Esther Lynch — A shy but unwavering force for Europe’s workers

This article features in The EU's Unsung Heroes, read the full magazine here.

Four minutes before the interview was due to start, a call from the comms department: Esther Lynch is hesitant to be featured in a magazine about unsung heroes, because she doesn’t see herself as a hero. Which is exactly why she’s featured in this magazine. 

Lynch never imagined herself in the spotlight. Her first encounter with organised labour came not in a boardroom but on a factory floor, where she noticed that part-time women workers were routinely overlooked. “They weren’t being listened to,” she recalls. “Particularly women workers who were part-time workers. They were given the worst shifts. They didn’t have a loud voice, even within the trade union.” So she became a voice.

Today, Lynch leads the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), representing 45 million members across the EU. Her leadership reflects the same principle she has championed from the beginning: that workers must speak for themselves, and that solidarity is a force for real, lasting change.

The story of her life, she says, "has been believing in change and believing that sticking with your workmates and standing with your workmates, is how you get that change."

For Lynch, the job of a union isn’t to impose solutions from above. It’s to create space for workers to identify what’s wrong and fight for what’s right, together. While ETUC engages directly with European lawmakers, she resists the idea that rights come only from institutions. Instead, she sees a constant interplay between grassroots mobilisation and legislative pressure. “What we have tried to do,” she says, “is to legally strengthen the hands of workers so that they could join a union and when they then get to the bargaining table, to have a stronger bargaining power.”

That dynamic is especially visible in recent wins. 

Lynch points to the Pay Transparency Directive and new protections for platform workers as tools that empower negotiations at the local level. “Trade union officials now have stronger arms to argue for the true value of work that’s predominantly done by women — carers, cleaners. That wasn’t possible before.”

“Democracy isn’t only when you turn up and vote. It’s also in the role of social dialogue.”

But victories don’t come without struggle. Despite legal progress, Lynch is still frustrated by "old-fashioned employers who say, 'I know best, I’m the boss, and it’s my way or the highway’." She sees this mindset mirrored at the highest levels of power. “There’s still this idea that if companies do well, workers will do well automatically. But that’s not universally true.”

This is where Lynch says trade unions step in as a vital counterweight, sometimes as a partner, sometimes as a challenger, to EU institutions. Not as an interest group, but as democratic actors. “Democracy isn’t only when you turn up and vote,” she says. “It’s also in the role of social dialogue.”

Lynch bristles at how technocratic language can strip urgency from real-life struggles. “The language of policymakers obscures real oppression. It’s a polite way of discussing something that’s immoral, that’s wrong, that’s exploitation. That’s cruelty.” She prefers to speak plainly, and always with the voices of working people in mind. “I’m sitting in that seat because all these working people put me in it. So I feel a responsibility to tell their reality.”

Sometimes, that means going against the grain. “More than likely, I’m the only person in the room who will say these things,” she says. 

Lynch has successfully fought for police officers’ right to collective bargaining, pushed back against efforts to weaken minimum wage directives through the European Court of Justice, and secured early-access funds for workers facing redundancy. Even when it’s just pre-empting a potentially harmful policy, she counts it as a win. "Every time we manage to prevent something bad from happening, every time we secure an improvement — that matters."

Her drive, however, is never self-serving. “The movement is the hero,” she insists. Yet behind her modesty lies a confident optimism, especially when she talks about young people. “They’re so much more full of confidence. I see young leaders coming forward in trade unions now, and I’m absolutely convinced that when they’re in leadership positions, the world of work will only improve.”

In Lynch’s eyes, the trade union movement isn’t just about wages or hours. It’s about agency, dignity, and democracy. “Jobs are people’s lifeline,” she says. “It’s how your family succeeds. Everything is invested in a job. So we owe it to our children and grandchildren to come together, identify what’s wrong, and fight for what’s right.”

Read the full magazine here.

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