Union leader's rallying call for change

by Smyth Harper
BBC News Online, Manchester

Woodley's background is key to his attitudes

As Tony Woodley prepares to take up the reigns of one of the country's biggest unions BBC News Online speaks to a man who is determined to change the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G).

Tony Woodley is a man with a mission.

He wants to transform the state of trade unionism in this country to re-create it as a powerful force for change.

He is accused of being a left wing firebrand and has criticised not only the government, but the T&G's current general secretary, for being remote from what working people want.

But he is also a man who has secured significant victories, saving the jobs and livelihoods of thousands.

An affable, hardworking Wirral man, Woodley has an air of both authority and honesty.

Bill Morris' way of running the union is Bill Morris' way and in many regards he's done a good job, but it isn't particularly my way of working

It is not hard to see why T&G members want to see him head their union.

"I want a union that conducts itself like a union," he says.

"We have had a culture here where our general secretary has described himself as chief executive.

"We're not master and servants we are staff and officers and colleagues working together for the benefit of our members."

So something of a rebuke for the current chief Bill Morris, then.

"Bill Morris' way of running the union is Bill Morris' way and in many regards he's done a good job, but it isn't particularly my way of working."

Merseyside background

But what is it that makes Woodley so in tune with his membership?

Growing up in a two-up, two-down in what was then Tory Wallasey on the Wirral, he knows a thing or two about poverty.

"At one end of the town you had us with very little and at the other end you had opulence and riches beyond my belief."

It was something he says he saw mirrored, albeit on a different scale, when he went to sea in the 1960s to the Far East for four years.

On his return, in 1967, he got a job with Vauxhall, where his father was a union official.

(Blair) is so closeted in his own ivory towers he can't see that his policies are going down like a lead balloon with working people.

He admits trade unionism and Labour run through his blood, but talks a lot about the failures of Labour since it came into power and the "disgrace" of a minimum wage that is more of a "poverty wage", the gutting of pension funds, and the erosion of union power.

But for Woodley it is not just a case of talk.

Rover victory

He was instrumental in helping to save thousands of jobs on Merseyside when Ford was persuaded to make the Baby Jag at Halewood in Liverpool.

He helped persuade brewery bosses to keep production of Boddingtons bitter in Manchester - its spiritual home.

And it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that without him, Rover cars may have been consigned to the scrap heap.

It was Woodley who persuaded the government and BMW bosses that it would be a mistake to sell the firm and Longbridge plant to a venture capital group.

That group - Alchemy - wanted to turn Rover cars into a "prestige" car firm, and strip the superfluous assets.

Those assets included 10,000 West Midlands workers, who would have been laid off in the first week.

'Difficult times'

Thirty thousand more jobs were at risk.

"It was difficult times," he says.

"People in my own union didn't believe there was an alternative, the government didn't believe there was an alternative, BMW didn't believe anyone could turn it around.

"But the workers did."

He persuaded a new group - Phoenix - to help Rover rise from the ashes.

"Close to four years on, nobody's been sacked. That's incredible and I can't even believe it myself," he says, adding with modesty: "If you like, that may have been one of my finest hours."

But he's not just concerned with the big issues, and speaks fondly of one of the first issues he had to deal when he started working for the union full-time.

"I was confronted with a young kid who was 16 and was working for the YTS scheme.

"She was sacked for allegedly trying to steal a stool. I went to an old church in Birkenhead and I walked in to what was a Dickensian scene.

"There were 60 kids renovating furniture, unorganised, exploited and in outrageous conditions.

"We turned that around. The young girl didn't lose her job and that gave me as much satisfaction at that time in my trade union life as anything else."

Frustration with Blair

So when Woodley speaks angrily of the diminution of workers' rights, he's speaking with the authority of someone who's done something about it.

Woodley claims he is more frustrated and disappointed with the government than angry.

But during our conversation the impression given was that he is angry, deeply angry, at what he sees as the betrayal by the government of the people that put them in power.

It's the people at the top - particularly Tony Blair - that are the problem, he says.

There's only one game in town and it's our party, but the policies are wrong

"He is so closeted in his own ivory towers he can't see that his policies are going down like a lead balloon with working people.

"He's trying to please everyone, and is now pleasing very few people.

"I do expect better from a Labour government that I voted for and work for."

But he does not believe the answer is to withdraw T&G support from Labour.

"There's only one game in town and it's our party, but the policies are wrong and the leaders are making tremendous miscalculations."

One Jaguar executive gives a telling description of Woodley's energy.

He is quoted as saying: "'This man is bound to die of a heart attack. He lives on his nerves, he has enormous energy, his phone is always going off. If you take him out for a drink, he never relaxes.

With a laugh, Woodley says: "That sounds like me."