Trade unions should fill gap in public life, says departing TUC chief

Trade unions have a "real opportunity" to fill the gap in public life created by Britain's discredited political and media classes, according to the outgoing leader of the Trades Union Congress, who also called on Labour leader Ed Miliband to show "more boldness" in supporting striking workers.

Brendan Barber, who stands down after nine years as TUC general secretary at the end of the month, said the trade union movement still has the credibility to map out a post-crash future for the UK even though its overall membership has halved from 13m since 1979. Barber will be succeeded by the TUC's first female head, Frances O'Grady, who has pledged to modernise and expand the union firmament.

"It is a real time of opportunity," said Barber. "If you look around wider society, the political classes are incredibly discredited in the wake of expenses and all the rest. The media is in serious trouble in the wake of Leveson, so which are the institutions that are perceived to have a decent degree of credibility within the wider community? I think trade unionism is still in pretty good shape. There is a real opportunity and Frances will be fantastic."

As a confrontation appears to open with the government over teachers, Barber said he would like to see "more boldness" from Miliband in supporting striking workers, amid criticism of the Labour leader's failure to endorse a public sector walkout on 30 November last year. The education secretary, Michael Gove, has written to all state school heads in England, urging them to take robust action against teachers involved in industrial action, and dock their pay.

The TUC, which represents 6 million trade unionists from 54 unions, had been "very effective combatants in the battle of ideas" that has raged since the near-collapse of the banking system in 2008, Barber said. The TUC's calls for bank reform, closure of tax loopholes and an activist industrial policy had struck a political chord and shifted public debate.

However, he acknowledged that the union movement had declined in his 37 years at the TUC and that the Conservative coalition with the Liberal Democrats had dampened some of the pressure from Tory ranks to crack down on unions. He said the political atmosphere under this administration had been different from the 1980s and 90s: the Lib Dem business secretary, Vince Cable, had attacked proposals in the Beecroft report to make firing workers easier. "Vince Cable and Nick Clegg made it very clear they didn't want to have anything to do with an awful lot of the Beecroft agenda, so it's a little bit different."

One of his biggest regrets was the "joint failure" of unions and the Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to devise a different approach to running the economy.

While a lot of positives had arisen from Labour's 13 years in power from 1997 to 2010, Barber said opportunities were missed, pointing to Germany, where unions had achieved a very strong dialogue with government and employers to stop the economy going into a "total nosedive" during the financial crisis.

He cited the level of dialogue in Germany about the labour market measures "including what turned into very big programmes of wage subsidies to support workers on short time working".

"Angela Merkel sat down for about three or four days with them for an intensive discussion on 'How can we best ride out this storm?'" said Barber. "And that sense of really active, continuous, serious dialogue we never quite built up with the Labour government through the Blair-Brown years."

He added: "We never quite persuaded Blair and Brown. Clearly they felt constrained by this sense that Labour can never look to appear in the pockets of the unions and the Tory jibe that you are just pandering to the union paymasters and all the rest of it."

Barber said their successor, Miliband, had been "bolder on a number of things". He said: "I think he's genuinely intellectually curious about some of these big changes that have been taking place in our economy and how we build a fairer economy." Nonetheless, Barber said he wanted more backing from the Labour leadership in industrial disputes.

"I understand that particularly if there is a dispute that is impacting on the public in some way that they are nervous about being seen to show support for it maybe, but I would like to see more boldness sometimes, yes, and acknowledging that workers don't take strike action lightly. To use the old cliches, it is the last resort. That is genuinely the case."