The full speech to the TUC conference by general secretary John Monks.

"President, Congress, if a teacher were to write a report on how we had promoted trade unionism over the past 10 years, she would probably give us 'B-', and add "much done, but much to do".

There's no doubt about our top achievement.

It's the part we played in the election of first one Labour government with a record majority, and then another.

Something never done by a previous generation.

Remember too, 10 years ago, that bitter 1992 defeat.

Many asked whether Labour could ever win again.

We must never forget just how much changed with those election victories.

The end of those dreary and depressing Tory years.

A chance to make progress - not just to try to hold on to what we had.

And progress we have very definitely made.

Real progress in the workplace, with employers, changes in the law, influence with government.

That's a good basis for doing what our Congress slogan says - reaching out.

We have new laws, not always going as far as we would like, but progress none the less.

Last year those legal changes helped unions signed nine times as many new recognition agreements as they did in 1997.

The minimum wage, safely introduced, can now go from strength to strength.

Next, and, most crucial, is high employment, even full employment in some areas.

I remember how the commentators scoffed at our calls for full employment in 1995.

We fight for full employment for many reasons.

But never forget that it makes labour scarce. It tilts the balance of power at work. It helps redress the inevitable unfairness in the relationship between employer and employed.

It was high unemployment, rather than Tory laws or privatisation, which did most damage to unions in the 1980s.

Just as it was full employment which powered our rising strength in the post-war period.

Then there is the huge boost to public spending - the high point of the government's second term.

The prospect now beckons of public services which begin to match European standards.

Half a million extra public servants already.

How can anyway say there are no arguments in modern politics?

That's clear red water with the Conservatives. They won't match that increase.

And if we are on clear red water, what about Europe?

With the opt out from Social Europe lifted, we have won:

• New and proposed laws on working time

• European works councils

• Rights for part-time, temporary and agency workers

• information and consultation

And they did not just fall out of the sky. They came from the unstinting efforts of Europe's unions - including the TUC - through the European TUC to boost union and workers rights and to combat the downsides of globalisation.

Sometimes they had the enthusiastic support of this government, sometimes unfortunately they didn't.

But none would have come without lifting that Tory opt-out.

I could go on - listing the progress we have made, the achievements of this government, progress in Europe.

Perhaps we will hear more this afternoon.

Of course, we have not won everything we wanted.

We do not now live in some trade union Utopia, where we can pack up our bags and give up our struggle.

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

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.

We've all heard the union busters say, "don't join a union, they can't do anything for you. They can't achieve anything any more"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.

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.

Yet we all know that current relations with government are scratchy. Why is this?

Frankly there's nothing new about unions and Labour government having problems.

Many of our members work in the public sector.

The government is either directly or indirectly their employer. Inevitably there will be problems and disputes about pay and conditions. Yet eventually just like with our arguments with private employers they get sorted out.

But there other factors at work as well.

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

First there is the mood music.

New Labour makes much of being business friendly. And there's nothing wrong with wanting and helping Britain's businesses succeed. I'm business friendly too for that matter.

But sometimes the mistake is made that being pro-business means playing back saloon bar prejudices.

by repeating back There is the constant playing down of pro-worker measures and the playing up of the so-called British flexible labour market - flexible for employers for sure but harsh and cruel for many workers, especially low paid ones.

There was the ill-conceived axis with Berlusconi of Italy and Aznar of Spain - two right wing politicians trying to reduce worker power in their countries. It gave the impression that Labour were on the same tack in Britain which is not actually true. But damage was done.

There is too the sometimes exaggerated respect for the role the private sector can play in the delivery of public services. I'm not certainly anti-private sector. The trade union Movement recognises that the private sector is where most of our fellow citizens work and where we need to recruit. And our primary job is always to get a fair deal for members in all sectors, not get bogged down with ideology.

Clearly the private sector have a role in building hospitals and supplying equipment and providing some support services. But never at the expense of the public service ethos and, more concretely, never by lowering terms and conditions of employment of public servants.

We have been told that. that won't happen any longer but the robust devices needed to stop it are still not fully in place.

There is also a problem about how we conduct our relationship with the Government. In the new Labour world, tripartism is a ghost of the 70s, Social partnership is an alien, European concept against which the CBI have set their face. So 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. None apart from the Treasury, has forced the TUC to work with the CBI, or, more pertinently, the CBI to work with the TUC.

As a result, unions affiliated to the Labour Party in particular tend to have concluded from this that the main way to influence the Government is through the Party, sometimes with financial pressure and contemporary resolutions. This is, for any Labour Prime Minister, a difficult area. But in truth causing problems in the Party - and the TUC did this on the recognition law within the Parliamentary Party -has been proving perhaps the most successful way of exerting influence. It should not be like that.

Indeed, 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. These include boosting productivity, performance and skills. We work too long for too little, achieving less than our counterparts in other advanced countries.

We must improve public sector pay and raise the self-esteem of public sector workers who have too often been portrayed as having second class status.

As Congress will say, we must protect and make universal decent pension provisions.

The future of UK manufacturing is also highly uncertain and the high exchange rate and the exclusion from the euro is costing 10,000 jobs a month.

It's time to attain the best European standards of employment law and collective bargaining and through those build a constructive, more influential and mature trade union Movement.

So against this background 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.

My perspective from the TUC is that , 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.

But while I am critical sometimes, I want to pay tribute too to our many real achievements.The new services for members with web sites and call centres keeping them in touch. As a new example, look at our new web site WORKSMART - bringing trade unionism with spot on information and advice to everyone at work - part of our bridgehead to the workers in the new economy areas.

We have a new generation of organisers, often graduates from the TUC Organising Academy - people not from engineering factories and public services like my generation but who have worked in the shops, the hotels and the services where most of our fellow citizens now work.

We do a huge amount of work to encourage skills and learning - making unions as much about getting on as getting even. We have the new partnership model of industrial relations led by the TUC Partnership Institute - a model that moves beyond the false choice between sweetheart or adversarialism, one based on raised respect, esteem, skills and performance.

We have enthusiastic engagement in European works councils and other aspects of the emerging European system of industrial relations.

And, we have a sense of solidarity and support with workers and union movements much less well placed than we are - those who are often persecuted , sometimes even killed, for their union work and beliefs. We never forget them. With the British trade union Movement around, they never walk alone.

All these are fine achievements. But we need to be as lively and committed in our debates about reaching out to the unorganised as we are in our debates on relations with Labour.

And we need to be as aware of our responsibilities to rise to the challenges of modern life as to the rights to which we are entitled.

Congress, my era at the TUC is approaching its end. With the General Council's support I shall be a candidate next year for election as the next General Secretary of the European TUC ready to fight there for a framework of democracy and collective bargaining across Europe - a framework in which trade unionism can continue to thrive and grow not just in Europe but from Europe across the world.

The truth is that trade unionism is secure and vibrant in Europe and it is hard to see where else has the power to be its vanguard.

The AFL CIO and American unions are doing their best against tough odds. But trade unionism there and across much of the world is on the back foot, pushed there by globalisation, economic liberalism, and anti -union policies.

Nor can the TUC do it alone despite the fact that we have much to be proud of. We are the world's oldest Movement . We lit the spark that originally ignited the flames of world trade unionism.

To do the same thing today, to ignite a new wave of trade unionism, we must build the European trade union system and social model in a way that puts world trade unionism back on the attack

And for that, 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. We need always to work with employers, who treat workers decently and with respect. 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."