action.

I’ll continue. Trade unions in South Lanarkshire won more than £20 million in back pay for 1,000 care workers. FBU members delivering a pay deal after delivering a thumping mandate for strike action. Unite, GMB and Unison members getting increased pay at Scottish Water, plus a reduction in the working week.

Plus more. Unite has won a 17.4 per cent pay rise for thousands of construction workers and also laughed all the way to the bank with a 19 per cent rise for Stand Comedy Club workers.

Elsewhere, for GMB Scotland members in McTears, they won £125,000 for the workforce. It’s that same union which, just last week, led from the front in demanding equal pay for female care home workers.

In the last 12 months alone, across Scotland, we’ve seen more than 450 strikes, involving more than 165,000 workers. This has, according to STUC research, resulted in more than £4 billion pounds extra in the pockets of unionised workers throughout the country. From Dundee to Dunfermline, Clydebank to Crossmyloof, there are workers the length and breadth of Scotland that carry a union card that has paid for itself many times over.

But please don’t mistake this crescendo listing examples of successful industrial action sound like a resounding endorsement for taking strike action in and of itself. It’s not. It’s often repeated but it doesn’t make it any less true: workers shouldn’t have to go on strike just to improve or sometimes to even defend their working conditions. Care, education, teaching, clerical, refuse, janitorial staff, NHS workers, ambulance drivers and many more besides shouldn’t have to strike. But, for those in power still under any illusion to the contrary, workers can and will do what is necessary to defend their services.

It’s because those in power, namely the UK Tory government, abhor us so much, presumably because of the power that ordinary working people in their collective masses yield, they’ve clamped down on us.

The Tory Strikes Bill fundamentally threatens our right to strike. It actively makes it harder for us to fight and win on behalf of our movement. It puts restrictions and ballot thresholds on workers that the politicians would never place on themselves. It’s another example, in a long list of horror show attacks on workers, of a Tory government fearing so much for its own safety that it tries to attack those they ideologically oppose.

Whether it’s demonising workers, migrants, the poor or unemployed, the UK government has thrown everything at the electoral kitchen sink to squeeze out the very last vestiges of their rotten administration.

Congress is united about many things. We also may disagree. But we all, resoundingly and without equivocation, will stand firm in launching out of office for good this Tory government that has caused irreparable harm to our communities.

Those next in charge, hopefully a Labour UK government, cannot just hope to be marginally better than those who came before them and just naively assume our movement will be appeased. Not at all. We aim for better.

It’s why we’re pleased that, with the first 100 days of government, Labour has committed to implementing their New Deal for Working People. A ban on zero-hour contracts; employment rights from day one; Fair Pay Agreements to reverse the decades-long decline in collective bargaining and the repeal of the Tories’ pernicious anti-strike laws: these measures represent the biggest expansion of workers’ rights in a generation.

Despite Labour peers like Peter Mandelson urging party high-heid yins not to “rush” reforms, we tell those who profess to represent the labour movement in Parliament that reforms to workers’ rights cannot wait a moment longer.

That same principle applies to those on Holyrood. Yes, it’s without question that industrial relations with the Scottish government are different than those with the UK government and with good reason. We’ve worked hard to ensure workers’ voices are represented at the highest levels of devolved government here in Scotland.

Be in no doubt however that when workers organise in Scotland, we make sure the Scottish government are put on notice. It’s precisely why, make no mistake about it, the Scottish government would not have introduced a new tax rate for those earning between £75,000-125,000 in the most recent Budget had it not been for the organised masses of workers that the STUC represent, demanding progressive change.

Pleasing, yes. A sign of the progressive powers of the Parliament being used for good. But we are far from done. As the past 12 months since our last Congress has shown us, we’re a movement, not a monument. We don’t stand still and allow those who otherwise will seek to exploit us the space and freedom to do so. The Scottish government can, and should, go much further and faster on delivering the widespread tax reforms needed to fund our public services, using the full powers of the Parliament to raise £3.7 billion a year more in tax revenues.

This is vital money for a population in need of good-quality, high-standard public services, underpinned by fine public-sector workers.

It is those workers and all other workers across our economy that I pay tribute to. Those who have stood up for their workplaces, their colleagues, their services and for those even further afield. It’s a tribute I pay to all those showing support for the people of Palestine, standing shoulder to shoulder with them in their hour of need in the face of unrelenting persecution and genocide.

We will not forget them. We will not abandon them.

Our Congress stands firm with all those across our country who take the lead when they have been failed by their governments. As has been shown, its workers winning together that brings change to our country, not the politicians who follow behind us.