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UNIONS must make the voice of austerity-hit workers heard “louder and stronger than ever,” Usdaw president Jane Jones urged today, as she opened the organisation’s 76th annual delegate meeting.
Despite widespread “despair at the injustice of it all,” Ms Jones issued a rally cry for the retail union’s 356,000 members to fight ahead of a probable general election next year.
Speaking in Blackpool’s Empress Ballroom, Ms Jones accused Tory ministers of “failing time and time again to take the urgent action needed to support low-paid workers and protect our high streets” amid soaring inflation.
“Instead, they spend their time on infighting and lurching from one scandal to the next as ordinary people feel the pain.”
Usdaw research suggests three-quarters of its members are struggling with poor mental health amid crippling financial pressures.
But Ms Jones stressed: “We can do more than just despair at the injustice of it all — we can give workers a voice and make that voice louder and stronger than ever.”
To laughter from delegates, Blackpool Mayor Kathryn Benson apologised that her late father, ex-mayor Leo Pomfret, was once required to show Margaret Thatcher around the ballroom.
