The TUC has appointed its first female leader, Frances O’Grady, to take over as general secretary when incumbent Brendan Barber steps down at the end of this year.
Although little known outside the trade union movement, O’Grady, who joined the TUC in the mid-1990s, is well-regarded and is expected by some to shake it up, according to the BBC.
From early on, she was identified as a “rising star” by Lord Monks, who was the body’s general secretary between 1993 and 2003. He described her as having “diplomacy and charm, and imagination. She’s got energy and dynamism – and she’s got the skills I believe that will make a very good general secretary”.
Born in Oxford in 1959 to a union family, O’Grady was the youngest of five children. Her father was a shop steward at the British Leyland plant in Cowley and her grandfather was a founder member of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union.
After studying politics and modern history at Manchester University, O’Grady initially joined the T&G, which is now part of Unite, before becoming a member of the TUC. In 2003, she became its first female deputy general secretary.
Colleagues say that she is in touch with the opinions of grass roots union members and can speak for growing numbers of women in low-paid, insecure jobs. But Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Daily Mirror, who has known O’Grady since the 1980s, also described her as “very persuasive”.
“She can sit people down and argue them into the ground,” he said. “She’ll now be the public face of trade unions. That will be a problem for [Prime Minister, David] Cameron. He has a problem with women. She’s quietly spoken…she could yet be his nemesis.”
O’Grady will be taking on the role of general secretary at a time of rising industrial unrest in the face of the coalition government’s austerity measures and inevitably “her critics will ask ‘is she going to be strong enough to take unions through what is going to be a very difficult period”, Maguire conceded.
