BEERG Newsletter - Unions: O’Grady to retire as TUC general secretary

Frances O’Grady will retire as general secretary of the UK’s Trades Union Congress at the end of the year, after a ten-year stint as the first woman to lead the UK’s union movement. The 62-year-old, who began her career campaigning for a national minimum wage and on behalf of part-time workers, succeeded Brendan Barber in 2013 after serving as his deputy for the previous 10 years — a period in which she led on industrial policy in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

While union membership has stabilised during O’Grady’s tenure, it is increasingly made up of public sector workers, with membership in the private sector at its lowest level since 1995. There are few signs that unions are heading for a dramatic revival anytime soon, even as workers are faced with declining real wages and the emergence of the gig economy with its emphasis on self-employment. 

Whoever O’Grady’s successor may be, he or she will also have to contend with the fact that UK workers will be cut off from developments in EU employment law because of Brexit. The EU is currently considering laws on: the employment status of platform workers; an adequate minimum wage and collective bargaining coverage; gender pay transparency; and supply chain due diligence. None of these will apply in the UK and the current government shows no appetite for introducing any employment laws of its own, even in the wake of the P&O debacle. What approach a future Labour government would take remains to be seen. 

UK representatives are also being increasingly excluded from European Works Councils and even where they still sit on EWCs they are finding that employers are reluctant to discuss developments in the UK as they fall outside the scope of EU law thereby creating unnecessary complications, especially in “exceptional circumstances”. 

The successor to O’Grady will have a tough job on their hands trying to guide the union movement in post-Brexit Britain.

Download BEERG Newsletter Issue #13 2022 as a PDF