“I THINK we’ve got really good motions on the agenda, and unions with practical solutions to the problems that working people face.”

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady is clearly excited about the union confederation’s 2021 Congress, starting tomorrow.

Its annual get together of members, representing about six million trade unionists across the country, is happening virtually for the second year running due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

O’Grady welcomes the opportunities that online organising can afford, but she does admit that for her there is “no substitute for being with people.”

But more on that later. First and foremost, she is keen to talk about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s impending hike in National Insurance contributions, announced on Tuesday. 

The Tory leader insisted that the rise, due to hit working people in April next year, is a fair way to fund more support for the NHS and an overhaul of social care.

O’Grady’s response is straightforward: “It isn’t.”

The TUC has called for a rise in capital gains tax so those with the broadest shoulders contribute the most.

“That seems a step towards fairness,” O’Grady stresses, adding it would generate £17 billion to improve the quality of care given, as well as working conditions for underpaid staff. 

“If we don’t treat them right, we’re not going to treat the people in need of care right. It would start to put their pay rates on a more decent footing.

“We have to be careful because there are those who want to turn this into a generational war, whereas unions know that inequalities within any given generation are at least as big as any inequalities between them.

“But it is true that young low-paid workers would be hit really hard by this National Insurance rise. And I think most people will see that Boris Johnson may be wrapping himself in the NHS flag, but this is really about making working people pay.”

O’Grady’s anger is palpable, especially when our conversation turns to next month’s cancellation of the £20-a-week uplift to universal credit, introduced to support the poorest when coronavirus hit. 

Reports suggest even government ministers are fully aware that the move will have a devastating effect on hundreds of thousands of families in Britain. 

Despite prominent Tories being prone to link use of the benefit to unemployment and the “undeserving poor,” O’Grady points out that most recipients are actually in work, but crippled by poverty pay.  

“How did we get to this, that work no longer pays?” she asks. “Many of us can see the impact this is having on ordinary families and on soaring rates of child poverty too.

“I still feel shocked that we’ve got foodbanks. That is a source of shame for Britain and any decent government would be making tackling poverty and inequality a priority.

“Our key message is that we do not accept going back to business as usual. Inequality was a massive problem before this pandemic, and we now need bold action to level the playing field and give people a fair chance in life.

“Key workers cared for us — it’s time we cared for them. Trade unionism is about the strong helping the weak. And we all benefit. The stronger we are, the more we all gain.”

The times seem to be a-changin’ for the union movement and its traditional link to the Labour Party.

Unite’s new general secretary Sharon Graham wants to focus on building the union’s industrial power, telling Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer that he must first demonstrate his commitment to working people before getting more cash from the party’s biggest donor.

And the bakers’ union, the BFAWU, could be on the verge of disaffiliating from Labour — the party it helped create more than a century ago — amid accusations of a purge of socialists by Sir Keir’s top team.

How does O’Grady, who helped to put activism centre stage at the TUC by setting up its innovative organising academy in 1997, feel about this pivot away from Westminster?

“Many of us could see [in the ’90s] that there was a real risk of people losing sight the basic truths of trade unionism, that we’re only as strong as our membership, so it was about rebuilding our numbers and becoming a stronger movement.

“Whether it’s across a bargaining table or whether it’s a government, people listen to you when you’re stronger.

“However, I’ve always believed it’s important that we, as working people, are entitled to a political voice.

“There was a reason why a party of labour was launched. Unless we have a fair framework of law, we are fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. 

“So I make no apologies for saying we need a political voice and we demand a fair hearing. Trade unionists are principled pragmatists. We have our values and beliefs, but we also seek and deliver real change — industrially, for sure, but also politically too.”  

O’Grady is happy to report that union membership is now growing in Britain, albeit at a modest rate.

Numbers are due to hit seven million by the middle of the decade, nowhere near the more than 13 million in the late 1970s, but up from roughly six million in the years preceding the pandemic. 

Has the crisis helped or hindered the movement?

“We’ve had to learn fast how to move our democracy, online — we had to. We’ve seen some stunning examples of digital trade unionism, with the peak being the [National Education Union’s] mass meeting [in January] with half a million people.”

O’Grady talks keenly about how reps are sharing the lessons learnt in the last 18 months across the movement.

“They’re really determined that it’s not just about mass meetings, it’s about how you use those meetings to talent scout, encourage support, and deliver trained reps out of it.

“I’m excited by some of the new approaches we have to using digital as the 21st-century equivalent of the 20th-century penny newspaper, using it to bind workers together.

“But for me, there is still no substitute to being with people, hearing what they want from their working lives. We’ve got to be there, that’s important for collectivism.”

Collective action is the only way to achieve change, she argues, with a good example being the need for a rapid transition to a green economy, the subject of some motions at this year’s Congress. 

But she stresses that working people must not be left behind. 

“We demand a just transition. We can’t repeat the mistakes of the 1980s that saw whole industries and communities decimated. We’re just not prepared to accept that.

“I feel excited about the extent to which we’re working internationally with unions.

“The US union movement has a real opportunity under President Biden. He acknowledges that, if you’re going to deal with some of those deep-rooted problems of inequality in society, then you have to increase unions’ bargaining power.

“Why not make every permit, every licence, every procurement contract, dependant on union recognition? That would give workers confidence that this isn’t just using the green agenda to leave them in low-paid jobs or on the dole.

“We don’t just need promises of new green jobs, we want proof, and we want seats at the table.”

There’s a lot of work to do. It starts tomorrow.