It is often said that people are defined by their work. Whether the job is in mining, teaching or engineering, it provides an income, status, friends and a sense of community.

Yet for a long time now work has become secondary to being a savvy consumer, a homeowner (or, better still, a multiple homeowner) and a pension saver. It’s not a trend the Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party recognises. But it’s a sad fact that a job is no longer the primary route to a better life, unless promotions – which often only add to the stress and long hours that employers already demand – are part of the plan.

If workers have any spare time, it doesn’t go into campaigning in their workplace for better terms and conditions. It is spent in the long queue at Aldi and Lidl for cheaper food. It is spent scouring the newspaper best-buy tables for a cheaper mortgage deal, a lower energy tariff or discounted car insurance.

And if there is a hint of a cut to a worker’s pension, they will leap up and vote for the party that promises to protect their entitlements, and even consider industrial action.

In part, this change reflects a rolling back of labour laws and with them the sense of solidarity among workers. It also follows the shift to an economic model that relies on workers to be more accommodating each year in their role as business and consumer service providers.

The irony is that when the consumer is made king, workers are forced to become even more flexible, providing services on a 24-hour cycle, usually to the detriment of their own health and wellbeing.

Some politicians have sensed that the tide is turning, and that workers have had enough of flat wage growth and employers that seek to improve profits almost exclusively at their expense.

It was clear once the promised bounceback from the financial crash failed to materialise that the trend for ever-worsening conditions and meagre pay needed to change.

George Osborne’s answer as chancellor was just to raise the minimum wage. Theresa May’s speech on taking office was to argue that workers should be more actively involved in the workplace. She even pledged to give workers seats on boards, putting them at the heart of corporate decision-making.

Young people have very little influence at work: the baby-boomer generation runs things

Corbyn’s rise to the top of the Labour party has also brought with it an emphasis on workers and workers’ rights. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has a vision of an economy made up of cooperatives and worker-influenced corporations, with staff owning shares and using them to influence the direction of travel. The gig economy will be reined in with extra employment protections, he says. The privatisation of industries by Margaret Thatcher and John Major will be reversed, with workers given at least some control.

To provide some intellectual ballast, the IPPR thinktank’s recent report on economic justice hammers home a message of hope around the re-emergence of the worker, back at the heart of corporate life.

This is a conversation young people are having after years of being told they should be grateful to be employed at all.

Young people, however, have very little influence at work: the baby-boomer generation runs things. Now 54 years old or more, its members started out as workers and might even have belonged to a trade union. They cared about their pay and how their boss behaved. But then they switched to consumption as a route to status: they are now primarily property owners, pension savers or pension receivers.

Before any angry baby-boomers declare that they are still union members and care deeply about their colleagues’ pay and conditions – or that they put their personal finances second to considerations like the environment – it is clear they are in the minority. There are so many indicators that the majority of their peers – fearful of the future, determined to maintain their living standards – put their wealth before the workplace that there isn’t space to discuss them all.

That is why May can get away with ignoring her pledge to put workers on boards – it is obvious there are not as many votes in it as her advisers thought.

And if there were a groundswell of opinion in favour, it is neutered by a lack of faith in today’s trade unions, most of which are far more concerned with internal Labour politics than with addressing the declining terms and conditions of their members.

Industrial action – last week’s equal pay strike in Scotland aside – is taken almost exclusively to protect pension entitlements. Unfortunately, the most experienced and better-off workers are still too busy shopping and saving to confront the boss.