Today‘s news over Labour’s workers’ rights proposals have got some sections of the media screaming. The Daily Mail — once the chief cheerleader of Liz Truss and her ‘true Tory budget’ — have laughably claimed that legislation to protect workers will damage the country, and that laws that will bring us into line with most European countries will leave us all worse off in a ‘workers’ rights revolution’.

If the Daily Mail are upset with you, then you must be doing something right. Beyond the headlines, the truth is that these proposals will be a massive improvement in the fortunes of workers in Britain, and plenty of the greatest damages inflicted on workers and their conditions since 2010 look set to be reversed.

The Tory attempt to cripple the power of workers through minimum service laws will be scrapped. The right to sick pay, maternal and paternal leave and protection from unfair dismissal are now guaranteed to all workers from day one on the job. Alongside other laws on fairer probationary periods and flexible work arrangements, the lives of millions of workers and the communities they serve will be measurably improved.

It is a proud moment for the Communication Workers Union (CWU), which initiated the New Deal for Workers campaign by winning a motion at the 2016 Trades Union Congress to create a mass campaign against an economy of bogus self-employment and casualisation that seemed rigged against most people.

As a movement, we have to be clear that this change has been achieved by the determination of workers themselves. They weren’t gifted to us by politicians — they were won by the millions of people who went on strike two years ago, who knew they were worth more than what the bosses and politicians thought of them, and seriously shifted national perceptions about the role unions should play in society.

It is true that the trade union movement hasn’t got everything it wanted from the government in these laws, and some particular laws need some serious tightening. But at the same time, these reforms will go further in addressing real problems in the world of work than any other previous Labour administration of this century, and clearly represents Labour’s genuine recognition of the need for things to change.

However, at the end of the day, none of these rights will mean anything without the genuine strengthening of unions in every workplace in the country. As we see the process of these laws unfolding, the CWU will be pushing the government to go further, but we will also be encouraging people to take away the message that we need to grow our movement, use this opportunity to make a generational leap forward, and step up to new challenges and possibilities for our movement.