Frances O’Grady: the TUC boss who pushed the cause of women
It was a moment when the wheel of fortune appeared to have turned full circle. After four decades when the trade union movement was kept at arm’s length from the levers of power, the TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, found herself standing alongside Rishi Sunak and the CBI boss, Carolyn Fairbairn, on the steps of No 11 Downing Street.
The photo-op in September 2020 came after the Covid-19 pandemic forced the chancellor to bury his antipathy towards organised labour, at least temporarily, and agree a “winter economic plan” with unions and employers that included an extension to the furlough scheme.
O’Grady, who has announced she is stepping down at the end of 2022 as boss of the TUC after almost 10 years in the job, said: “It doesn’t matter who’s in government, our job is to present our case, to look for a fair hearing, and to secure jobs and livelihoods for working people. That’s what we do.”
The 62-year-old leaves with union membership on the rise and the wider public gripped by a cost-of-living crisis that has brought worker power and wage negotiations to the fore.
Long before the pandemic, O’Grady was leading a campaign under the banner “Britain needs a pay rise”, which increased the pressure on Tory ministers to increase the minimum wage well above the rate of inflation.
Yet for almost all her tenure as general secretary, wages have stagnated as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. After the latest fall in real wages, which is expected to last until 2023, the value of earnings in relation to prices could be no more than it was in 2007.
O’Grady grew up in Oxford with four siblings and saw first-hand the split between town and gown, with her home firmly in the working-class district near the Cowley Leyland car plant,
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