AFTER five years of austerity and with a majority Conservative government determined to attack trade union rights, this year’s TUC Congress comes at a significant time for the trade union movement.

The CWU’s two motions both stem from an urgent need for us to reassert trade union values in society today.

On September 11, the day before Congress began, the Labour leadership result was announced the hoped-for victory for Jeremy Corbyn became the first step for the movement in fighting back.

But whatever happens with the Labour Party, I am clear that trade unions cannot sit back in the hope that a new government will come round to our way of thinking in five years’ time.

Many of the motions on the agenda this year — as they have done for the past five years — talk about the need for broad campaigns and protests against austerity and the Trade Union Bill, and the CWU fully supports this. But we need to recognise the importance of what we are now facing.

While coverage of the Bill has focused on the intricate details of thresholds and turnout, it is about criminalising our members, removing our industrial strength and ending the political voice of trade unions in the future.

The response of the trade union movement must reflect the seriousness of these steps and the threat they pose to the survival of unions as we know them today.

Motion 63, which we have tabled, sets out the two key measures the CWU believes must form part of a strategy against this, not simply in campaigning but in connecting our political and industrial agendas.

First, we are calling for a co-ordinated day and an ongoing programme of action from unions across the country.

I want to be clear, and I will be saying to Congress, that this is not about us putting our heads down and running. We need a proper strategy for co-ordinated action to be effective.

Second, we are calling for the development of a Workers’ Charter setting out the central aims that every union should pursue in collective bargaining.

If the government will not implement protections for minimum employment standards to prevent a race to the bottom, the trade union movement must unite and work together to progress this for itself.

Neither of these issues should be taken lightly and both need to be developed by the movement in the coming months.

But we do not have the luxury of time and we are therefore calling on the general council to prepare a report outlining a strategy including both of these for a Special Conference by March 2016.