TUC general secretary Brendan Barber

Tony Blair should not "stitch up" his union allies in Labour's third term, Brendan Barber has warned.

Ahead of his annual conference next week, the TUC general secretary called on the prime minister to show real "passion and conviction" for workers' rights.

He added that the government should fulfil pledges on issues such as equality in the workplace, holiday rights and pensions, made at the party's national policy forum in Warwick earlier this year.

"Tony Blair must demonstrate this doesn't simply represent a kind of pre-election stitch-up - it genuinely represents a commitment to a joint programme of work that's designed to deliver a better deal for the people of Britain at work and that's a key challenge for the prime minister," he said.

"The day we stop being hungry for advance or being passionate about righting wrong will be the day our movement will die because there is still real exploitation faced by many workers in Britain, some real injustices that need to be tackled."

Atmosphere

Although civil service job cuts look set to dominate the TUC conference in Brighton, Barber claimed that delegates will be meeting "in a better atmosphere than we have for some years".

"In the run-up to the 1997 election we'd hammered out a common programme: the minimum wage, the commitment to deliver the fairness at work legislation, union recognition, the social chapter and so on," he said.

"We've not had an equivalent understanding running throughout the second term but now as a result of all the work that's been done and which came together very much in the Warwick weekend, we can see an agenda that's been taking shape for the workplace, for the trade union movement to work on together with the government."

Speaking to journalists, he insisted that access to ministers had "never been a major concern" for union leaders.

"Where there are tensions it's because there's been disagreements about aspects of policy and the lack of that sense of a shared programme... I hope they are now going to change for the better," Barber said.