The CWU’s annual conference meets this week against the backdrop of rapid changes in the communications sector and in the political situation facing the labour movement as a whole.

Doubtless conference will express the anger of CWU members at the government’s fire-sale of Royal Mail.

The danger now is that the coalition government will throw the public’s remaining 30 per cent of shares into the market to fund a one-off giveaway to some voters.

Opposing this and demanding fair regulation are immediate concerns for union members.

Equally, conference will register the union’s continued concerns that the market is failing to deliver the comprehensive roll-out of high-speed broadband that every part of the country, and our economy, needs.

And certainly conference will be concerned to promote the continuing campaign to ensure that agency workers do get genuinely equal treatment by getting an end to the legal loopholes on equal rights.

Many changes in the communications industry are driving down terms and conditions.

Only the greater unionisation of the workforce can defend living standards in this dizzying pace of change.  

Large parts of the postal, courier and telecommunications sector are only partly unionised or not unionised at all.

The future guarantee of living standards has to lie in sectoral agreements.

Greater collective bargaining can prevent the frenzied cutting of conditions that we are witnessing.

We cannot expect such an approach from the coalition government, which is relishing the casualisation of work.

It is necessary to persuade an incoming Labour government that an extension of such bargaining is essential to overcome poverty pay, generalised insecurity and economic stagnation.

However, it has to be said that the national debate about unions has rapidly deteriorated in the past 12 months.

We’ve seen the government calmly watch a venture capitalist threaten the livelihood of many thousands of people in Grangemouth and surrounding areas.

We’ve seen a fierce media and Tory attack on Labour’s link to the unions.

In response there’s been a navel-gazing exercise inside the Labour Party with the sole purpose of seriously loosening the link.

We have seen a Bill whose aim was supposedly to control the lobbying industry being turned into an Act that gags and limits the political campaigns of unions and charities.

The ruling Establishment really does not want to risk unions gaining growth and influence should an economic recovery actually commence in earnest.

We can take comfort that those with power and wealth are still concerned about the strength of the unions.

The task for unions is to grasp the changes in work and the workplace which create the potential for growth in membership and influence.

Among these changes are the decades-long feminisation of the paid workforce, the ever stronger multicultural character of society and the workplace and the radical challenges that the young are facing simply to have any quality of life.  

If the unions are capable of integrating these shifts into their organising and bargaining agendas, we can certainly expect a resumption of union growth.

These are both short and long-term challenges which we must address. We must also register the shifts in the political situation.

The coalition government is going to be defeated in 2015.

This is leading a variety of right-wing political forces to try and seriously influence Labour’s leadership.

The trade unions have to be part of a concerted push back against such manipulation.

The debates now under way about Labour’s election manifesto must not end in shrinking the offer to the electorate.

Labour needs to be committed to using all the resources and levers of government to expand the economy and raise living standards.

Let the Tories offer a vision of permanent austerity.

Labour should offer a prospect of fundamental change for the tens of millions of people who have felt the sting of wage and benefit cuts, of unemployment, underemployment and housing problems.

If Ed Miliband really wants to restore the “promise of Britain” then he must ensure that the manifesto commits Labour to educate, employ and house the next generation.

There has been much abstract talk, inside and outside the party, of Labour needing to provide a “transformative” political leadership.

Some of this talk is undoubtedly a way of hiding agendas for instituting austerity under the feint of devolving power.

Real transformation does not involve forcing larger numbers of councillors and civil servants to cut the population’s living standards.

It involves providing good terms and conditions in the workplace, in the community and in our national institutions.

The City of London believes we cannot afford this. Labour has to tell the electorate that we cannot afford to forgo such things.

Billy Hayes is general secretary of the Communication Workers Union.