Fighting for you during this cost-of-living crisis

Prospect general secretary Mike Clancy writes that we are doing everything we can to support, protect and defend our members through the tough times ahead.

I know that today’s announcement that the energy price cap will rise to £3,549 per year for a typical household from October will be deeply worrying to many members already facing the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.

Bills up, prices up, inflation up, wages not keeping pace. This will be a tough winter for millions of people. For too many workers, work no longer pays in the face of rising costs and greater insecurity.

A new Prime Minister will shortly take office after a summer of inaction where the debate has all been about a small and particular audience. It’s not been about the country and the challenges we face. The new occupant of Downing Street’s first act must be to announce substantial support to help households and industry to get through the winter and beyond.

Prospect has been taking a leading role in supporting members and branches on pay deals and action to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. At a national level, we have been calling for social tariffs and regulatory reform to be part of the solution, but it is clear that substantial state action is required too. In our sectors and branches we have been using our collective expertise to bargain for better pay and working conditions.

We have said for years that there was a looming energy security crisis, so this is not just about the tragic war in Ukraine and the consequential impact on energy supply. Therefore the new PM must show vision and that they are serious about delivering long-term energy security to prevent this kind of  crisis happening again. That means announcing the government’s investment decision on Sizewell C as the first step towards the next generation of nuclear power, and committing to expanding our renewable energy footprint.

The broken energy market must be fixed and as Prospect’s recent announcement of a landmark recognition agreement with offshore wind company Ørsted demonstrates we must also meet our commitments to delivering a just transition to Net Zero.

In all of our sectors, we are fighting and negotiating for members feeling the squeeze.

In June, our #WorldClassHeritage campaign was launched outside Parliament, where we met with MPs and Peers to demand an end to second class pay for workers in our museums and heritage sites.

Prospect’s #ServingOurSociety campaign has been highlighting the work of our public service members, and we’ve been defending civil servants from the constant attacks and negative briefing from ministers who should know better. We are fighting proposals to arbitrarily cut civil service headcount by 91,000 and attempts to slash redundancy terms by a third, and this week called on the Cabinet Office to rethink the 2-3% cap on pay increases for civil servants.

In our Bectu sector, we’ve negotiated with the Society of London Theatres to deliver a 10% increase to minimum rates for crew working in London’s commercial West End venues.

This is just some of the work that branches and the wider union are doing to stand up for members.

We’re also joining forces with other unions as part of the TUC’s #WeDemandBetter campaign, joining in the national lobby of Parliament and Westminster rally on Wednesday, 2 November, and the TUC is asking workers to visit their local MPs at constituency surgeries on 2 November to tell them how the cost-of-living crisis is affecting them.

At the TUC national demonstration earlier in the summer, I called on workers to go back to their workplaces and demonstrate that trade unionism is alive and kicking. It’s not enough just to march, we have to organise and build a response that endures and makes change happen.

That is our mission as a movement as we enter a difficult autumn. It requires us all to step up, to recruit members to our branches and organise in our workplaces, because our movement’s strength lies in its numbers. A better future will not be granted to us – we will have to fight for it.

The Conservative leadership campaign over the summer has felt at times like it is taking place in a parallel universe, divorced from the pressures the public are facing and ignoring the dark economic clouds that are gathering.

In the coming months, Prospect will be fighting alongside our fellow unions to put help for working people at the top of the new government’s agenda. Let members be reassured, and ministers be warned: we stand willing and able to use every industrial and legal route to protect and defend our members.