From the ashes of a financial crash, there is a chance to create a new economic settlement that is more equal, sustainable and democratic.
Category Archive: Frances O’Grady
I think being a mother helps keep your feet on the ground. There’s very little dignity in parenthood. It’s a great leveller.
I am a feminist and I have no problems being called that.
Never has a strong, responsible trade union movement been so needed. With austerity policies biting hard and with no evidence that they are working, people at work need the TUC to speak up for them now more than ever.
The UK has a poor investment record. According to IMF data, we have come seventh out of the top seven industrialised countries since 1999.
My impression is that most women public service workers have a long fuse. Precisely because they care so deeply about services, more than anyone, they still want to find a sensible and fair negotiated agreement. But their patience has run out.
My first hero, as a teenager, was James Connolly. I remember discovering that he was a feminist, and that was an eye-opener, coming from a man of such poverty.
Britain is a textbook case of how growing inequality leads to economic crisis. The years before the crash were marked by a sharp rise in remortgaging and the growth of 0 percent balance transfer credit cards. By 2008 the UK had the highest ratio of household debt to GDP of any major economy.
There is nothing that says unions have a God-given right to be there. We have to work at it and make ourselves relevant to every section of the workforce.
In the U.S. the powerful critics of austerity such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich rightly identify the decline of ‘labor’ as a problem, and renewing trade unionism part of the solution. Our opportunity is to make the same case in the UK.