Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard is to call on trade unions to "reforge the alliance" with his party.
Mr Leonard is expected to outline the case for stronger connections at the Scottish Trades Union Congress in Aviemore on Tuesday.
He is also set to describe the labour movement in Scotland as being at a "turning point".
Mr Leonard is expected to say: "As far as the Scottish Labour Party is concerned, trade unions have a big role to play in the new economy, not just defending your members, but using your members' knowledge, skills and capacities to plan for the future.
"We need to look afresh at who owns the Scottish economy, why we are so vulnerable to external shocks, and why so much wealth leaks out from our country.
"And we need a Scottish industrial strategy because we cannot carry on with business as usual, lurching from one defensive rescue to the next. We need forward planning, economic planning and also environmental planning, to tackle humanity's greatest challenge - climate change.
"We need democracy in our economy, not just when things go wrong, but to help things go right in the first place.
"We are at a turning point, both for the Labour Party and the labour movement in Scotland.
"We can reforge the alliance between the industrial and political wings to start winning support for real change, to challenge once and for all austerity which is a political not an economic choice, to make the case again for public ownership and an end to PFI, PPP and NPDs and to secure a lasting redistribution of wealth and power into the hands of the many, not the few."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel