In the course of just a few weeks, a 12,000-strong online community has sprung up to defend UK workers hit by the coronavirus crisis. The ‘Workforce Coronavirus Support Group’ is advising workers about Covid-related injustices, shutting down construction sites forcing employees to work, organising campaigns for NHS PPE through Zoom calls, and bringing unorganised workers into the labour movement.

Back in January, Stuart Melvin, a former organiser for UNISON and the ACORN renter’s union, responded to frustration after the general election by setting up a group called ‘Workforce.’ It started as an attempt to bring together people interested in combining the distributed organising models of ‘new’ movements – Fossil Free, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter – with the goals of the labour movement. Around 40 organisers signed up. They were inspired by where this approach had worked to win audacious goals, like the 2018 US teachers’ strikes, where tens of thousands of education workers staged unlawful strike action despite weak unions, winning wage increases and better school funding.

“We were going to spend most of this year planning Workforce out,” says Melvin, who envisioned a slow-and-steady organising approach that would build a sustainable organisation. “But then it became obvious that Covid-19 was going to be a massive threat to workers in the UK. One bright spark said we should do something for workers affected by Covid-19. So we set up a Facebook group – and it just exploded.”

As the crisis escalated, the group rapidly expanded. The huge scale of bosses taking advantage of the crisis was laid bare. Stories came in of employers telling their workers they can’t be furloughed, despite clear evidence to the contrary. People’s wages were being cut because they were working from home. Supermarkets were systematically cutting the pay of workers with non-UK passports. A large number of the people seeking help had never belonged to a trade union.

“My boss has furloughed all the staff including himself and his wife,” writes a group member posting anonymously. “But he’s told us we have to keep working and to lie to anyone who asks what we’re doing.” Group members respond with encouragement and suggestions. It turns out the boss has helpfully sent his staff email evidence of his intention to commit fraud. The members help the anonymous worker come up with a plan.

For every one of the stories posted on the group, advice streams in, along with encouragement to join a union. While the support group has experienced trade union staff and legal experts to hand, a lot of the advice is provided peer to peer, worker to worker. This reduces the dependence on a small group of core organisers and allows people to empower and guide each other.

Along with advice for individuals, Workforce is helping unorganised workers to realise their collective power. They have helped construction workers band together to shut down their sites and get furloughed. They have used the ‘clap for carers’ to organise to get PPE for health workers, and talks about the political origins of this crisis. “We’re setting up Zoom calls for training and inductions for workers who have never organised before,” Melvin says. “We’re supporting people to organise themselves, to get that experience of building a collective voice together.”

Through the Faceook group, they are also organising solidarity for workers across the world affected by this global crisis. They organised a call with over a hundred attendees, speaking to health workers in Pakistan on hunger strike for PPE. On March 28th, International Workers’ Memorial Day, they helped to coordinate calls for PPE across the UK and beyond, with the slogan “remember the dead, fight like hell for the living.”

The Workforce Coronavirus Support Group was born out of necessity, and in some ways is the opposite of the meticulous, step-by-step approach that experienced union organisers use to engage unorganised workers. But in an emergency, they had to act fast. There’s still a need for long-term vision of using the power of social movements to boost the worker’s movement. The people involved in Workforce would be the first to tell you it’s not a new concept, but it’s a vital one to prepare for what comes next – inevitable attempts at further austerity, deregulation and attacks on what remaining workers’ rights we have.

It’s no exaggeration to say that trade unions have saved millions in this crisis from destitution. Scandinavian trade unions hammered out deals for unprecedented state intervention from reluctant governments. The Tories were pressured into following suit by trade unions here and by the need to come up with a package that would compare with ones agreed elsewhere in Europe.  Every day brings fresh stories of unions up and down the country avoiding mass layoffs and fighting individual unfair practices.

But there are even bigger battles to come. And whether unorganised workers victimised by this crisis can be brought into the union movement will form a big part of the answer to what kind of world we can build after we emerge from lockdown.