John Monks has warned his trade union troops that frustrations with Labour could damage their cause.

Giving his final conference address as TUC chief, Monks played up the progress made under two Labour governments.

And in a clear warning to unions spoiling for a fight with Tony Blair, he told his Blackpool audience that rows with ministers could drown out applause for "the Labour movement's" achievements.

"We are not even where we should, and could, be on some important issues," he said.

"But it's our opponents that say unions can't achieve anything any more. Every time we let our undoubted frustrations obscure our progress, we play into their hands - confirming the worst anti-union propaganda."

The TUC moderniser, close to Downing Street and moving on to Europe next year, underlined his view that future prospects for trade unionists were bound up with the Labour government's fortunes - even at a time of tension.

"Of course we will use some sharp rhetoric in our debates this week. I've been tough myself on some aspects of the new Labour project," he told the Blackpool conference.

"But our commitment to make further progress should never blind us to just how much we have achieved, are achieving and know we will achieve."

Describing relations with the government as "scratchy", Monks stressed that some of the problems were "nothing new".

Many disputes, he insisted, arose from the fact that many trade unionists were in the public sector and had a minister as their employer.

"But there are other factors at work as well," conceded the TUC general secretary.

"Some are down to government, some may be down to us."

Taking the prime minister to task for his "mood music" to the City and alliance with Italy's right wing leader, Silvio Berlusconi, Monks lamented the absence of formal, structured relations with government.

"We are left with informal relations. These are often quite good but they are also unsystematic and diverse. Some key ministers speak only to the people they trust. Few have regular systematic meetings with agreed outcomes."

But Monks insisted that using Labour's funding crisis and trade union cash as a lever of influence was not the way forward.

"Unions affiliated to the Labour Party in particular tend to have concluded that the main way to influence the government is through the party, sometimes with financial pressure and contemporary resolutions," he said

"This is, for any Labour prime minister, a difficult area. But in truth causing problems in the party has been proving perhaps the most successful way of exerting influence. It should not be like that."

"It's time now to build a new partnership with Labour and with the employers to tackle the big problems we all know we face and cannot solve independently."

Looking to the future Monks used his address to warn trade unionists against faction fighting.

"How do we promote trade unionism? Despite high employment and the new recognition laws, our membership levels are stubbornly level. We know too that a Labour government cannot be our recruiting sergeant . It cannot do our job for us," he said.

"I see union energies sometimes over engaged on internal matters - the next election, mergers, political faction fighting, inter-union tribalism. These stir the adrenalin and absorb time and energy. Yet we must focus on organising the millions of unorganised as our top priority."

And the outgoing leader reasserted the importance of maintaining a positive link with Labour.

"We need to work with political partners which want to work with us. We need to build the relationship with Labour and avoid the mistakes of our predecessors who let it slip," he told trade union delegates.

"We must generalise the good while fighting the bad."

"Congress, this way we attract the unorganised. This way we win the fight for equality and this way trade unionism reaches out to the millions who need us."