KEY workers took centre stage at the Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday as a postal worker and a nurse addressed the 200,000-strong gathering at Britain’s biggest celebration of the labour movement.

The crowd was fully aware of the theme of this year’s gala: key workers and the role they played, sometimes at the cost of their lives, during the coronavirus pandemic.

Postal worker Rohan Kon and nurse Holly Johnston, both from Sheffield, were each greeted with rousing cheers and thunderous applause as they went to the rostrum and told of the experiences they and their co-workers underwent as they carried out their vital duties.

Ms Kon, a member of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), said that if the crisis was “stripped of everything else,” it was workers who kept services going.

“Now I have workers coming to me crying saying they can’t sleep for worrying about paying their heating bills,” she said.

“The chief executive of Royal Mail says ‘pull together.’ But we have nothing in common with someone taking home £1 million a year.

“We have just made record-breaking profits for Royal Mail. So where is our record-breaking pay?”

She said she and her colleagues are ready to fight.

“This is my first job with a strong workplace union, and last week I voted to go on strike for the first time,” she said. 

“We are sending the biggest message that we are going to stick together as a class.”

She said postal workers will not “be left begging for scraps.”

“No worker should have to beg,” she said. “If our unions stand together we are not just unbreakable, we are solid steel.”

Ms Johnston works on a cancer ward in Sheffield and is a member of the GMB union. She contracted coronavirus and still suffers from the long-term effects.

She praised rail union RMT for “leading the fight.”

“Workers have never had a better chance of getting the Tories out and winning pay rises across all sectors,” she said. 

“NHS workers have had enough of being treated with contempt. We are organising like never before.”