“Stop apologising and stick up for workers,” Sharon Graham tells Labour

Sharon Graham has urged Labour to “stop apologising and stick up for workers” and warned that “playing it safe” will not be enough for the opposition party to win the next general election.

Moving composite motion 18 – “rebuilding industrial power, supporting collective action and fighting for a new deal for workers” – at TUC Congress this morning, the general secretary of Unite told the Labour Party: “Do not stand on the sidelines playing it safe, crossing your fingers for that to get you over the line. It won’t.

“Be bold, be on the side of workers. Stop apologising and stick up for workers. Because there is already a very loud voice for the rich and the business lobby, it’s called the Tory Party.”

The Unite general secretary has been critical of Keir Starmer’s stance on frontbenchers attending picket lines over the past few months, accusing the Labour leader of “hiding” after it emerged that he had instructed his shadow team not to join striking workers during the rail dispute involving RMT workers in June.

Graham used Congress to call for “real industrial co-ordination” between unions, urging them to work together in an effort to combat further austerity. Her comments followed an emergency statement from Jeremy Hunt on Monday, in which he warned there would be “difficult decision” to come on spending.

“We must be ready. We know what [the government] have in store for workers. They will make workers and communities pay again. We are already seeing the biggest squeeze on incomes in generations. We will not allow them to put one hand in our pocket and the other up our back. Not this time,” she said.

“The flame flickers anew. The rebirth of the trade union movement has begun. But we must be serious about winning. We must now begin on the road to real industrial co-ordination – across employers, across industries, focusing on jobs, pay and conditions.”

She said this would involve committing to “the hard miles of organising, with detailed planning” and warned that “there are no shortcuts”.

Graham told the annual gathering of the federation of unions that the trade union movement “cannot abdicate our industrial power for political promises”, adding: “Bad employers fear worker power, not how much money we give to Labour.

“Worker power. It is the power of collective organisation that is really feared because, let’s face it, if the bosses went on strike no one would notice. But when workers do, everyone notices. Because it is workers that do the work. It’s workers that create the profit.”

The Chancellor confirmed on Monday that the Conservatives would be abandoning “almost all” the unfunded tax measures announced in the ‘mini-Budget’ by his predecessor. But he added that all government departments will “redouble their efforts to find savings” and that “some areas of spending will need to be cut”.

Hunt also confirmed that the ‘energy price guarantee’, as originally unveiled by Liz Truss shortly after she became Prime Minister, will only last until April 2023 and said the government will launch a review to consider a “new approach”.

The planned cut to National Insurance contributions of 1.25 percentage points will still go ahead, Hunt confirmed, as will the decrease in stamp duty.

The government had already U-turned on significant parts of the fiscal statement, including proposals to abolish the top rate of income tax and abandoning a corporation tax rise, and Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked after weeks of political turmoil.

Commenting at the time, Graham said it is “really clear that this Chancellor is now preparing the country for another round of austerity” and the general secretary warned that “when he talks about the difficult decisions that lie ahead – this is code for workers and communities will pay”.