Paul Nowak, TUC General Secretary
In January of this year, Paul Nowak took over as General Secretary of the TUC.
Born and raised in Merseyside, Paul first joined a union at seventeen, when he was working part-time at Asda. In the years that followed, he worked as a call centre operator and a hospital night porter.
Later, while working as a rep for the financial services union BIFU (now part of Unite), Paul was a member of the first ever intake of the TUC’s Organising Academy. He joined the TUC as a staff member in 2000 and went on to become regional secretary for the North of England and then Head of Organising. For the last ten years, he’s served as Deputy General Secretary to his predecessor Frances O’Grady.
A lifelong Everton fan, in his spare time Paul can be found spending time with family and playing the guitar with friends.
Hi Paul. You’ve taken your role at a turbulent political moment, but also at an exciting time for the trade union movement. What are your biggest priorities in the months and years ahead?
Hello to all Accord members. Yes, these are definitely turbulent times! When I became General Secretary in the New Year, I said I had three immediate priorities. My first priority is to support working people and unions through the cost-of-living crisis – not just by demanding action to boost pay, but standing shoulder to shoulder with everyone involved in industrial action. My second priority is to push back against attacks on our rights which make it even harder for unions to fight for a fair deal. And my third key priority is to secure political change, including a New Deal for working people. Fundamental to all three is my defining mission: to build a stronger, more diverse, more inclusive trade union movement. That demands we put equality at the heart of everything we do, whether it’s fighting racism or tackling sexual harassment. Accord is a great example of us putting our aspirations around equality into practice with around 65 per cent of Accord members women and 13 per cent from a BME background. But there’s more to do if our wider movement is going to look, sound and feel more like today’s workforce in all our fantastic diversity.
One of your first jobs in the trade union movement was as an organiser for the financial services union BIFU. What did that experience teach you about the finance sector and the kinds of challenges our members face?
I was 26 when I joined BIFU, and my experience working there was incredibly important. I learned that the finance sector is vital to the UK economy but is constantly changing amidst massive global competition. Since the crash of 2008, we’ve had loads of restructuring, high-street branch closures and redundancies – with LBG shedding around half its staff. That’s invariably meant fewer people doing more and more work. And finance has always been on the frontline of tech change, with the growth of mobile and online banking just the tip of the iceberg. At BIFU, I also saw for myself that the vast majority of finance workers aren’t City highflyers on massive salaries and bonuses, but branch staff, call centre staff and other workers, often on middle incomes at best. And the work they do has never been more important than it is now: helping workers and their families manage their finances, mortgages and savings. Millions of people really depend on them.