A decade ago, Frances O’Grady thought she had seen just about the worst conditions possible for workers in 21st-century Britain. As part of a team investigating vulnerable employment, the trades union leader held clandestine meetings in churches with intimidated workers that exposed life at the sharp end of the jobs market.

“We had stories about people working up to their knees in water in white meat factories on zero hours. Pretty shocking stuff,” she recalls.

Now on the 10th anniversary of that landmark commission into vulnerable employment, the general secretary of the TUC seems exasperated that for all the evidence of workers being mistreated, little has changed. And yet for the past fortnight her frustrations have been mixed with a glint of optimism. The election shock was a clear signal people have had enough, O’Grady tells the Observer.

“Ten years on we are forced to take stock, and what’s happened? We’ve gone backwards,” O’Grady says before a TUC conference on Monday to launch a campaign for better jobs and pay.

“My feeling is that the government needs to get its act together pretty fast. I am not overly optimistic on this front. But if they learned anything from that election campaign, then they should have learned there is a real appetite for real change in the workplace.”

Sitting in her airy central London office, clasping an “I love unions” mug full of tea, the 57-year-old reels off a sorry list of statistics. “The number of people in precarious work has rocketed by over a quarter over the last five years. We’ve got over three million people at the sharpest of the sharp end … This is people who are not only on low pay: they have also got no rights, and even if they had rights they would be too scared to enforce them,” she says.

The new campaign, called the Great Jobs Agenda, is targeting the millions of people in precarious work in the so-called gig economy – where, rather than having fixed permanent roles, workers tend to be given tasks as and when they are needed. That kind of work has grown hand in hand with the rise of online shopping, and platforms such as the taxi-hailing app Uber and the takeaway delivery service Deliveroo.

Most of those companies say they hire independent contractors, who miss out on rights such as the minimum wage and sick pay. They are often paid per job rather than by the hour. Other workers in the gig economy, for example in care homes and pubs, are on zero-hours contracts with no guaranteed work and therefore no guaranteed income. They also tend to be on lower pay.

O’Grady also highlights the army of people getting work in warehouses through temporary employment agencies, such as with Sports Direct. An investigation by the Guardian highlighted a climate of fear at the retailer’s Shirebrook warehouse in Derbyshire, prompting a select committee of MPs to say it was being run like a Victorian workhouse.

O’Grady reaches for a similar description. “I am personally shocked about how technology is used as a tyrant in the workplace. Tracking people going to the toilet. Tracking the work they do … All of that feels Dickensian in its failure to respect workers as human beings. They are just commodities. There is something really sickening about it.”

A Deliveroo rider on the road in London. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Trade unions and journalists have exposed “exactly what’s going on in high street names like Sports Direct”, she says, and now there is widespread anger. But Theresa May’s promise of an economy that works for everyone seems to have made little difference so far.

“There are people across the spectrum who are pretty outraged at what’s going on in 21st-century Britain. But nothing’s happened. We had the prime minister on the steps of Downing Street, we’ve had promise after promise, and we’ve had no action. So I think patience is wearing thin and I think it’s important that politicians do listen – but more importantly that they act. And there is no reason for delay. How much more evidence do people need?”

The TUC wants zero-hours contracts banned and for everyone on regular hours to have a right to a written contract guaranteeing their normal working hours. It wants an end to bogus self-employment and believes the law should change to give people a default right to qualify for all employment rights, unless the employer can demonstrate they are genuinely self-employed.

O’Grady says people’s anger goes further than the squeeze on living standards that has been sparked by meagre wage growth and a rise in living costs since the Brexit vote. She also points to the £4bn a year the TUC reckons insecure work is costing the public coffers in lost tax and higher benefits.

“Yes it is about falling real wages, yes it is about people’s anxieties about what sorts of jobs their kids are going to go into – but there are these immediate, urgent issues of some employers running riot with exploitative contracts that are not just robbing those workers of a decent job and livelihood but robbing the exchequer too,” she says.

The TUC wants workers to go on to its new website, https://greatjobsquiz.org.uk, where they can rate their workplace by checking, among other things, if it pays the living wage, recognises trade unions and is safe. It is a kind of “Tripadvisor for bosses”, says O’Grady.

The site will also tell workers what their rights are. O’Grady, who has two grown-up children, feels that kind of information is urgently needed to prevent a culture of precarious work becoming entrenched.

“For me, the heartbreaking bit is the generation of workers who don’t know any better – who think that this is normal,” she says.

As for where unions fit into the world of rising self-employment and short-term contracts, O’Grady insists that collective action will remain the best route to change. She also rebuts the idea that falling trade union membership leaves them without a mandate, but she wants better access to workplaces.

“Surely it should be possible for workers to have the right to be represented by a union and also to have a right for unions to bargain on their behalf. Because in the end, particularly with vulnerable workers, banding together is your only chance of resetting that power and balance,” she says.

Uber’s driver service centre in London. Photograph: Felix Clay/The Observer

The prime minister made a nod to changing culture in workplaces last year when she appointed Matthew Taylor, the former head of Tony Blair’s policy unit, to head a review into modern employment. He is due to report soon. So is O’Grady hopeful the review will mark a turning point?

“Matthew’s job is to make recommendations to government,” she says.

“I don’t think governments of any colour can duck their responsibility or outsource their responsibility or use reports to delay. They should be getting on with the job.”

There is a worry, however, that getting on will prove more difficult as Brexit negotiations finally get under way – a year on from a referendum in which O’Grady made the case for staying in the EU to protect workers’ rights.

“I am very conscious about civil servants being dragooned into Brexit work and what does that mean for everything else? There is still a country to run. There are still injustices to tackle.”

Yet she remains optimistic that May’s weakened government knows it cannot let workers’ rights fall by the wayside.

“The government would pay a big political price for not acting to tackle insecurity at work. I can’t think of too many elections where work issues were so high on the agenda,” she says.

Case studies

Liz Lee

Care home worker

Lee has been on zero-hours contracts with care homes for four years and wants to keep things that way until her teenage children are older. The 48-year-old mother of two says she prefers not having to commit to fixed hours. “It fits my lifestyle, really. It slots in nicely,” she says.

Lee is on a zero-hours contract with a care home in Warwickshire and also on a “bank” list, where different homes can call on her to cover shifts when they are short of staff. She likes having the option of topping up her family’s income but also being able to say no when she needs to be with her children, Shannon, 15, and Ciaran, 13.

Her husband, Carl, runs his own business fitting professional kitchens in top-end restaurants around the country and is often away from home. Flexible working allows her to support the children’s activities, such as dance, music and karate, says Lee. “There’s also school holidays where there is nobody else to have the children – otherwise I would have to be paying out what I earn in childcare costs.”

As a carer Lee earns around £9 per hour in the daytime, £9.50 per hour at night and a little more at weekends. “Luckily, in Carl’s job he can support us anyway but it’s nice to have that little extra for things like dance and singing lessons for my daughter, and to help pay for holidays.”

Some carers have said they are nervous about turning down work for fear of not getting further offers in the future. But Lee says she has never found that a problem. “I’ve always managed to get some form of work, and they still offer shifts to me,” she says. “The only downside is that if I am off sick you don’t get sick pay, but Carl can still support me.”

Syed Khalil: ‘I have no pensions and no savings at all.’

Syed Khalil

Taxi driver

Khalil, who lives in Dagenham, east London, has worked as a driver for Addison Lee and Uber over the past eight years, and experienced the downside of life in the gig economy.

When he first joined Uber, the fast-growing ride hailing app, Khalil said he had high hopes, given promises of decent pay and the ability to work whatever hours he chose. He bought a car on hire purchase and initially paid no commission on rides secured via the app.

But when he had a problem with his car and then got sick, Khalil says his situation changed. As a self-employed contractor he did not receive sick pay and, because he was the owner of the car, he continued to have to make hire purchase and insurance payments. He had to claim benefits.

Before long, he had to go back to work in order to cover his rising bills. With his vehicle off the road, Khalil went to work for Addison Lee, where he could rent one of the taxi firm’s own cars.

But he says he had to work long hours to cover the cost of renting the car. He remained self-employed, so when he got ill again, with a kidney problem, he did not receive sick pay and had to continue to make rental payments. He says Addison Lee required him to wear a smart shirt and trousers, and he could be fined if spotted not meeting the dress code, so he felt like an employee without any of the benefits.

He has now returned to Uber, as his own car is back on the road. But he says Uber has gradually raised the commission it takes and signed up more drivers so that his earnings have dropped. He says it regularly introduces new terms and conditions, with drivers having to agree to them before they can access the app.

“If you say no, you can’t log in. I’ve been working as a minicab driver since 2009 – I’m nearly 40 and I have no pension and no savings at all,” he says. “There is no way you can plan anything, for a holiday or for the future.”

Uber’s Tom Elvidge said: “Licensed drivers who use our app are totally free to choose if, when and where they drive with no shifts or minimum hours. The vast majority of drivers tell us the reason why they signed up to Uber is so they can control their hours and be their own boss. We’re always acting on feedback from drivers, which is why we’re investing in discounted illness cover and savings schemes alongside other improvements.”