Paul Nowak interview: ‘I’ll tell it straight to Labour – and push for wealth taxes’

When James Callaghan was Prime Minister, an often referenced opinion poll found that Jack Jones, the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, and not the resident of number 10 Downing Street, was reckoned to be the most powerful man in Britain.

When I ask him about this, and which historical general secretaries he’ll look to for inspiration, Paul Nowak (sadly) doesn’t take the bait and declare himself Britain’s most powerful man. Instead, the TUC general secretary told LabourList that he had been thinking about what he could learn from how others in the union movement have related to Labour governments.

“I spent time with all three of my predecessors earlier this week to talk to them about their experiences of dealing with a labour government, because I’ve obviously never been general secretary under a Labour government.

“That included John Monks [TUC general secretary 1993-2003], who famously said that Tony Blair treated trade unions like an embarrassing elderly relative at a party – he knew he had to invite them but he’d rather they didn’t turn up. I don’t think that’s the relationship we’ve got with Labour now.

“I hope that they see us as a trusted family friend, which means that we work together, we get on together, but sometimes if you think your friend is getting it wrong, you have to tell it to them straight”.

Labour and the unions trust each other – but I’ll tell it to them straight

Nowak, who took over from Frances O’Grady as general secretary in 2022, is keen to stress just how many opportunities the unions have had to tell it to Labour, straight or otherwise, in the first days of the new government: “Bridget Phillipson met with the education and teaching unions, Johnny Reynolds immediately sat down with the steel unions to talk about the plan to save Tata, I met Rachel Reeves yesterday – that sense that they’ve opened the door up to unions to have meaningful discussion and negotiation I think is really important.”

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The main thing Nowak and his union colleagues have been working on with Labour in recent months, and indeed years, has been the new deal for working people, the party’s package of legislation to improve workers’ rights and strengthen trade unionism. Nowak describes delivering it as his “number one priority”, saying that it will “it will make a massive difference to people in workplaces up and down the country.”

“Britain’s board rooms are not representative of Britain at work”

But what about after that? If the new deal goes through, where will the trade union movement want to press next? Nowak laughs at this, saying that the trade union movement is “always ambitious”.

He highlights a potential next priority as being “corporate governance in this country. The fact is that Britain’s board rooms are not representative of Britain at work, and there is a massive disconnect between what happens in board rooms and what happens on the shop floor”.

“We need a national conversation on tax”

I asked if he would like to see Labour go further, and got a very clear answer: Tax. “I think there’s real issues about where we find the money to rebuild our public services…I think we’ve been clear at the TUC that we need that national conversation about tax.

“Growth is really important, we need to get growth in our economy, but we also need to make sure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share.

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“We’ll be taking that message as we go into the budget that we need a fair taxation system in this country. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to re build our public services  – you can’t put right 14 years of neglect in 6 months, or 12 months”.

So would he like to see trade union aligned MPs in the new intake pushing for taxes on the wealthy? “Not just the trade union MPs. I want that debate right across the spectrum in the House of Commons. The fact is dividends have risen three times faster than wages in the last period. Our tax system doesn’t reflect that and we think we need a tax system that does reflect that.”

We need to modernise trade union law

Another thing he thinks doesn’t reflect the world of in Britain today is legislation around trade union organising. “Things like electronic balloting would be transformative for unions”, he tells LabourList.

“The fact that our members can’t vote in workplaces, or electronically, but you can vote [electronically] for leader of the Conservative party, as they did for Liz Truss, just doesn’t make any sense. Modernising trade union law to actually reflect the world of work would be a really useful start.”

“Totemic” fight to unionise Amazon

One contemporary workplace Nowak has a particularly close eye on is Amazon, where the results of a ballot to recognise the GMB union in a Coventry warehouse were at the time of speaking pending. Nowak describes the fight to unionise in Coventry as a “really totemic” battle. On Wednesday, we learned that the unionisation drive failed, 49.5% to 50.5%.

If they don’t get over the line,  Nowak said a week ago, “it’s not because of the efforts of the union, or the wishes of the members – it’s because Amazon have spent millions of pounds to keep them out, to frustrate recognition”

“I don’t know what the result will be. But I do know that in 5 years’ time we will have unionised not just one amazon site, we’ll have unionised dozens of amazon sites across the country. I’m absolutely confident that that’s going to happen”.