Gavin Laird, who has died aged 86, was a leading moderniser in the trade union movement after its disastrous loss of influence following Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election victory. His combative but successful advocacy of accepting government money to pay for union ballots and securing single union agreements to persuade multinationals to build new plants in the UK brought him into conflict with other major union leaders. He was an unabashed Blairite and as one contemporary put it, “a moderniser before his time”.

He carried his reforming zeal into his position as the long-serving general secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, Britain’s second biggest union, now part of Unite, from 1982 until 1995. He streamlined its cumbersome organisation, cutting headquarters staff by two-thirds and introducing new technology so that by 1990 its cost per member was far below that of other large unions.

While his career as a major union figure was circumscribed by his enforced concentration on administration, his insights and abilities were recognised by a long list of external appointments which included two terms on the court of the Bank of England, where he was highly regarded.

In 1992, he became one of the handful of trade union leaders to appear on Desert Island Discs, where he set out his philosophy: “Our job is to interface with employers, to recognise the economic aspirations of men and women, to make representations to political parties and governments.” He attacked those who used trade unions for political change: “We have got to give service to members, not be budding prime ministers.”

His tenacity stemmed from his upbringing on the “Red Clyde”, where he was born, in Clydebank, one of six children, to a bricklayer, James Laird, and his wife, Frances (nee Luxton). The family was bombed out during the second world war, and taken in an army lorry round larger houses in Glasgow to no avail before they found sanctuary with a miner’s family. Gavin scraped through school and then took an apprenticeship in the truck maintenance shop of the local Co-op. He joined the Young Communists alongside others such as Jimmy Reid, took part in an apprentices’ strike, and when he qualified went to sea as a ship’s engineer, in lieu of military national service.

Experiences of iron curtain ports shook his communist beliefs and when his letter to a party official, Gordon McLellan, asking why communist societies were so unsuccessful, received no reply, Laird left the party.

At 23, he married Reena Campbell, swallowed the anchor and found work at Glasgow’s largest factory, Singer Sewing Machines, which employed 16,000 people. He became an engineering union representative and then convenor. In 1972 he was elected the union’s regional secretary and in 1975 he became a member of the union’s seven-man national executive, defeating the charismatic Reid, a hero of the Upper Clyde shipyard sit-in, by a 2-1 majority. In 1979 he joined the TUC general council and in 1982 was elected general secretary of his union.

The AUEW’s highly democratic structure, with every position subject to re-election, encouraged bitter right versus left battles and internal jealousies. Laird navigated his way through and for a brief period between 1985 and 1986 took on the president’s duties after the death of Terry Duffy. He had made his mark on the TUC general council as a potential star in the making, with an astute grasp of economic policy as well as marked negotiating skills. But when he became union general secretary, it was made clear that his role should be largely administrative and he was forced to resign from his TUC position.

Lord (John) Monks, a former TUC general secretary, said: “He was very talented and very passionate. He emerged as a bright star in the TUC firmament and had it not been for his union’s internal politics, he would have been one of the great figures.”

A dapper, well-organised person, whose penchant for smart lightweight suits led to him being compared to an ICI manager, Laird would be in the office by 7am, having taken his wife a cup of tea in bed. To a background of classical music (Saint-Saëns’s Organ symphony was his Desert Island favourite) and successive cups of coffee he would start work by skimming the newspapers.

Critical of some union practices, he said: “We tell management how they should train and invest, but when we look at ourselves, we don’t do it well.” A fact-finding mission with the TUC to the US led to the establishment of a school for union organisers. His reorganisation was timely. All union membership fell in the 1980s and AEU membership declined from a peak of 1.2 million to only 500,000 in 1995. It could be personally abrasive – regional jobs went as well as headquarters, there was a wage freeze, and at one point Laird published the expenses claimed by executive members in the union annual report.

He was proud of the long negotiations which then led to a merger of the union with the electricians’ union, the EEPTU, in 1992, something he claimed they had been attempting for almost a century. But he did not stay long, retiring early three years later.

By then the single union deals were more accepted – an AUEW deal helping to bring vital Nissan investment to Sunderland. But Laird’s 18-month fight to persuade Ford to set up an electronics plant in Dundee with a deal that challenged existing union understandings ended in bitter failure and recriminations between unions.

Laird’s reputation as someone with whom business could discuss its problems led to a range of appointments and an invitation to address the CBI conference in 1986. His eight-year term on the court of the Bank of England ended when John Major insisted on someone with “individual expertise” instead.

His directorships included BNOC and a range of Scottish development bodies and he was a member of the Arts Council from 1983 until 1986, stirring boyhood memories of acting as a stagehand at the local rep. He served on various government bodies including the Armed Forces Pay Review Board. But his posts on various insurance and investment trusts and his acceptance of a knighthood under the Major government in 1995 brought some criticism, which he characteristically brushed off.

He had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for many years and last year he and his wife moved to the US, to New Jersey, where his daughter, Fiona, a lawyer, lives.

His wife, daughter and four grandchildren survive him.

• Gavin Harry Laird, trade unionist, born 14 March 1933; died 26 October 2017