‘Workers have become slaves to an app,’ TUC general secretary to tell Vatican summit aimed at fostering unity in fight for economic justice

The “global titans of technology” are forcing workers into a form of slavery, Britain’s trade union chief will tell Catholic and labour movement leaders at the Vatican on Friday.

Trade unions and the Catholic church must build “a popular alliance for economic justice”, Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, is to say in a speech in Rome.



O’Grady is attending a two-day meeting of trade unionists and Catholic leaders, led by Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana. Its purpose is to hear testimony of injustices suffered by working people and consider how trade unions and the church can work together to achieve greater social justice.



The TUC leader will say inequality, conflict and climate change are threatening world peace and prosperity, and technology is concentrating wealth at the expense of working people.



“New global titans of technology now have wealth and power beyond our imagination. And many workers have become slaves to an app, with employers washing their hands of any notion of an employment relationship,” she will say.



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“We must challenge the very values on which our economies are run. The market should be our servant, not our master. Value cannot be measured in monetary terms alone. And individual greed must not triumph over the common good.”



O’Grady will refer specifically to tax avoidance by companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google, and worker exploitation by firms such as Uber and Amazon.



She will speak of a shared history in the UK between trade unions and the Catholic church, citing Cardinal Manning in the 19th century who supported striking dockers and described the refusal of their employers to negotiate a “public evil”.



“This year I met the ‘McStrikers’ – young fast food workers at McDonald’s, stuck on low pay and zero-hours contracts. Their demands are the same as the dockers nearly 130 years ago. They want a fair wage, guaranteed hours and recognition of their trade union. They need a modern-day Cardinal Manning.”



The church and the unions “share values of community, dignity and social solidarity … Together we can improve working lives and put dignity for working people ahead of market forces and freedom of capital. We can build a popular alliance for economic justice, in Britain and around the world.”

Catholic leaders should support workers standing up against injustice, call on members of their congregations to join a union, and encourage Catholic employers to recognise unions, she will say.



There are more than 1.2 billion baptised Catholics around the world, more than 40% of whom live in Latin America. Africa and Asia have seen huge growth in the numbers of Catholics in recent decades. The Catholic population of the UK is relatively small, at about 5.7 million at the last census in 2011.



The Vatican meeting follows a speech delivered by Pope Francis in June to the Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions, in which he said: “The capitalism of our time does not understand the value of trade unions, because it has forgotten the social nature of economy, of business. This is one of the greatest errors.”



He also criticised unions for failing to fight for young people, women’s rights, and “for immigrants, for the poor who are below the city walls”.



Social injustice has been one of the issues that has defined Francis’s papacy. In 2015 he denounced “the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature” and called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the devil”.

