Frances O’Grady, Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway, was the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) from 2013 to 2022. She was Deputy General Secretary between 2003-2013.
This interview was conducted on 7 November 2022.
Q: Could you tell us about your role in growth and regional policy over the past few decades?
I was the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), retiring at the end of 2022. I’ve been a union representative in various industries, such as hospitality and retail. I then went to work for the Transport and General Workers Union and then into the TUC. My passion around industrial strategy began when I was Head of Organisation, which covers our nations and regions, and getting a framework agreement for the 2012 Olympics. We were keen to get decent standards of labour, but also to try and push how far we could get value through the supply chain – not just on site or for the show, but through procurement, down the supply chain, to deliver jobs in the parts of the country that need it the most. That has been developed collectively in the TUC around the green agenda, with some quite specific proposals around how additional green investment could be spread, opportunity and rewards, more fairly – geographically but also critically between workers and capital. It’s just been a thread running through, with some frustration because we’ve had lots of written industrial plans. Some of them with bits in them that we quite like. But I genuinely can’t see evidence of any of them being executed, which in itself probably deserves a book.
Q: Before you were the Campaigns Director?
I was a Campaigns Officer for the TUC, then into Head of Organisation, setting up the organising academy to recruit a new generation of organisers doing greenfield recruitment and organisation. These were mainly young people trying out new ways to do that. Then Head of Organisation, where a big part of the job is the regions and the nation, and then Deputy General Secretary and then General Secretary.
We’ve always been a little cautious about our role and devolution. Obviously, from a trade union perspective, the key issue to address is inequality. Inequality within regions is at least as big as any inequality between them. But we like to keep our feet on the ground and our locus is representing working people and working people are organised in ways that don’t always fit neatly into geographical boundaries. When you’re talking about companies, certainly when you’re talking about multinational companies, what’s important to us is maintaining unity amongst workers. Having said that, it was plain to see, and for anybody who lived through the 1980s and saw the disparate impact on different parts of Britain of ultra free market policies, it was plain to see that something had to shift. We took a keen interest, and we’ve always been supported. Our key locus is whatever we end up with, whatever the constitutional arrangements turn out to be, wherever the workers’ voice is, that’s always going to be our kind of top priority, because nobody else is necessarily going to argue for it, apart from anything else. So, we have a responsibility there.
Q: Where have we been successful over the past few decades in improving those regional imbalances, and where you think the challenges remain?
The other kind of dimension I would add is corporate governance, because I think all of us have to understand what’s happened to capital. And what are the levers that we can pull; and to what extent those creating new levers at a regional level can help shape the behaviour of corporates in a way that respects a social dimension. For a long time, we’ve argued for workers on boards and again, have come up with very detailed proposals and answered a lot of the apparent resistance in some quarters.
We got on, I’m talking at a very practical level, with regional development agencies quite well. We knew they were patchy. There were good ones like Yorkshire, which had ambition and also lead responsibilities that we were particularly interested in. And there were others where, partly because of structural reasons, the profile of employers in their regions, it was much harder for them to make an impact. But it seemed to us that there was a gap in terms of thinking more long term and thinking bigger about infrastructure, particularly with the Net Zero agenda; some RDAs came up with really good ideas.
We also liked them because we had seats at the table. So we were able to inject thinking around, what does all this mean for people on the ground? If it creates lots of extra wealth, but that isn’t spread, actually is that going to make working lives worse and communities worse off rather than better off? So injecting some of that thinking was important to us.
When it came to LEPs [Local Enterprise Partnerships] and all of that era, again I’m just being honest, it didn’t really suit us. Actually, I don’t think it suited a lot of employers either, because they were either very local and small and without much to bring to the table; the idea that very big companies were going to spread themselves across schools of different LEPs, that architecture didn’t seem to work very well for them. I’d be hard pushed to point to too many material improvements – nothing really slapped me in the face that was a huge success story.
So, there’s an issue about architecture. We have also worked very well with the mayors, including ones not of our persuasion; but obviously, it’s been most productive where they are, so that’s been interesting. But again they’re hitting legal barriers, like restrictions on how they can use procurement to advance industry, a social industrial strategy. And nations, well we know there are real challenges in Northern Ireland. Wales obviously, I don’t think this is bias, I think it’s doing some of the most interesting, innovative policy work in very difficult circumstances. There is ownership and support there for what the Welsh government is trying to do. And Scotland, obviously another whole story. In England, something has to shift on that front.
Q: From a trade union point of view, how did you navigate between what was happening at the regional level with the RDAs and trying to shape the national policy and political agenda around workers’ rights, corporate governance, industrial policy?
When Peter Mandelson came back from Brussels and developed that industrial strategy, it felt like a big breakthrough. I feel that every industrial strategy since has been used that as its reference point. There have been variations. But actually we knew what needed to be done. I think the key difficulty in Britain is that nobody sticks at anything, so there are no lasting institutions. Every time a new government comes in, a new administration or even a new minister, it’s like things start again. None of the configurations are perfect, but it would really help if you built a consensus, a national consensus that this is the least imperfect configuration and we are going to stick with it for 10, 20, 30 years.
Social partnership is an integral part of this. It’s boring, frankly, to have to keep going through the evidence that’s so clear: that where there is worker engagement, the quality is often better, the thinking is better and you’ve got sign-up. You’ve got champions for this deeper in society and that helps you sustain it longer. I suppose the problem is that, ultimately, this is about power. It’s not about finding the best approach based on evidence-led policy. There is irrational resistance to what would be good for the country. I felt that really sharply on the corporate governance debate where we got really close. Prime Minister Theresa May was even convinced that there was something there. The possibility of rebuilding a consensus around that was there. But the irrational response from employers who knew very well that this was happening in plants in other countries under their company logo successfully, and that there was evidence that workers brought real value to the board, that there was more likely to be longer term investment in skills, more awareness of environmental and community issues, better decision making, and so on. It’s all out there, the research. Ultimately, we systematically took apart every argument that they had or every concern and offered options and did win some. But other employers would ultimately say, ‘It’s not British, British culture is different,’ as if culture was something written in stone as opposed to something dynamic that you shape and create.
Q: Does it feel different organising in businesses and engaging with business leadership in London versus say the West Midlands or the North East?
Clearly we have had different histories, including industrial histories, that give rise to different relationships. And sometimes the memory of that can still shape people today. So in the North East, Scotland, Wales, the idea that unions and employers sit down together to talk about strategic issues in a public space is no big deal. Doing that in the City of London, sometimes you can feel like you’re more there to be the entertainment – and very cheap, if I may say so. Free entertainment, rather than necessarily being part of a long-term, deep relationship based on mutual respect and a degree of trust.
But an interesting question is whether, for example, Japanese motor manufacturers would behave in the same way if there was an already established strong culture of social partnership. I’ve seen this time and time again with multinational corporations. Take P&O, they didn’t sack a single French worker, as opposed to illegal, disgraceful, obscene behaviour here. Part of that is that it would have been much more difficult for them to flout the labour laws in France, whereas here they could get away with it – the laws were there but not enforced meaningfully. But also, you can see the way that multinational corporations, when they come across a very strong culture, feel that they’re the ones who have to adapt as opposed to the country has to adapt to them. So you actually have to sink deep roots if you’re going to create a different culture. Otherwise, you’re very vulnerable. Even in the North East, we had those new management techniques and, in some cases, union avoidance strategies from new inward investors that at a regional level couldn’t be resisted. So you do need that national framework too, with a very strong sense of vision, identity and culture that you create.
It’s not one or the other. We have to work at many levels. Particularly, as is self-evident, as capital becomes more monopolised, and some would say more rapacious.
Q: Are there policy areas where there has been more stability?
It’s really difficult to say at the moment from the TUC perspective. You can obviously trace this back to the 1980s and the ripping up of consensus around a whole range of issues, from welfare to how you treat asylum seekers to whether the unions are a good thing. Are unions performing a public service, rooting out exploitation and low pay, or whether they’re the enemy within. I don’t think that national consensus has ever been properly rebuilt and it becomes a vicious circle. Why are skills so crap in Britain? And because they’re so crap in Britain, somebody will come up with a new policy, a new approach, every five minutes, that makes them even more crap. Because there is no certainty or stability in terms of a policy framework or expectations of who should pay what or whose responsibility it is. And people are fighting over peanuts as to who gets to administer some ever-shrinking pot of money. But the big picture is that it’s got worse and worse and worse. It’s a key factor in holding back decent growth. And it’s a major problem for the country. So what does it take to break through that short-termism? Why has that consensus been so hard to rebuild?
Brexit is another episode, less about Brexit itself, more about it being another shock, another ripping up. Some of us went to Madrid recently to look at what the Spanish government is doing there. It feels exciting, it’s a very determined programme around investment including in human infrastructure, accompanied by levelling up rights at work. The first big measures that we’ve seen in Europe. And data transparency, algorithms, AI, all of that, where they introduced the Riders’ Law. They had workers queuing around the union offices to join. They’ve been able to show they have clear targets for reducing insecure contracts, carefully documented its relationship with unemployment. So there are examples of interesting and exciting things going on.
Q: How important is devolution and decentralisation in driving wider equality within society?
This is the big dilemma. I’m partly playing devil’s advocate here because I think it would be a mistake to think that devolution, in itself, will achieve greater equality within regions. On the contrary, it could be a lot worse. In the end it comes back to what are the values and vision driving it. However you create this architecture, if you have everybody pulling in the same direction with agreement that tackling inequality, at the local, regional, national or UK-wide or international level is a key objective, then that could be incredibly exciting. Because part of the task is people feeling more empowered. If that space is opened up for people at a local and regional level, that in itself is an exciting and innovative way to redistribute wealth and power.
My worry is that I’ve also watched people fighting over crumbs from the table. That feels pretty demeaning and risks people turning in on themselves, feeling even less power to change things for the better. I have also watched Westminster politicians quite happily outsource poverty. We saw some of that during the pandemic where, on sick pay, we were looking for reform not least to bring in the two million people in Britain who don’t qualify for any sick pay at all. We got very close. But when that was refused, what was offered instead was a little fund that people can apply to, peanuts, and obviously people don’t apply. Because the people who most need it are very often in the worst position to make the argument and win it.
But people who would have felt angry with Westminster end up feeling angry with their local authority. So I always have a little bit of scepticism, a personal view. As I say, we constructively engage with whatever is going on, but this has to be part of a wider progressive agenda. Otherwise, you are managing the shit, basically, at a local level.
Q: If you’re not significantly increasing investment and doing enough to build up regional structures, it means that as soon as there is a change of government nationally, the taps can be turned off. Is that what happened?
One thing that many of us genuinely believed about Gordon Brown was that he absolutely had a mission to tackle poverty. And that mattered. It mattered morally and it mattered in terms of, you know, we’re only as strong as our weakest worker, and we know that most children in poverty have at least one parent in work. So, this this was incredibly important. However, tackling poverty is not the same as tackling inequality. There were people inside Number 10, quite early on in the Blair government, who were beginning to get anxious about how wages were falling behind relatively. Everybody was having a good time, nobody was too bothered, but it became clearer and clearer before the financial crash that workers’ share of wealth was falling. And to me, not looking at that issue was a major mistake. Even with investment in infrastructure – and my kids’ school got inside toilets for the first time ever, thanks to the school’s fund – I don’t underestimate the difference that this can make, but industrially, also in terms of society, what nobody was looking at was what was happening to wages, to shareholder dividends, to profits. And that, I think, was a major mistake. And now look at us. It is rising three times faster than pay.
Q: Why do you think levelling up moved up the political agenda?
I think politicians started getting scared. We saw reconfigurations of coalitions, both in respect of the Brexit referendum but also in terms of political parties. So they started paying it more attention. Not enough, but more. And also, nobody’s making this stuff up, it was real. You’d go to various places around the country, I remember 20 years previously, and I’ll tell you what, Friday night it didn’t feel safe, drug use, all of the social ills as well as issues around jobs and apprenticeships. So that in itself gives rise to volatility in politics and to the creation of extremes. We’ve probably seen that more graphically in the Rust Belt in the States or the Yellow Jackets in France. But the idea that Britain was immune from those sorts of anxieties, political anxieties. Somebody said to me recently, ‘It’s much better to have industrial unrest than social unrest,’ which is maybe what was driving some political interests, people getting worried about what was going on and where it would lead. But I think we have spent an awful lot of time talking about devolution. Obviously, the debate around Scottish independence, the future of Ireland, which is on a different journey. There’s been a lot of discussion about that. What I think there hasn’t been nearly enough discussion on is what are the institutions and policies that would actually bind Britain together as a country. We’ve all got different TV stations. They even have a different Newsnight. Actually, capital is becoming more concentrated, more multinational, with a huge number of obviously smaller companies beneath, but what binds us together as a people, and do we need new institutions and policies to do that?
Q: What’s the role of the trade union movement in that?
We are one of the few institutions of working people that is democratic, and that does bind people together, whether or not we are liked in certain quarters. We have clear values and a democratic structure that brings people together. We’ve just had our rescheduled Congress. You will hear every accent under the sun, people from every corner of the country, telling stories, and identifying – black and white, men and women, young and old – the common story for us all. It seems to me a wise government would see that as very precious. If you’re worried about fragmentation and atomisation and growing inequality, actually boosting collective bargaining, boosting membership organisation would help you address that inequality, whether that’s place-based or whether it’s workers and capital. Do we have to change? I think we do. I think that’s what’s kind of going on in the movement. Ironically through the industrial action that’s been happening, the language of solidarity and support for workers supporting workers, I’ve never seen the spirit as strong as it is, for a long time. Also, we’ve invested a lot in digital tools because we have more oppressive anti-trade union legislation, thresholds, hoops we have to jump. Using digital, the ballot results, turnouts and votes have been incredibly high. From Congress House, we’ve been deploying those digital tools and activist training. At a very practical level that’s made a difference.
Other than government, I don’t think there’s anybody who has as strong a relationship at a cross border level as trade unions do. We are part of the European TUC, despite Brexit, we are part of the International Trade Union Congress and that includes industrial work, but it also includes political work against the radical right. So, I think we are evolving. We are majority women. We’ve made some big breakthroughs in the gig economy by getting recognition at Uber and Deliveroo. But when are we going to get the surge? Because the big difference would be if we could get that surge, growing at a much faster rate and sustaining that.
Q: What do you think you would prefer, power or a more immediate move into social partnership?
Personally, I’d prioritise the surge of power. Partly because of what we learned during the financial crash. In Ireland, where we have a very close relationship with the Irish Congress, they had basically a collective nervous breakdown when the ‘Troika’ (EU/ECB/IMF) beat up Ireland. Part of the price was literally ripping up the Social Partnership agreement. And it went just like that. As my opposite number said at the time, ‘We discovered that we had members, but we didn’t have activists. They were passive members expecting to be serviced, with somebody else up there doing all the negotiations.’ Not because I want to have a barney, but because I’m a democrat, I do believe that there is power in working people organising together. Pretending that there is not a connection between our numbers and the strength of our organisation, and how much we can get across a bargaining or political table, would be deluding ourselves. In that sense I’m old-fashioned, except that I don’t think it is old-fashioned anymore. I think you see this around the world. People know we’re going through a period of real danger and, if we’re not organised and strong, we’re in trouble.
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