Interview with TUC President Dr Mary Bousted

When she was elected TUC President last September she couldn’t have imagined that just 12 months later unions would be celebrating a series of important legal victories and that the Conservative government would be so weakened.

“I think people will be buoyed by the general election result,” she says, speaking ahead of the 149th TUC Congress.

“I don’t think anyone could have predicted that the Tories would run such a poor campaign.”

And her eyes light up as she recalls the series of legal victories, culminating in UNISON’s landmark win in July when the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s employment tribunal fees were illegal.

“I do think that the mood music is different now and that’s something that I will be hoping to reflect in my conference speech.”

By any standards she’s had a busy year. As President she’s represented the TUC at numerous conferences and events. She’s chaired Executive and General Council meetings and been a “listening ear” for Frances O’Grady, supporting her leadership.

At the same time she’s led her union, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) through a tumultuous period as education has risen up the political agenda. England’s schools are facing the largest real-terms cuts in funding in more than a generation. Unions responded with the “School Cuts” website, which allowed parents to see the impact of funding cuts on their own child’s school.

“That showed that unions can be successful in leading campaigns that cut through to parents,” she says “and what unions can do using new methods of campaigning.”

But with teachers’ pay capped at one per cent for another year and a looming crisis in recruitment and retention, she argues that teacher unions need to go further.

That’s why on 1 September the ATL formally joined forces with the National Union of Teachers to create the National Education Union.

“It will have over 450,000 members. It will be the largest dedicated education union in Europe. It will be the fourth largest union in the TUC.”

New super union

And as the joint general secretary of the new super union – alongside the NUT’s Kevin Courtney – she’s about to become one of the most high profile trade union leaders in the country.

If that sounds like fighting talk, when it comes to industrial action Mary has form. In 2011 she led the ATL union into its first ever national strike as part of coordinated action by unions against the coalition government’s plans to change public sector pensions. “We took two days of strike action and the government came back with a revised offer,” she recalls.

And she doesn’t rule out the prospect of further industrial action ahead. The Trade Union Bill may make national action harder to achieve but she says that calls for a change in strategy. “The (ballot) thresholds are much more achievable at a local level,” she argues. “And joining forces allows us to put on more pressure – potentially that’s much more disruptive for the government.”

“Strike” was probably one of the first words she ever learned. Brought up in Bolton in the 1960s she recalls climbing onto her father’s knee to get his attention and scanning the headlines as he read his daily newspaper, The Manchester Guardian. “I could read by the age of three,” she says.

“I just learnt it by osmosis.”

Teaching in the blood

Her father was the headmaster of a local primary school. Her mother also taught while raising eight children. Mary was the second youngest. From her parents she learned the importance of hard work, discipline and that education could be a vehicle for social justice. She started her career as an English teacher in North London comprehensives. It was then, as the Thatcher eighties dawned, that she first joined a trade union but she admits she was never an activist.

Shami Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general and former director of Liberty, was one of her pupils. She was “very able,” Mary recalls, “and always the most stroppy.” (Yes, they still keep in touch.)

Later she set up the English teacher training programme at York University and ran the secondary teacher training programme at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, before joining Kingston University as the head of the school of education.

But it’s her track record as general secretary of the ATL, a job she spotted advertised in The Guardian in 2003 that gives her most satisfaction. “There were lots of people who said that I would be an absolute disaster because I didn’t know trade unions,” she says. “But what I knew was education, teaching, I knew management. I knew about leadership. I had to learn trade unionism.”

Back then, she says, the union had declining membership, internal problems and no profile. “I think it’s become…a confident, successful union,” she says. “I’m very proud that ATL has always made a well evidenced case and that we have been listened to.”

Radically different approach

Her year as President has also opened her eyes to the challenges facing the movement. “It has come a long way,” she says. “But it has to reinvent itself further. Membership is falling. Density is lowest amongst the young. Most workplaces employ less than 10 people and are not unionised. That calls for a radically different approach.”

That’s why the TUC’s Young Workers project is so important, she says. The three-year project aims to understand attitudes to  unions amongst young people who are often in insecure, non-traditional workplaces. “How do you organise care workers who work from their cars?” she asks.

But she insists unions are winning too. The past 12 months has seen the GMB’s “gig economy” victory over the taxi hailing firm Uber and Unite’s high profile campaign against Mike Ashley and the working practices at Sports Direct. And then that historic win by UNISON on tribunal fees.

“Those big legal cases give a very strong public message that unions are here to campaign for, and win, fairness at work. That unions can win against appalling employment practices and unjust government decisions.”

The power of unions

So as delegates gather in Brighton she’s characteristically upbeat. “I do hope that what Congress gives is a message of not just what is wrong with the world but the power of unions to change it. Let’s not engage in the long trade union history of celebrating glorious defeats. Where we have been successful, let’s celebrate that. Let’s build on that success.”

But delegates beware. As chair of this year’s proceedings Mary is unlikely to look kindly on anyone using sporting references – particularly football ones – in their speeches. “I am absolutely fed up of the quick way to jovial chumminess in the TUC of telling a joke about football. If there are any  references (by delegates) to football at Congress then their speaking time will be cut to zero.”

Don’t say you weren’t warned!

John Moylan is a writer and a former BBC Industry Correspondent.