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  "path": "/2026/02/trade-unions-can-fight-hunger/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-20T16:43:48.000Z",
  "site": "https://tribunemag.co.uk",
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  "textContent": "### Today, 14 million people in Britain face food insecurity. Ending that scandal means winning a legal Right to Food — and trade unions must lead that fight.\n\n* * *\n\nUnite Against Hunger brings together trade unions to fight food poverty. (Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)\n\nFourteen million people going hungry in the UK is a national disgrace and it is clear that food poverty has become a blight on British society. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Philip Alston issued a damning report on the austerity policies of the Coalition and Tory governments, reflecting:\n\n> It is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes to see the immense growth in food banks and the queues waiting outside them, the people sleeping rough in the streets, the growth of homelessness, the sense of deep despair that leads to … unheard-of levels of loneliness and isolation.\n\nThe government might have changed, but the hunger has not. Last year, the Trussell Trust alone distributed 1.8 million emergency food parcels, and this does not even take into account the work of independent and non-affiliated foodbanks.\n\nIn practically every town and city across the UK we find significant numbers of people struggling to feed themselves and their families, and foodbanks are increasingly being accepted as a normal part of everyday life. For example, in Ian’s Liverpool West Derby constituency, the Child Poverty Action Group found that 43 percent of children live in poverty. This cannot go on.\n\nSignificantly, we know that nearly one-third of foodbank users are from households with at least one wage-earning worker whose wages do not stretch far enough to put food on the table. And we know that poverty is the consequence of endemic low pay, casualisation and zero hours contracts, and a culture of bogus self-employment.\n\nIn our _Food Insecurity and the Cost of Living Report 2025_ , research for the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) showed that this is true even amongst the workforce who produce our food in the first place.\n\nIn a survey of workers in the industry, 6 out of 10 food workers say their wages are insufficient to meet their basic needs such as food and energy, and that they are fearful of running out of food due to a lack of money. Nearly half said they are feeling food insecure, and 3 out of 10 reported they do not have enough food to feed them and their families. More than 80 percent say they choose to eat cheaper alternatives, which invariably means they eat lower quality and less nutritious food.\n\nSo hunger is absolutely a trade union issue, and we know that stronger union and workplace rights are needed to turn the tide.\n\nWhilst the new Employment Rights Act and scrapping of the two-child limit on Universal Credit should have some positive impacts, there is clearly still a long way to go before we can make food poverty history.\n\nIt is clear we need to go beyond talking about the problems and demand that government takes swift and decisive action to put things right.\n\nAnd this is where the Right to Food Commission UK comes in. Established jointly by the Right to Food Campaign, the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), the University of Westminster and the Food and Work Network, the Commission launched in September 2025 and is travelling across the UK to map out solutions to systemic food insecurity. Crucially, this work will produce a roadmap for the implementation of a Right to Food law in the UK by 2035.\n\nThe Commission brings together a range of experts from academic, public health, legal and community food provision sectors, together with leading trade unionists, in order to consider evidence on how we might bring forward a credible and deliverable roadmap to deliver a legal right to food.\n\nAt the same time, all the Commissioners recognise that the real reservoir of knowledge about dealing with the realities of hunger lies in workplaces and communities across our nations, with the workers dealing with feeding their own families and helping their neighbours and colleagues. Indeed, trade unions at every level understand better than most the impact of the rising cost of living, squeeze in household incomes, and failure of the benefits system to provide genuine social security.\n\nSo alongside more formal ‘select committee’ style evidence hearings being held in Knowsley/Liverpool, Newcastle, Cardiff, London, Belfast and Glasgow, we are also holding citizens assemblies and community conversations to hear first-hand about the experience of food poverty in workplaces and communities.\n\nWe are also asking trade unions to submit formal written evidence submissions at national level, but just as importantly, we are encouraging unions to facilitate branch-level discussions of our ‘community survey’ questions, and encouraging local trades councils to link up with other campaigners to set up their own assemblies in their own areas.\n\nWe are not just looking to hear about the problems, we also want to know what is already working, whether it is community kitchens, football fans campaigning across traditional rivalries, local food pantries and co-ops, or the impact of free school meals.\n\nTo share the important work of the Commission, we are holding an online rally on the evening of Monday 23rd February, bringing together a range of leading trade unionists to discuss how our movement must be at the heart of this initiative in every workplace and community so that we can deliver material improvements to the lives of members, their families and neighbours.\n\nThe grim persistence of food poverty proves the old adage that power concedes nothing without demand. Trade unionists can end the scandal of hunger in our communities — and over 14 million people are counting on us — but only if we organise and fight for it. That work starts now.\n\n* * *\n\nWant to find out more or get involved? Join us on Monday’s call.\n\n**Unite Against Hunger: The Right to Food**\n\nHosted by Arise and the Trade Union Coordinating Group\nMonday 6.30–7.30pm\n\nRegister here.\n\nSpeakers include Eddie Dempsey (RMT), Andrea Egan (UNISON), Maryam Eslamdoust (TSSA), Fran Heathcote (PCS), Daniel Kebede (NEU), Gawain Little (GFTU), Mary Williams (Unite the Union), Sarah Woolley (BFAWU), Ian Byrne MP.",
  "title": "Trade Unions Can Fight Hunger",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-20T16:43:48.000Z"
}