President's address to TUC Congress 2023
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Comrades and friends, It’s a huge honour to chair this Congress.
To celebrate our trade union movement and our values of unity and solidarity.
Thanks to you delegates for the work you have done this year in your own Unions and for our movement.
A big thank you to the TUC. To Paul and Kate and those on the senior team, and to all the TUC staff who have gone the extra mile.
As your President, I want to place on record my thanks to Dave Ward and those in my own Union, the Communication Workers Union, for the faith they placed in me as a lay national representative.
In addition thanks to friends, family and my partner Angela for supporting me over the year.
My Mum and Dad were both trade union members during their working lives, but are not with us anymore. I know they would have wanted to be here today.
Congress, we meet at a time of crisis in our country. A cost of living crisis with the biggest fall in our living standards for 200 years. Real pay cuts when our bills are soaring. Key workers clapped in the pandemic now told they are not worth a pay rise. It’s not our pay demands that cause inflation it’s the profiteering.
The pay of company bosses going up year on year whilst our salaries stagnate or go down. Their increase in pay bears no relation to merit or success. They get millions annually because they can. Their remuneration is decided by other bosses and board members who are also raking it in.
But over the past year we have been gifted a vision of hope. Hundreds of thousands of us have taken action. We’ve seen what solidarity means in practice.
This year, alongside my CWU colleagues, I took strike action for a proper pay rise in BT & Openreach. We were supported on our picket lines, at our rallies by other Unions members from the nearby college, local train drivers and transport workers, comrades from the Trades Councils - and by the public. And this experience was reflected in other disputes too.
Unprecedented public support. Workers in the public and private sector united, standing together, marching together and winning.
And what has this venal and incompetent Government’s response been? To pass even more repressive anti trade union laws.
The Minimum Service Level provisions remove the right to strike from as many as one in five of us.That is why the whole of our movement will stand with any worker who loses their job because of these laws.
Because we believe in solidarity. We are meeting here in Liverpool at a key time, both industrially and politically. On our Congress agenda is our collective response to 13 years of swingeing cuts to our public services,
Privatisation, outsourcing, low pay, working poverty, gigification, casualisation.
All the result of the bankrupt philosophy of market fundamentalism. The Tories are in their death throes but are still destroying people’s lives
Our movement stands for different values.
For the common good not individual greed, for accountability not irresponsibility.
For public service and for democracy. And we stand for equality.
As your first out and proud TUC President I remember well the Thatcher Government in the 1980s. They played the blame game to distract us from their anti working class policies. And now the Tories are at it again.
Their favourite targets this time are migrants and Trans people. They have new words and new ways of spreading hate.
But it’s the same old fears and prejudices they have always stoked up to keep their grip on power - racism, homophobia, misogyny. They seek to divide and rule.
We bring people together in respect, and solidarity. They enrich their mates and donors
We organise to get better pay for all. As a trade union movement we know unity is strength, that an injury to one is and injury to all
And that is why the work of the TUC Anti Racism Task force chaired by Patrick Roach, the work of the Sexual Harassment working party chaired by Sue Ferns, and the launch of the Trade Unions for Trans Rights Alliance is crucial.
Let’s be clear Congress, every working person is entitled to be treated with dignity. Our movement stands for equality for all.
There is no place for prejudice and discrimination in our workplaces. And comrades there is no place for it in our movement either.
This year I have had the privilege of representing you at certain international Conferences and events. It has been uplifting to hear about the work of our movement across the world. But it has been sobering too.
At the International TUC Congress we heard from trade unionists whose leaders are jailed in Belarus. From trade unionists and democracy campaigners about the repression in Hong Kong. And on a joint union visit to Turkey we protested in support of activists from the KESK public employees federation kept in a high security prison for months and months on trumped up charges.
I am pleased to say we were there when Gonul Erden was finally released - a truly precious moment.
At the European TUC our colleagues told us how the far right has been emboldened by nationalist populist leaders who demonise and scapegoat migrants.
But migration is not a crime – it’s what workers do in our globalised world.
Our fellow human beings are dying, in the Channel, in the Med, and in Qatar where they still abusing migrant workers on an industrial scale.
At both ITUC and ETUC representatives from the Ukrainian trade unions spoke of the awful effects of the illegal Russian invasion. Swathes of their country is destroyed, thousands of their citizens killed and millions displaced and driven into exile.
Congress we must be clear we stand against the actions of Putin, and with the Ukrainian people. National populism is on the march. Working people’s democracy is under threat. From Putin, from Xi, from Modi, from Trump running for a second term saying he will lock up his political opponents. We must resist authoritarianism wherever it comes from.
Our movement was born from struggle. In 1890 Sarah Chapman one of the leaders of the East London Matchgirls Strike attended our Congress here in Liverpool, one of only 10 women delegates present.
I am pleased to say that Sarah great granddaughter Sam is here today with her partner Graham. Their work with the Matchgirls Memorial Trust is keeping the lessons of our history alive. I hope you will support them.
The fight for health and safety and dignity at work is not over. Congress, the world of work is changing rapidly
In the 20th century technology delivered millions from dangerous, unsafe and back breaking work.
In the 21st century new social relations are being created by rapid technological advance this leads to an expansion of human wants and the possibility of meeting more human needs.
But this promise is subverted to make profits and monetise hate and misinformation, to monitor and track us to make us work harder and longer for less
Here’s to those doing the vital work unionising the AI and tech sector and the platform economy reaching into new areas, as we must, so we can grow.
And here’s to the Amazon workers of Rugeley and Coventry directly challenging Jeff Bezos and all the other 21st century robber barons. You are hero’s – our new pioneers.
Comrades and friends, as workers united we can build a better world. Although she only held the role briefly, this is the 100th anniversary of Margaret Bondfield’s election as the first Woman President of the TUC. A leading light in the Shop Assistant’s Union, she became the first woman Labour Cabinet Minister. Her life demonstrates that trade union aspiration and political change go together.
We can’t opt out. You either do politics or you get it done to you. Politics affects all aspects of our lives. To win for working class people we must do more politics not less.
And, as the Women’s Labour League said in Margaret Bondfield’s time,
“The Labour Party is nothing without strong trade unions”
The General Election will probably be sometime in the next year and our country will choose. As a trade union movement we look forward to the rights at work in Labours New Deal, commitments that exist because of the link between the affiliated trade unions and the Party.
These rights will equip us to meet the challenges in the world of work. We look forward to the election of a Labour Government that delivers for working people.
Congress, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Can you imagine another five years of Tory poverty Britain, the dismantling of our public services, the end of our NHS.Pprivate greed even more rampant and unfettered, destroying our environment and our planet. And even more attacks on our trade union freedom.
Congress – No
Lets stand in unity, in solidarity.
Let’s go forward together.
Victory to all working people.
Victory to our class.