General Council Report 2021

Introduction - Frances O'Grady 

This year, thanks to the heroic efforts of our members in the NHS, the great majority of the adult UK population has been vaccinated against Covid-19, and there is hope on the horizon.

Throughout the crisis, union reps have stepped up to enforce safety standards, as across the UK workers kept the economy running. And, just as the TUC argued, wage subsidy schemes – that at their peak protected over eleven million livelihoods – have secured a faster economic bounce-back, with most of those furloughed now back at work.

The TUC and unions have stood strong to protect working people’s jobs, health and dignity. In turn, more working people have joined unions, with total net membership rising four years in a row.

The drive for digital organising, with online mass meetings and reps training, alongside face-to-face, is beginning to bear fruit.

And we can all share pride in union achievements this year, from protecting safety and skills, to fighting the obscenity of fire and rehire, and winning trailblazing agreements in the gig economy. ’Flexibility’ should not be a one-way street to exploitative fake self-employment, zero-hours contracts and unpaid overtime. The pandemic has unleashed a huge appetite for more positive flexibility to help balance work and family life.

While the government drags its feet on the promise of an employment bill to ‘level up’ rights, it has rushed to sign trade agreements that put jobs and public services in peril. As the host of the G7’s labour arm, the TUC argued to lift global standards for employment, environmental and data privacy rights, and to set a minimum global corporation tax. Global union solidarity has never mattered more as together we demand governments rewrite the rules that have been rigged against working people for far too long.

Instead of tying unions up in red tape, the PM should follow President Biden’s lead and recognise that stronger union rights is one of the best ways to level up at work.

There can be no complacency given the failure of global leadership to vaccinate the world equally, risking the rise of new virus variants, the growth of long Covid cases and the threat of a tough winter ahead. Rather than pull the plug on vital support for working families and our industries, UK nations and regions need ambitious government action to prevent unemployment, and speed a decent jobs-led recovery.

In advance of the COP26 climate conference, the TUC set out a bold £85bn green investment plan that would cut carbon, upskill and create over a million new jobs, and deliver a just transition for our communities. We have called for urgent investment in our public services to fill vacancies, deal with the backlog and pandemic-proof our resilience for the future. And we have launched an AI manifesto calling for new technologies that humanise – not atomise – working lives, and to share their multi-billion pound productivity gains fairly. We demand fair wages for those who can work, and decent pensions and social security for those who cannot.

While inequality did not start with Covid-19, the pandemic has made it a whole lot worse, with those on the frontline much more likely to be women, BME and migrant workers, and on low pay and insecure contracts. Our new Anti-Racism Taskforce aims to put equality at the heart of our organising, bargaining and campaign strategies, and to ensure that the TUC and unions get our own houses in order, leading by example.

Whatever our race, religion, gender, disability, sexuality or class background, everyone should be included and treated with dignity at work.

And we all deserve answers about how austerity cuts left our public services understaffed, overstretched and ill-prepared for the pandemic. We need to know who benefited from multi-million pound government contracts and why there was a catastrophic failure to fix track and trace, sick pay and PPE. And why there has been one rule for the few and quite another for everybody else.

So, the TUC has campaigned for an urgent independent public inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic. Many of our members in key worker jobs put their health and lives on the line for the rest of us. We must learn the lessons and deliver a new deal for working people, and a new direction for the UK. Let this Congress mark the beginning.

Frances O'Grady