Frances O'Grady at the TUC: The blue-eyed boys need to listen to me The appointment of a woman to a job held for 145 years by men prompted talk of broken glass ceilings, but there was no surprise last summer when she was unopposed to succeed Brendan Barber after nine years as his deputy. Lord Monks, Barber's predecessor, was impressed by O'Grady's charm, imagination and diplomacy, and she was marked out for advancement soon after her arrival at the TUC in 1994. Before that, she worked at the Transport and General Union. O'Grady's skill at negotiation will be needed as cuts bite, jobs go and the more militant union barons agitate for a showdown with David Cameron. But first: formative influences. "I left home and was working part time at a newsagent's," she remembers, "then in kitchens - after a brief spell in silver service. One of the colleges was Somerville but I can't remember the other. That was the thing about Oxford - it was two different worlds. Locals felt resentment that there were these college parklands they couldn't get into. There was a sense of it being a divided town. You would see very privileged people running around very drunk and causing trouble. Did she ever bump into the future Prime Minister and fellow Bullingdonians on one of their notorious roistering expeditions? I think David Cameron denied running around in his blue tails. Anyway, he's a bit younger than me. Serving the posh boys and girls at Oxford involved some tongue-biting. Staff were not encouraged to join in dinner table debate and were, to all intents and purposes, invisible. Maybe that is why she has promoted politeness in the workplace - encouraging bosses to smile at office cleaners. I was brought up to believe that I'm no better than anyone, no worse than anyone. I'm a democratic socialist. For me it's about fairness, people looking after each other, the sense that excessive inequality can damage the social fabric. In a nod to supposed neutrality, she adds: "I am not here to represent my beliefs but a movement that includes Tory voters, Lib Dem voters, Labour voters and an awful lot of people who don't vote at all. The TUC is not affiliated to any party. Political parties have become elites, so removed from ordinary people that there is no way of shop workers and factory workers having their voices heard. O'Grady's policies are standard for the head of the TUC. She wants an end to austerity economics and cuts in the public sector, Keynesian investment in infrastructure to promote growth and create jobs, an end to the demonisation of benefit claimants and greater worker representation in the boardroom. The money to pay for new infrastructure is there, she argues, in the bank accounts of the rich who avoid and evade taxes to the tune of £120 billion annually. The top 10 per cent have £4.5 trillion in total wealth between them - that's gone up half a trillion since the recession. The money is there. Business is sitting on a massive cash pile but isn't investing. The key drivers in increased welfare spending are housing benefits and tax credits. Private rents are sky-high and low-wage work is increasing, so the taxpayer ends up subsidising greedy landlords and low-paying employers. The rate of people incorrectly claiming incapacity benefits is tiny compared with the scale of tax dodging. She has placed emphasis on ending workplace inflexibility, discriminating against female workers and the enduring pay gap. "I don't think it's healthy for any of our institutions to be governed exclusively by blue-eyed boys," she says. It doesn't give rise to good decisions. It's important to have experience from all walks of life. Women, she says, bring more empathy to the boardroom, a greater understanding of the need for good morale. There has been too much self-regarding, macho management, fuelling obscene pay rises at the top. "There's an idea today that wealth is produced only by business leaders, rather than the whole workforce," she says. "I remember listening to a former chief executive of Royal Mail talking about how he delivered X-million letters every day and thinking, 'You want to get some help there!"" There were 13.2 million people in unions in 1979, the apogee of their power and the arrival of their nemesis, Margaret Thatcher. Membership had fallen to 7.7 million by 2009 and is now under 6.5 million, sustained largely by the public sector and almost equally men and women. Hobbled long ago by hostile legislation, the destruction of old industries and the casualisation of the workforce, the TUC, umbrella body for 54 unions, no longer commands a place at the top table. O'Grady practises soft power - she enjoys a good working relationship with Business Secretary Vince Cable - but some union leaders, such as Bob Crow and Len McCluskey, would like to take the fight to the Government, possibly with a general strike. And, as job losses in the public sector advance towards 700,000, she does not discount widespread strike action in the coming year. Union members, she says, suspect the Coalition, or at least its Tory half, of using unemployment as a weapon to drive down pay and conditions. Sometimes with the Government there is a touch of the Marie Antoinettes - being very out of touch with the anger felt by ordinary people. One can't imagine Miss O'Grady cheering on the tumbrels, but you don't become the first female successor to George Woodcock, Vic Feather and Len Murray just by being nice.