As a semi-regular Uber user, I listened to calls by drivers on Tuesday not to cross a digital picket line during their 24-hour strike – the latest attempt to unionise the gig economy. Members of United Private Hire Drivers (UPHD), a branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, are campaigning for a higher rate per mile, an end to what they claim are unfair deactivations, and a reduction in the commission that they have to pay. Drivers staged rallies outside Uber offices in London, Birmingham and Nottingham, and many logged off the app and stayed home.

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I support the Uber drivers on principle, but I also have a personal affection for the service. During a period of illness, Uber drivers kept me out and about. If you are ill, disabled or a woman on her own late at night in a dodgy part of town, an Uber can mean freedom. Over this time, I spent weeks talking to the drivers, about their jobs, their lives and their politics (many were Jeremy Corbyn supporters). Though often horribly demonised by black-cab drivers – one of whom handed me a card that said I would be raped if I used Uber – they are, like you and me, just people trying to make a decent living. Some have escaped untold horror, such as the man who dropped me at Euston station in central London one December morning and told of the drone attack he had witnessed. Others are born in Britain and simply prefer it to the monotony of the daily office grind.

Play Video 0:51 'It has to stop now': hospitality employees strike over conditions – video

Most people I know who use Uber, generally in their 20s and 30s, feel the same affection. What’s needed is some way of channelling that affection into support. Most people I spoke to on Tuesday about the strike were unaware that it was happening. Recruiting and galvanising younger adults – whether as members or supportive customers – was always going to be a challenge for unions. Most of us have never known the pressures of the physical picket line. A sense of collective industrial struggle is more challenging to convey in the maelstrom of social media, a clarion call so often drowned out by all the chatter. Digital nomadism and the gig economy mean that communities exist more and more online. People are more atomised. It’s a world away from the strikes of the past; there isn’t often someone a couple of doors down to prop you up when things feel particularly hopeless.

Last year government figures showed that union membership had declined by a quarter of a million in just one year, bringing it down to 6.5 million people – less than half as many as in the 1970s. Their memberships are ageing, and millennials aren’t joining. We are told that unions need to innovate, become digitally savvy, in order to attract younger members. What we do know is that those young people are amenable – in the US, the Pew Research Center found that 68% of people aged between 18 and 29 said that they have positive views of unions. In the UK, a 2017 Ipsos Mori poll found that 77% of people said “unions are essential to protecting workers’ interests”. Last week’s McStrike, which included many young people working in hospitality – this newspaper profiled three – is an example of what could be achieved on a much larger scale. The success of Momentum provides a campaigning model that works for this demographic. Corbyn’s popularity with young people demonstrates that the need is there.

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Occasionally, I mentor young, aspiring journalists who might – as I did – feel somewhat out of place in the British media, whether because of the colour of their skin, a disadvantaged background or a disability. They are usually in their early 20s and when I ask them if they are in the union, they always say no.

I don’t blame them. I was the same. Then one day I needed the union: when a client didn’t pay up, when I suffered sexual harassment, the union was there. It’s what it is for, and one of the best things that any of us can do is tell our friends, both about unions they can join and about action that is taking place on behalf of those working for the services they are so dependent on – Deliveroo, Amazon, Sports Direct, Uber. In the last year or so, I’ve been meeting more and more millennial Uber drivers. The rights secured by those fighting now pave the way for younger workers. This isn’t a case of them and us. We’re all in it together.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist