Frances O?Grady?s tenure as a silver service waitress didn?t last long. During one posh, black-tie banquet she accidentally dropped an entire laden tray onto one of the guests. ?It was pretty heavy, too. I was taken off that pretty quickly?, says O?Grady, who is about to become the first woman to head the TUC in its 134-year history. It is a metaphor for a task she has set herself, this time deliberately, in shaking up the established order.
She wants to use her role as general secretary of the national representative body of British trade unionism to champion what most captains of industry and their political wing in the Conservative Party must have come to regard as extinct: the extension of collective bargaining, workers setting bosses? pay rates and engaged in companies? strategic decision-making, nothing short of a ?new economic settlement?; democracy in the workplace and the concept of an economic citizenship that is too important to be left to shareholders alone.
?If any good is to come from the ashes of [this] crash, then it?s got to be a new economic settlement ? an economy that works for ordinary working people but also some national consensus on what a good company should look like?, she tells Tribune in her fourth floor office at the TUC?s central London headquarters. To many business leaders who have enjoyed the light-touch of government under Thatcherism and its New Labour spawn, this will sound like old-fashioned revolutionary retro-speak. To the most senior woman in the trade union movement, born of shop steward parents ? father in the former Cowley car plant, mother in shops and the National Health Service ? and life as an official in the Transport and General Workers? Union (now Unite) it is a passionate imperative.
?It is an essential part of the solution. It is not a question of vested interest. It is about how we rebuild an economy that is sustainable in every sense for the long term.?
Looking back on the varied jobs she did before during and after reading politics and modern history at Manchester ? ?on the floor and on the till?, in a newsagents where she used to sneak a read of Tribune before it went out to the subscriber ? she muses at her early involvement in unions: ?That?ll be the title of my book ? ?I was a teenage trade unionist??.
A challenging choice for a woman in a notoriously man?s world? ?Some of those women in the engineering firms in the Midlands were definitely a force to be reckoned with. So, for sure, not every male member was a born-again feminist, but some of the women would certainly stand their ground. On the other hand, you?ve also got this other element. Jack Jones was a feminist in a great tradition of feminist working men, and many others devoted their lives life to winning equal pay for women.
?The point is, that it is our core value. We don?t always match our vision, but the vision is there. That?s what makes us different from so many other organisations ? it?s at our heart and not just on gender, but on race and class, too.?
So what difference will come from having a woman at the top of the TUC? Is it relevant at all? ?The practical value is that nobody can dismiss us as male-dominated anymore and in fact that ended some time ago; 50-50 men to women membership, we have three in 10 of general secretaries now women. For all the failed attempts to stereotype unions, or dismiss us as macho
militants, if you look at the recent high-profile disputes, they have been
led by women workers.
?But also it is an opportunity to reach out. There are millions of women doing often invisible or under-valued work, from very low cleaners to professionals commuting into London every day who are often not paid fairly for the work they do. We need radical change in the way workplaces work and progress has only often been made because unions have campaigned ? part-time workers, agency workers, equal pay for equal work, better maternity rights, the people that brought you the weekend. Who else would have done it?
?We?ve got an opportunity now to take a message out to millions of women and men to a movement that looks and cares about issues that concern all ordinary working people, not just our members.?
?But I don?t think we can afford to be complacent. There has never been a more important time to be a member of a union and there has never been a bigger responsibility on unions to reach out to workers, including those who say they support unions, but nobody?s ever asked them to join. So, our first task ? ask them.?
What, then, is the role of trade unions in a climate in which they are seen as less and less relevant?
?It is a challenge for us to show, not only that we are relevant, but that we are a central part of the answer to the problems that this country faces ? the two big issues that ordinary people are facing are falling living standards and a declining share of the wealth going into wages. This isn?t just a problem of the unions or the workers, more and more economists now agree that wasn?t some unfortunate by-product of the crash, it was essentially a key driver of it and the absence of any decent increases in pay, and on the contrary decreases in pay, has meant that debt was growing at an unsustainable rate and that contributed to the bubble. That level of inequality is unsustainable, not just in terms of the kind of society we live in but actually in the absence of consumer demand a lot of decent businesses are struggling.
?So I think there is a growing consensus, even among the likes of then International Monetary Fund, that we have to see some rebalancing in power and wealth between those at the top and the great majority. And collective bargaining and the extension of it has got to be a key part of that answer.?
O?Grady has written and spoken of the need for greater worker participation and responsibility in corporate decision making but believes there needs to be a home-grown model rather than the importation of the German or Scandinavian systems. Not that she is not impressed by Germany: ? I was impressed on a visit to Berlin that the leader of the country sits round the table with the unions and employers to look at trends and make those big decisions about public investments and the development of key decisions with strong sectoral agreements.
?Many, many families in this country have been through the equivalent of an economic war and have suffered huge casualties and enforced sacrifice and it seems to me that if anything good is to come from the ashes of that crash then it?s got to be a new economic settlement ? an economy that works for ordinary working people but also some national consensus on what the good company looks like. That must involve treating workers decently and fairly but also giving workers a say over the issues that matter in companies because frankly, if we leave it to the shareholders in an increasingly globalised and fast-changing economy, then we will never get to a long-term vision and strategy for industry in the UK.
?It is about economic citizenship, the introduction of a measure of democracy at work, the idea that it is not acceptable that eight out of ten workers in the private sector are subject to a dictatorship in respect of their terms and conditions and have no say over the future of the company in which they have invested their livelihoods. Their livelihoods depend on the future of those companies and I cannot think of more able stewards to look after the interests of those companies and industries.?
This thinking is going to meet with some opposition, perhaps not least from the Labour leadership. ?I?ve been encouraged by Ed Miliband?s recognition that strong unions are essential for a fair society, and it?s very important that Ed Miliband ?gets it?. [It?s] not just about who gets what slice of the cake, but who runs the bakery.
?One of the first questions we are looking at is if that policy is to be adopted then clearly we all need to sit down and come up with practical proposals for how those workers would get engaged.
?For example, we don?t want management appointees because they would then be management representatives not worker representatives. Where we?ve got unionised workplaces, a democratic system that ensures that somebody would be on there representing the interests of ordinary workers. We need to sit down and discuss what would work but there are a significant number of workplaces in the private sector where that isn?t the case.?
The planned demo on October 20 in London is the next step. O?Grady wants to see ?a huge show of strength ? it is absolutely vital. This is much broader now than cuts to services. It is about an economy fit for working people. Our economy is being taken down and we need a fundamental change of direction. Here?s our opportunity to get our message across to the wider public to demonstrate the strength we?ve got and to draw strength from each other.
We may have been in choppy waters?for the past couple of years, but it?s going to get rougher and we need to be ready for that.?
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About The Author
Chris McLaughlin is Editor of Tribunemiami dolphins buffalo bills minnesota vikings pittsburgh steelers detroit lions seattle seahawks ryan tannehill
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