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Brendan Barber

Brendan Barber

I’m General Secretary of the TUC, the 9th person to hold the position since its introduction in 1922. I’ve been with the organisation since 1975, working in different roles in industrial relations and communications, as well as Deputy General Secretary until 2003, when I was elected General Secretary by the TUC’s General Council. I’m responsible for the overall operation of the TUC, and for leading the implementation of policies set by our annual Congress and the General Council.
I studied at City University in London, and took a sabbatical year as President of the City University Students Union, as well as working for a year with VSO in Ghana. I’m a Non-Executive Director of the Court of the Bank of England, and have done turns as a member of the ACAS Council and of Sport England. The latter is close to my heart as I’m a keen supporter of Everton Football Club, though you’ll also find me occasionally at home games of Vauxhall Conference side Barnet, and when I get the chance I enjoy a round or three of golf.

  • Economics

    The IoD should be careful what it wishes for

    11th May 2011 — Filed under: Economics

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    I’ve been at the O2 in Greenwich today, to speak to the Insitute of Directors (IoD) annual convention.

    I always admire the way the IoD doesn’t pussy-foot around. They’re very clear that they don’t just back the spending cuts, but want more of them – and want them more quickly. But in their desire to see the deficit tackled in this way, they should be very careful what they’re wishing for.

    The deep and rapid spending cuts are not just slicing away at the public sector, but doing big damage to the private sector too. The medicine doesn’t just taste nasty, its side-effects are making the disease worse too.

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  • Economics

    The real alternative to the cuts myths

    22nd March 2011 — Filed under: Economics, Politics

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    I’ve been at the EEF in London today, to give this year’s Warwick-ACAS Lowry lecture. I wanted to use the opportunity to talk about some of the myths underpinning the government’s programme of fast, deep spending cuts. Here’s some of what I said.

    The TUC is no deficit denier. We know that borrowing one pound in every four we spend is unsustainable, and we agree that spending more on servicing debt interest than on educating our children is just plain wrong. What we need is a Plan B.

    My concern is that the government’s answer – to slash public spending with reckless speed – is based not on a sound reading of the evidence, but on an ideological zeal to shrink the size of the state. The so-called reforms in the NHS and education threaten the fundamental character of our public realm.

    This brutal austerity is being implemented on the back of a series of myths – half truths and distortions that have poisoned our public debate:

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  • Politics

    Lib Dems are abandoning the centre-ground

    12th March 2011 — Filed under: Politics, Public services

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    This is what I’ve just said to a fringe meeting at the Lib Dem Spring conference in Sheffield, where I’m sharing a platform with Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander:

    I like to think that the TUC has developed good relations with the Liberal Democrats in recent years – of course there have been disagreements but also mutual respect.

    Charles Kennedy addressed our annual Congress when he was leader, as my predecessor John Monks spoke to your Assembly. Chris Huhne addressed the TUC environment conference last October – and in turn I’ve been delighted to speak at a number of your fringe events.

    That mutual respect has been based on a recognition that we share some basic philosophical roots and approaches.

    Social Liberalism was a driving force behind the creation of the post-war welfare state of Keynes and Beveridge, but it also drew on important work done by the TUC on social insurance.

    The social democratic tradition that helped regalvanise your party in the 1980s was the UK’s main advocate of what I would call the social Europe bargain – a key belief in today’s trade unions.

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  • Economics

    Government needs a Plan B

    26th January 2011 — Filed under: Economics

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    Yesterday’s dismal growth figures and the Governor’s revelation that ordinary people are paying a heavy price for the government’s economic policies, on top of huge cuts in vital services, make a plan B even more necessary.

    In his budget the Chancellor must change course.

    Above all the government needs a growth strategy that can get people back to work and the tax receipts flowing again to close the deficit.

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  • Blogging

    Why I’m proud the TUC is hosting Netroots UK

    8th January 2011 — Filed under: Blogging, Politics, Public services

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    The British people are not yet quite sure what they think about the cuts. The government’s homespun metaphors about not spending what you don’t earn and talk of paying off the nation’s credit card bills work with many.

    But fewer and fewer accept that we are all in this together, and a big majority expect to be personally affected by spending cuts.

    Resistance is therefore growing. The student campaign against higher tuition fees may have been dismissed as middle class self-interest by some, but quickly broadened to include a defence of educational maintenance allowances and in any case is about fees for future students. Campaigns to defend science spending, school sports and children’s books have secured at least partial victories.

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  • Economics

    Tax dodge protestors are right to be angry

    17th December 2010 — Filed under: Economics, Public services

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    UK Uncut protesters are right to be angry at the scale of tax avoidance in the UK. The TUC has long been campaigning to expose the amount of tax that is dodged by big companies and the super-rich.

    There is a whole industry of socially-useless advisers who come up with new perfectly legal ways of avoiding the tax that Parliament intended wealthy people and organisations to pay.

    As the cuts bite, it is getting ever more clear that we are not all in this together and those who did least to cause the crash are suffering the most.

    What UK Uncut are doing is not the way that unions traditionally make their voice heard, but I am sure that they will remember that the workers in the shops they target are just as much victims of cuts and unfair tax policies as anyone else.

    As the TUC recognised in the statement we adopted at our Congress last September the campaign against the cuts will take many forms. A tiny minority will go in for ones that are counter-productive, but the rest are going to add up to a real movement for change. We have no pretensions that all of it can be brought together in a single organisation or run in a top-down way.

    Our March for the Alternative will be one focus – scrupulously organised and highly disciplined to ensure that it can be both safe and huge – but there’s also room and a need for spontaneity and action at the grassroots.

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  • Economics

    OBR report: Planning for job losses?

    29th November 2010 — Filed under: Economics, Labour market

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    No doubt the Chancellor will try to spin today’s OBR “Economic and fiscal outlook” report as a vindication of his approach. But a closer look at the figures reveals that even by the time of the next election, the OBR expects well over a million people still to be claiming unemployment benefit.

    In short, by 2015 the UK economy will still not be back to where it was before the recession hit in 2008. No politician should seize on these figures as some sort of good news story, least of all one that has just abandoned plans to publish a jobs and growth strategy for the country.

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  • Economics

    Spending cuts: A new coalition against bad economics

    19th October 2010 — Filed under: Economics, Politics

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    Today, I’m addressing a rally at a TUC-backed mass lobby of Parliament. Hundreds of consituents from across the UK will be visiting their MPs to register their concern at the cuts expected in tomorrow’s Comprehensive Spending Review. This is taken from what I’ll be saying at the event.

    Tomorrow the Government will announce unprecedented cuts in public spending – deeper than any of us can remember. They will bite deep into our social fabric – and hit some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society.

    They want us to believe that they have no choice and that this is economic necessity. Yet economic experts across the spectrum warn us that the cuts are too deep and too rapid. The warnings come from the White House, the US Treasury department, Nobel prize winners like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, key members of the Bank of England monetary policy committee, the chief economics commentator on the Financial Times, and yes, even the Mayor of London.

    At worst the cuts will plunge us back into recession. And at best they will condemn us to lost years of high unemployment and growth so weak that the deficit may well stay high.

    This is not economic necessity, but a political choice. Bad economics is serving a political project that has never been put to the British people at an election.

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  • Working Life

    Young Review: Predictable, but still a disappointment

    15th October 2010 — Filed under: Working Life

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    After much anticipation, Lord Young’s review’s of health and safety is out this morning. His recommendations are as predictable (indeed every bit as predictable as we’d predicted), but they still manage to be a grave disappointment all the same.

    The report contains not a single proposal that will reduce the high levels of workplace death, injuries and illness. Every year in the UK over 20,000 people die prematurely as a result of their work and at any one time over two million people are suffering ill-health because of their jobs.

    Yet instead of looking for ways of preventing people being killed and injured, the report uncritically accepts the myths and preconceptions surrounding health and safety, and focuses on dealing with a compensation culture which the Government accepts does not exist.

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  • Economics

    Spending cuts will hit the poorest

    12th September 2010 — Filed under: Economics, Politics, Public services

    Brendan Barber Brendan Barber

    Only a few weeks ago, the Government was seriously embarrassed by IFS research showing that the changes to tax and benefits bear down hardest on the poor. But so far no-one has yet worked out the impact of spending cuts on different income groups.

    It’s common sense that the poor use public transport more than the rich, and pensioners use the NHS more than the young. But no-one has yet put all the data together to work out the precise impact of the big cuts planned by the government.

    Today we launch a substantial independent report that does exactly this.

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