Frances O'Grady's Congress 2013 press conference

date: 8 September 2013

embargo: For immediate release

'This week we will show once again why trade unions should have a strong political voice.

'Of course I know that anything we say will be dismissed by some as tainted goods coming from union paymasters.

'Sometimes they even go on to be nostalgic about some golden age of trade unionism.

'But go back in time and you find the same kind of people dismissing calls for the minimum wage, equal pay for women or compulsory employer pension contributions.

'Now all are mainstream.

'Only this weekend George Osborne is claiming credit for moving against tax avoidance. But when TUC research first exposed its scale, politicians dismissed us.

'And that is what unions do. We prick the Westminster bubble. We put the grit of the workplace into our democratic life, which too often floats free from the lives of ordinary people.

'And we will proudly continue to raise awkward questions this week.

Unions first raised the great living standards squeeze before the crash. Ever since, it has got worse.

'When we were living through the bubble years, few politicians saw what was going on in the workplace: the decline of good, secure skilled jobs and their replacement by insecure low paid employment.

'Pay soared in Britain's boardrooms, but stagnated on shopfloors.

'Union free workplaces were celebrated as labour market flexibility. But all that happened was a shift in the balance of power from worker to boss.

'Keeping pay down appeals to many employers in their own workplace.

'But it's not so good when it happens to all their customers too.

'And it turned catastrophic when we all found out the hard way what happens when huge numbers borrow to make up the living standards gap, and then find they can't pay it back.

'And since the crash that gap has got worse.

'Unemployment went up - and that has not just held back pay, but encouraged the worst kind of working conditions.

'Zero-hours contracts have spread into every part of the workforce. Agency workers no long just help employers with unpredictable demands, but have become part of the regular workforce with employers using loopholes to get round equal pay requirements.

'Much as we welcome wide support for the minimum wage, it is now too often an excuse. How often have we heard the bad boss say 'but we pay the minimum wage'.

'But we will never get a real recovery and sustainable growth unless consumers have cash and confidence, because that's the kind of customers that businesses need.

'I now see an interesting divide opening up in UK politics. There are those who celebrate a cowed, insecure and low-paid workforce, and the bumper profits it can give some firms.

'And then there are those that see this as part of the problem. Indeed poverty pay, growing inequality and workforces without union representation helped drive the crash and slow recovery.

'Once that might have been a lone union view.

'But now even the IMF wants to see more collective bargaining. Conservative ministers talk about a higher minimum wage.

'The union view going mainstream once more.

'Unions doing what we are meant to do - speaking up for Britain at work by saying 'Britain needs a payrise'.

'And today new TUC figures show that boosting low pay is not just good for pay packets but good for the public finances too.

'We have looked at the impact for the Exchequer of a range of increases in the wages of the lowest paid.

'If the minimum wage went up by a modest four per cent to £6.56 an hour it would increase the tax take and reduce benefit spending enough to free up a quarter of a billion pounds of public spending.

'If we had a minimum wage of £6.88 - half way between its current level and the living wage - it would provide more than £800 million benefit to the public finances.

'And if we could achieve full coverage of the living wage, the savings rise to well over £3 billion a year.

'These figures show that raising wage floors boost the economy.

'That is why this week I will argue both for a realistic rise in - and proper enforcement of - the minimum wage. The many employers that can afford it should pay the living wage.

'And I am also calling for new modern wages councils to set a floor in wages and wider working conditions for those sectors that can exceed the minimum wage - with employer, union and expert voices working as part of the Low Pay Commission.

'These are just some of the ways that we can give Britain a pay rise, start to beat the living standards crisis and secure a recovery not just for the already prosperous but the whole country.'

NOTES TO EDITORS:

- The TUC analysis of the benefits to the exchequer of raising the minimum wage is available at www.tuc.org.uk/payrisebenefits

- The TUC's campaign plan can be downloaded from www.tuc.org.uk/campaignplan

- All TUC press releases can be found at www.tuc.org.uk

- Follow the TUC on Twitter: @tucnews

Contacts:

Media enquiries:
Liz Chinchen T: 020 7467 1248 M: 07778 158175 E: media@tuc.org.uk
Rob Holdsworth T: 020 7467 1372 M: 07717 531150 E: rholdsworth@tuc.org.uk
Alex Rossiter T: 020 7467 1337 M: 07887 572130 E: arossiter@tuc.org.uk