Entering 2023 with a renewed resolve

Prospect General Secretary Mike Clancy reflects on the challenges of the past year and looks ahead to a critical year for the union movement.

It is becoming something of a cliché to reflect each December on how difficult a year it has been, and this year is no different. Coming out of the pandemic, we might have expected 2022 to be a welcome relief but domestic political and economic turmoil, war on European soil and the descent into a cost-of-living crisis contributed to another year of uncertainty and challenge.

One constant amongst the turbulence has been the unrelenting hard work of Prospect members across every sector and industry imaginable, and I want to highlight just a few of them as I reflect on the year gone by.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put defence at the top of the agenda. I am proud to lead a union whose members provide essential technical and logistical support to our armed forces, and who develop, build and maintain the weapons and equipment needed to keep our country safe and to support Ukraine against tyranny.

Our members working in energy have kept the lights on and are at the forefront of ensuring we have a safe, secure and green energy supply as we transition to a net zero future.

In the heritage sector, finally reopening after the pandemic, Prospect members were the guardians of British culture, preserving, educating, and delivering access for the public often in the face of obtuse opposition from culture warriors. They make sure everyone has the opportunity to learn what it actually means to be British – warts and all.

There has also been the welcome return of audiences to theatres and live events; with film and TV returning to volumes that reflect the UK’s global reputation in the creative sector. After the pain of the pandemic, our freelance members have begun to feel the benefits of the recovery.

And our members in public services have worked hard behind the scenes to keep the country running and minimise the disruption to people’s lives caused by failures in political leadership at the very top – and despite relentless attacks on them from ministers who should have known better.

Members meeting this moment, but government failing to

All the more impressive is that this work has been taking place during a year where the cost-of-living has soared. Our mission as a union and a movement is to do all we can to ensure 2023 marks a clean break from a decade of the erosion of working people’s standard of living.

Whilst our members have been meeting the moment, their government has not. Three administrations in the space of less than two months and each has in turn failed to get a grip on the challenges we face as a nation, particularly the fact that in too many parts of our economy, the hard work, expertise and dedication of our workforce – particularly the experts amongst Prospect’s membership – isn’t properly rewarded.

Worse still, when the opportunity to reverse decline arises, the government too often squanders it by sending work abroad instead of truly levelling up the country or dithering on the big decisions needed to turn things around.

They handed the recent Fleet Solid Support Ship contract to Spain, albeit with a promise of some jobs in Belfast and Appledore, giving no consideration to the benefits those contracts would bring to the economy, to security and to jobs and skills if they had awarded it to the British-led bid.

And despite the promise of a new nuclear reactor every year in the British Energy Security Strategy, it has dithered and delayed on vital infrastructure decisions like Sizewell C. This winter has hammered home the urgency of our energy security and net zero goals, and we need bold and fast action to meet them.

This year has also highlighted the holes in our employment rights safety net. There is no way that P&O should have been able to act the way it did in sacking all its staff with no notice and replacing them with cheaper workers. There is no way a multinational like Twitter should be able to leverage its global power to treat its workers the way it has in the UK without fear of action. And there is no way that government’s response should be to rip up decades of hard-won workers’ rights by automatically scrapping any EU-derived law by the end of 2023.

An opportunity and obligation for the union movement

These challenges also pose an opportunity – and an obligation – for our movement to rebalance things more in our favour.

This will be most visible in the public sector, where we will be balloting members across employers because they have told us that they have had enough of real-terms pay cuts and of attempts to remove or dilute their terms and conditions at work. After an overwhelming response to our indicative ballot, I expect we will see the most widespread industrial action by Prospect members in a decade. As ever, this action comes as a last resort after intransigence by a government that simply does not get it.

You don’t need to take my word for that – I have never seen the wider public so supportive of workers taking industrial action. We must leverage that support, and the pressure our action will exert, to get the deal that our members deserve, and which will tackle the recruitment and retention challenges pay levels and structures are causing in the public sector.

Next year will be about what type of labour market are we going to have for the decade ahead. Is it more deregulation and power in the hands of employers, or will we learn the pandemic lessons and create a labour market built on good work and worker voice? Unions will need to not only use their traditional strengths and draw on core values, but innovate and think differently about how we ensure we are relevant and influential.

There will be many challenges ahead, but I am confident Prospect is well positioned to overcome them. A union’s strength comes from its members, and we continue to grow in size – but we will not rest on our laurels.

Thank you for your work this year, both in your workplace and for your union. Enjoy your break over Christmas – and then come back in 2023 with renewed resolve to win – and a New Year’s resolution to recruit a member in your workplace.