Workplace democracy would allow us to come out of the pandemic with a greater sense of control over the future
With most formal Covid restrictions all but melted away, freedom prevails. Back to the workplace, Tory ministers make demands of our newly liberated workforce: the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, warns young workers that continuing to work from home may risk their careers. Though markedly softer in tone than last summer – when ministers demanded, through the press, to “Go back to work or risk losing your job” – the message is clear, at least in England: pubs and bars may be thronged again, but the ancien regime of work must be restored in full.
Yet as wars have disrupted the old ways of doing things, spurring on demands that widespread sacrifice should be rewarded with new rights and freedoms, so it should be with the pandemic. In her successful campaign to become general secretary of Britain’s largest private sector union, Unite, Sharon Graham said the organisation “should get back to the workplace and deliver what it says on the trade union tin – a relentless fight for jobs, pay and conditions”.