Esther Lynch was elected ETUC Deputy General Secretary at the Vienna Congress in May 2019, after four years as Confederal Secretary. She has extensive trade union experience at Irish, European and international levels, starting with her election as a shop steward in the 1980s. Before coming to the ETUC, she was the Legislation and Social Affairs Officer with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), where she took part in negotiations on Ireland’s National Social Partner Agreements. Esther’s responsibilities as Deputy General Secretary include social dialogue, collective bargaining and wage policy, trade union rights, gender equality and Brexit.  As Confederal Secretary she ran a successful EU-wide online campaign ‘Social Rights First’ that mobilised support for the European Pillar of Social Rights, led ETUC lobbying actions aimed at improving workers’ rights in legislative initiatives such as the Transparent and Predicable Working Conditions Directive and the Whistleblowing Directive, she spearheaded the ETUC’s ‘Europe Needs a Pay Rise’ campaign and helped secure the EU’s adoption of legally binding occupational exposure limits to protect workers from exposure to carcinogens, as well as a social partners’ agreement on reprotoxins.