The strike wave of 2022-2023 marks the reawakening of working-class resistance. Not since the defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers in their historic battle with Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government has there been such a sustained and widespread wave of industrial struggles.

The reasons for these strikes are not hard to find: decades of low pay, worsening conditions, cuts in public services, have been intensified by the current cost-of-living crisis. Real declines in the standard of life for millions of working people cannot be sustained and must be resisted.

We are rank-and-file trade unionists who have been involved in the current strikes and who are fully aware of the enormous stakes that are currently at risk for working people. We have, and will continue, to support our union leaders when they lead strikes, resist deals that do not improve our wages and conditions, work to extend strike action to make it most effective, and co-ordinate such action across the working class movement.

We will resist all attempts to conclude deals which fall short of protecting our wages, conditions, and services. We understand that the final decision about whether a settlement meets the aspirations of union members can only be made democratically by a vote of all those involved in a dispute.

We reject the privatisation and casualisation of work in the gig economy and fully support all those who insist on their right to be treated as workers, to be unionised, and to conclude collective bargaining agreements with employers.

We will oppose any attempts to divide workers from one another or to play one union, or one group, of workers off against another. We stand for the unity of all working people above and beyond all differences and distinctions whatsoever.

We fully understand the political dimension of these strikes. The government is acting on a virulent and destructive free-market ideology and it seeks to use new anti-union laws to further restrict the right of workers to join unions and conduct effective strike action.

We reject the anti-union laws, past and present, in their entirety. Workers who are not legally able to combine together and withdraw their labour are forced labourers. Such conditions, typical of authoritarian regimes, are unacceptable.

We consider that links across the union movement and between workers in all unions will increase the effectiveness of the strikes and give those who are risking jobs and pay to win these disputes a direct say in how they are conducted.

We call on all trade unionists to affiliate to this movement.

We call on all trade unionists to raise money for the strike funds set up to ameliorate the hardship that some strikers are now facing.

We call on all trade unionists to resist the anti-union laws.

We call on all trade unionists to back the protests called at the Tory Party conference in October.