TUC President Matt Wrack has told the annual meeting of the Trades Union Congress that the new Labour government must “offer hope”, arguing that “people cannot take more of the same”.
Wrack called on unions to continue campaigning hard to ensure that improvements to workers’ rights are delivered and anti-union legislation repealed.
He argued that there “are powerful forces in play which will seek to resist measures to strengthen our unions or to shift economic power in favour of the majority”.
He also said that unions must not “miss the opportunity” presented by the new government, arguing: “We already hear some people saying there is little difference between politicians. That is a mistake as serious as complacency”.
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Wrack, who has served as general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) since 2005, is at the end of his one-year term as TUC President and his service in this role was the subject of a motion of thanks at the congress in Brighton.
Wrack also spoke about the final report of the Grenfell Inquiry which was published this week. “I visited that fire as operations were still underway,” he said, praising the work of firefighters and others who worked in the aftermath of the disaster.
“Almost to a man and a woman, the people entering that inferno that night, risking their own lives in desperate attempts to save others, were trade unionists, members of the Fire Brigades Union”, he said.
Wrack cited Margaret Thatcher’s drive to promote profit and David Cameron’s war against “excessive health and safety” as being responsible for events like Grenfell, describing it as the result of a “grotesque ideology” which “has created a building safety crisis affecting millions.”
The FBU general secretary also described himself as an internationalist and sent “solidarity to the Palestinian people”, saying of the war in Gaza that for the new Labour government “it should not be difficult to take the right side and make the right decisions”.
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