Uniting Workers - ETUC and industriAll Europe Together for a Fair Deal for Workers
Speech by Esther Lynch, General Secretary ETUC delivered at industriAll Europe Congress (Budapest, 3 June 2025)
Dear colleagues,
I bring you warm solidarity greetings from the 45 million workers and their trade unions represented by the European Trade Union Confederation.
It’s an honour to be here with you for industriAll Europe’s 4th Congress.
I want to thank Jude, Isabelle, your President Michael,
and the industriAll Europe team for your support for the ETUC snd your tireless commitment to defending and building Europe’s industrial future.
Your Congress theme — “Uniting Workers for an Industrial Future” — could not be more timely or more necessary.
We meet at a time of deep uncertainty - but also of powerful solidarity.
Across Europe, workers are uniting their struggles united in our understanding that a collective agreement the best route to a quality job and that collective action transforms not just workplaces, but entire societies.
Our recent ETUC Mid-Term Conference in Belgrade determined action on three pillars for action:
- Pillar 1: Build the Trade Union Movement — the foundation of our power
- Pillar 2: Resist Deregulation and the Far Right — defending what we’ve built
- Pillar 3: Deliver Quality Jobs — winning the future we demand
Pillar 1: Build the Trade Union Movement
Our collective task is to reinforce the trade union movement. We must strengthen the union movement like never before.
That means putting trade unions, organising and collective bargaining at the front and center of our European agenda.
For ETUC it means creating real support for our affiliates in their trade union renewal activities.
At our Mid-Term Conference, we launched the Trade Union Renewal Centre and set out our actions under the Social Dialogue Pact concluded recently.
We demand meaningful social dialogue, not empty consultations. Not tokenism. Not corporate theatre. Real dialogue where trade unions are heard and their perogatives respected.
And we are pushing for concrete tools — such as workplace access rights, both digital and physical — and social conditionalities to ensure public funds only support companies that offer quality jobs and have a collective agreement as part of the support for our affiliates organising.
This is about building our power — worker power. Because without strong, growing unions, we will not be able to build a future that delivers for people.
Trade unions don't just recruit members – we ignite a movement and energise the spirit of solidarity that has always been our greatest weapon.
Our second Pillar : Resist Deregulation and the Far Right
The second pillar of our struggle is resistance—principled, organised, and unapologetic.
Every attempt to roll back workers' rights, every deregulation scheme that puts profits above collective agreements, every assault on the social Europe we have built together—it will meet the full force of our united movement.
We are not against doing things better but we are against competition on cut throat wages and low road conditions.
Because every right we've won from working time, to equality to workplace health and safety represents generations of struggle. So we are not just defending what we have; we protect the foundation upon which future victories will be built. When forces, from US or more home grown seek to roll back our achievements, we stand as an unbreakable wall of resistance.
And alongside with these attacks against rights and protections comes a darker force: the rise of the far right.
The far right creates fear, division, and hate — blaming migrants, lgbtiq+ and even trade unions for problems created by an unjust economy.
Europe must not be bullied out of its standards, rights and values.
We must respond with unity, with courage, and with determination.
Thats why we will be back here in Budapest for PRIDE on 28 June.
And its why our third pillar is to win a Project of Hope is our boldest pillar.
We join IndustriAll in Championing and industrial policy that puts quality jobs at its heart.
An industrial policy with purpose.
We don't just react to change we do not defend the status quo we . We are shaping a new European vision, built on quality union jobs in every sector and every region
Securing investment in infrastructures, public services and public goods
No blank cheques.
Ensuring social conditionalities – every euro of public money must come with guarantees for quality jobs and collective bargaining.
A genuine just transition – not a slogan - with strong worker protections in AI, automation, green transition, restructuring processes.
And ambitious legislation
- to ensure the right to training and anticipation and management of change
- protection from psychosocial risks,
- to guarantee human in control in AI along with an improved value for human labour and a fair share of the profits for workers
- to guarantee the respect of the right to disconnect
- to end exploitation and abuses including by intermediaries and in subcontracting chains
This is the agenda Europe needs and workers want.
Three pillars
We unite. We resist. We build.
And we’ve already shown that change is possible: just two weeks ago, we secured an important step forward with the trilogue agreement on the European Works Council Directive, and we are now only few steps away from achieving important improvements in that Directive — proof that with our joint work and mobilisation, we can win.
In conclusion colleagues,
I thank industriAll Europe again, you have shown real leadership — at the negotiating table, in the discussions with European institutions, on the streets, across Europe.
Your demonstration at the heart of Brussels was essential to highlight the risk of deindustrialisation and calling for emergency measures to protect industrial jobs
Real leadership in calling on the EU institutions to introduce emergency measures to protect jobs and industrial capacity
Your committment to develop a real industrial policy with substantial investments and social conditionalities to ensure European industrial future leads us all.
The ETUC has stood, stands today and will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with you.
There can be no strong Europe without a strong industrial base.
No social model without unionised, quality jobs.
No democracy without trade unions at the workplace, sector, national and European level.
Friends, the ETUC will need to rely on the strength of IndustriAll to help us.
Mobilisation is how we shift power — how we make our demands visible and impossible to ignore.
The Belgrade Declaration we adopted says it clearly: “Trade union leaders stand united to win a fair deal for workers, to build solidarity, and to resist any attack on working people and their rights.”
Let’s carry that message forward, here in Budapest and across Europe.
United, we build, resist, and deliver.
Shoulder by shoulder. Inch by inch. Until we succeed.
Thank you.
we have faced down greater challenges before. We built the social Europe from the ashes of war. We fought for the eight-hour day when it seemed impossible. We secured rights that seemed unimaginable to previous generations.
We are the inheritors of that tradition. We are the guardians of that legacy. And we are the architects of what comes next.
No social model without unionised, quality jobs.
No democracy without trade unions at the workplace, sector, national and European level.