10/07/2012

TUC Appoints First Female Leader

Britain's Trade Union Congress will be lead by a woman for the first time in its history.

The union has confirmed that Frances O'Grady will become its next general secretary, taking over from Brendan Barber at the end of the year.

While she is little known outside the union movement, Ms O'Grady has "diplomacy, charm and imagination," former TUC leader Lord Monks said.

"From early on, we identified her as a rising star," said Lord Monks, who was general secretary from 1993 to 2003.

O’Grady joined the TUC in the mid 1990s.

Born in Oxford in 1959, the youngest of five children, O’Grady’s father was a shop steward at the British Leyland plant at Cowley. Her grandfather had been a founder member of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union.

She became the first woman deputy general secretary of the TUC in 2003.

Frances O'Grady takes on the role of general secretary at a time of growing industrial unrest. The TUC is organising a mass demonstration against the government's austerity measures in October.

(H)

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