Back when Paul Nowak was an agency worker, he was called in to see management.
A young trade union rep in the Communication Workers Union, Nowak had been organising to improve pay and conditions.
The wave of new CWU members at the Merseyside call centre had not gone unnoticed by the agency.
“They told us we were all finished,” Nowak remembers. “Just like that, 80 people, many with families.
“They didn’t like how many new members had joined our union. It was union-busting. Just like we saw recently at P&O.”
For 22-year-old Nowak it was a turning point. “You can react to that in two ways,” he says. “By never again putting your head above the parapet. Or by fighting to make sure that never happens to anyone else ever again.”
In just a few days’ time, Paul Nowak – former call centre operator, hotel night porter and a supermarket worker of Liverpool Irish, Chinese and Polish heritage – will be confirmed as the next General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, the most powerful union position in the country.
Born in Birkenhead on the Wirral peninsula between North Wales and Liverpool, the guitar and ukulele-playing Everton fan will take over on January 1 from Frances O’Grady, to whom he has been deputy since 2016.
Having worked with Frances for nearly 25 years, he knows how big her shoes will be to fill. “Well, it’s a privilege isn’t it?” he says, speaking to the Mirror. “To be representing 5.5 million working people in 48 different trade unions. You can’t imagine anything that’s more of a privilege.”
Nowak never had a secure job until he worked for a trade union.
Brian Kenny, who has been on the CWU executive for half a century, remembers the call centre dispute well – and how Nowak stood out as a young activist. “Paul was a breath of fresh air,” Kenny, a Labour councillor on the Wirral, says. “So positive and passionate.
“So many new people got involved because of Paul. He organised the branch so well one day he and his fellow agency workers came into work to be told they were finished.
“I knew then he’d be involved in trade unionism all his life, not because he wanted a career, but because he believed in unions, and instilled it in everybody else. Paul hasn’t changed a bit.”
Eileen Turnbull, the legendary Shrewsbury 24 campaigner, worked with Nowak as the GMB union’s legal officer. He was then a teenager working part-time at Asda and studying at Liverpool Poly – now John Moores University.
As a rising star, the union invited him to shadow the legal department. “He was a breath of fresh air,” Turnbull says. “He looked about two, and asked a lot of questions. I recall him asking, ‘how does this benefit the members?’ I thought, ‘you cheeky sod’.
He listened, he took notes, he sat in on industrial tribunals. “Julie, the secretary for the education department, said, ‘he’s amazing’.
“I said, ‘don’t tell him’. We just knew one day he’d be General Secretary. I can’t remember having the same conviction about anyone.” Lynne Morris, a regional manager at Unison, worked with Paul when he was a bus information officer and union rep. “He was very fresh-faced, a real young Turk,” she says.
“He was very articulate, but he could also listen. He wasn’t afraid to take people on, but he didn’t just rant at everybody.” In 1998, no one was surprised to see Nowak, then 25, selected for the first intake of the TUC Organising Academy in London.
His fellow recruits included Sharon Graham, now General Secretary of Unite the Union, and Roz Foyer, General Secretary of the Scottish TUC. The Academy was launched by the TUC’s then campaigns officer, Frances O’Grady.
Nowak laughs hearing his former colleagues’ memories. “I must have been insufferable,” he says. “But it was the best training ground.” He tells Turnbull: “I’ve got to make you all proud in the job now.”
Ask Nowak where he gets his passion for organising and he’ll point to the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead and Liverpool’s historic Chinatown.
His maternal granddad Chin Tsang, known as Jimmy, was a Hong Kong-Chinese cook in the Merchant Navy alongside his brother who worked in the laundry.
He married Betty, a Liverpool-Irish girl and settled in the city. Nowak’s mum Ann was one of 11 kids.
“She grew up with very little in a three-bed flat in Chinatown,” Nowak says. “She had to live in the Fazakerley cottage homes (former children’s homes) for a while when nan was ill and granddad was away at sea.”
His other grandfather, Jozef Nowak had reached Liverpool via the Polish RAF, where he was an engineer. After the war Granddad Joe got a job at English Electric in the city and also married a Liverpool-Irish girl, Peggy.
“I’m one generation away from people who migrated here for a better life,” Nowak says. “So when I see people dismissing migrants, we need to stand up to that. My granddad felt he didn’t get on at work as he was Polish.
“My other granddad was lucky to escape being sent back with other Chinese Merchant Navy men after the war.
“My parents experienced poverty more than racism. Both left school at 15, but they are fiercely intelligent working-class people. They grew up unafraid to speak truth to power.”
His dad John was a Cammell Laird welder but work often dried up meaning tough times for the family. His mum, he says, is “pretty formidable”.
Nowak adds: “I’m not claiming to be a working class hero, by the way.”
Now with three grown-up children, he still lives on the Wirral with wife Vicky as well as on a canal boat in Hertfordshire when he needs to be in London.
“My life as a trade union activist has been to grow unions,” he says. “So I’m heartened to see renewed life in them. Now the country is rightly focused on the 40,000 rail workers and others striking for decent pay.
“But beyond these struggles, the trade union movement is fighting every day for workers in all sorts of ways – stopping people getting sacked unfairly, and fighting discrimination.”
He points to all the gains made by the TUC and trade unions in the pandemic.
“I’m not interested in celebrating glorious defeats,” he says. “We have millions of members, and our job is to make sure employers and the Government deliver for working people.”
Brian Kenny recalls that when Nowak left the CWU at 22, members clubbed together to buy him a watch.
“When Paul left we were gutted,” he says.
Years after Eileen Turnbull showed a young activist the ropes, she went to ask TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady and her Deputy Paul Nowak for support for the Shrewsbury 24 campaign, fighting to clear the name of 24 strikers convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.
“These men had been convicted, meaning it was politically difficult to support them, but Frances and Paul didn’t hesitate,” she says.
As we finish our tour of Nowak’s Merseyside, we drop in at the Cavern Pub in the cellar made famous by The Beatles. Ian Prowse, lead singer with bands Pele and Amsterdam, and organiser of the venue’s Monday Club, is there.
Since meeting Prowse at the Tolpuddle Festival in Dorset, singer-songwriter Nowak has been a regular with his guitar at the Monday Club.
“There’s a conviction in his song-writing and a bit of steel he’ll need in the job,” says Prowse, who wrote one of John Peel’s favourite songs, Does This Train Stop on Merseyside.
“What a great achievement to become General Secretary of the TUC. We’ve some famous alumni at the Monday Club – but for rock and roll song-writing, not running one of the greatest institutions this country’s ever had.”
The Tranmere Rovers fan nods at the Evertonian Nowak. “He’d probably give it all up for an FA Cup win though.” Paul shakes his head.
“He’s wrong. It’d have to be a league title at least.”
