A Farewell From Your General Secretary:
It Has Been the Honour of My Life.
Thank You For Your Trust, Courage, and Solidarity.

Dear comrades, friends, brothers and sisters,

This International Workers’ Day, 1st May, will be my last as General Secretary of UVW. After 13 years, it has been the honour of my life to lead this union.

Stepping down is the right decision for me. It is not, however, an easy one. UVW has never just been a place I work; it is a union I co-founded, a community I belong to, and a political project to which I have dedicated my life.

Before we look to the future, let us remember where we came from, and what we have built together, often against impossible odds. 

My Mum’s Kitchen Table

We began as a tiny handful of us – myself, Vera Weghmann, Albeiro Ortiz, and a couple of other Latin American cleaners – gathered around my mum’s kitchen table. That was our first “headquarters”. We had nothing. No resources. No roadmap. No grand plan. Just righteous anger and a bold idea.

The anger was at a system that profits from poverty and precarity, and feeds on fear and isolation. The idea was beautifully simple: if low-paid, precarious and migrant workers could find each other and take collective action, they could replace fear with confidence, isolation with solidarity, and precarity with power.

That anger, that idea – mixed with love, audacity and more than a little madness – became the United Voices of the World.

From that kitchen table, UVW has gone on to represent more than 12,000 workers from over 100 countries and across nearly every sector of the economy, with 2,000 joining every year now. Through sustained industrial action and strategic litigation, we have challenged some of the deepest structural inequalities in this country. And we built all of this through our small membership fees alone, protecting our freedom and independence. 

That transformation – from kitchen table to a national force for working-class power – belongs to all of you.

Against All Odds

None of this was handed to us. It wasn’t easy and it certainly wasn’t inevitable. It also demanded sacrifices and took a real toll on many of us. And it unfolded during one of the most hostile eras for trade unions in a generation: anti-union laws tightening their grip, private sector membership dropping to a historic low of under 12%, and new unions folding left and right.

Of the five unions born the same year as UVW, only one other still exists. Of the 16 founded in our first six years, half have vanished. Yet while others closed their doors, we did more than survive: we fought, we won, and we grew.

Why We Built Something New

People often asked why we bothered starting a new union when so many already existed. The answer is clear. Too many doors of established unions were shut to the people who needed them most: the invisible army that keeps this country running, the very people UVW was built by and for. Time and again, they were dismissed as “too scattered”, “too hard to organise,” “not strategic,” “not worth the effort.” We believed otherwise. And we were told that without vast resources we couldn’t win. We proved them wrong on both counts.

More Than a Union

We didn’t just set out to build another union. We wanted to build a living, breathing community – a place of solidarity, action, education, and joy.  A place where indignation could be forged into action and lasting worker power. For nearly four years, we had no office making do with street corners, cafés, pubs, and libraries. And yet UVW became a home for many, where people found belonging, friendship, even family. Those who once felt alone and afraid could now speak at protests, lead strikes, sit on committees, and shape union direction. Nothing shows UVW’s success more than that journey from loneliness to leadership and isolation into collective power.

Taking the Fight to the Bosses

Our founding mission was simple and unapologetic: “to fight the bosses on the streets and in the courts.” And fight them we did, because for too long bosses in certain sectors had become accustomed to operating with impunity. Organised collective action changed that. 

We knew that to win without the benefit of traditional structural power and resources we would have to compensate with something else: unbreakable solidarity, creativity, direct action and sheer dogged persistence. And with no paid staff, within 18 months, we were shutting down Oxford Street and Knightsbridge, blockading flagship stores of global brands that had underpaid and mistreated our members. Within three years, still running on fumes and fuelled more by conviction than resources, we pulled off the longest cleaners’ strike in British history: 61 consecutive days. The next year came the then-largest cleaners’ strike ever, and the first to smash outsourcing in higher education, at the LSE. That victory triggered a snowball effect across London’s universities. 

More historic breakthroughs followed: the first strike to end outsourcing in the NHS, at St Mary’s Hospital, and shortly afterwards a decisive win against outsourcing at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

Organising at Scale

Testament to our unwavering commitment to our mission is this: we have run over 125 disputes to date. That’s nearly one a month, every month, year after year spanning every corner of the economy. From retail to social care, from health to hospitality, from charity to government in London to Birmingham to Brighton and beyond. Like David and Goliath, we took on corporate giants, elite universities, cultural institutions and public bodies. And we won. 

We won because members were prepared to strike, because communities rallied behind them, and because supporters stood in the rain at dawn on picket lines, refusing to let them stand alone. 

Around two-thirds of our disputes have involved strike ballots. More than a third led to strike action. Nearly half involved some form of direct action. This was not militancy for its own sake; it was necessity. The only language exploitative employers understand is organised, collective action. And when workers refuse to be invisible and act together, confidently and persistently, l bosses are forced to concede. 

UVW’s record of leading members into action is second to none. Among the 89 UK unions with 15,000 members or fewer, we have led more disputes, run more ballots and taken more strike action than any other – balloting in nearly twice as many workplaces as the next most active union. Even among all unions with fewer than 100,000 members – which make up 90% of the entire movement – only the transport unions RMT and ASLEF – have balloted more groups than we have. 

We now stand alongside the most established unions in the country, and our momentum shows no sign of slowing. In the past few years, our small insurgent union has led some of its largest, longest, and most ambitious disputes yet: organising the first strike of restaurant workers and cleaners at Harrods; leading the first coordinated strike of security guards across the Science Museum, the V&A and the Natural History Museum; mobilising 400 workers in coordinated strike action across London in the past year alone; and, just months ago, supporting hotel workers in leading the first strike in their sector in England since 1979.

This is what it looks like to stand with workers not only in words but in action, transforming courage into organisation and anger into strategy.

Repression, and Resistance

As our victories mounted, employers grew rattled enough to seek injunctions to try and restrain and silence us. On one occasion, so unnerved were they by UVW’s infectious, joyful resistance, they went to court to try to ban us from dancing within 200 metres of the workplace during a strike.

That is what we were up against: not just low pay and exploitation, but a deep fear of workers who refused to be cowed; workers who sang, who danced, who turned protest into power and solidarity into celebration.

We also regularly met with heavy-handed, draconian policing and a number of us were arrested, myself included more than once, yet not a single charge was ever brought. It became clear this was just an attempt to intimidate workers who dared to stand up and organise.

The Tail That Wagged the Dog

Our track record has drawn global media attention and become the subject of academic study and documentaries. We have been described as “the tail that wags the dog”, as a small union setting precedents and pushing larger ones to catch up. 

That was always the ambition. Not to be the biggest, but to demonstrate what was possible. To prove that workers dismissed as “unorganisable” could not only fight, but win and, in doing so, lift the standard for everyone.

We helped change the story about who gets to organise, who gets to strike, and who deserves dignity at work. That is something all of us can hold our heads high for.

Fighting on Every Front

I take real heart, too, in the fact that we brought groundbreaking legal cases that reached the door of the Supreme Court challenging outsourcing at its roots and confronting racially segregated two-tier workforces. We exposed blacklisting and sham self-employment, and tested laws that shield employers from accountability.

We used the law strategically, always understanding legal action was a tool, never a replacement, for workers acting together.

Beyond the Workplace

Our politics has always been strictly independent of political parties and donors alike. Our solidarity has never stopped at the workplace. We have always understood that working-class struggle is international. 

From confronting the far right to defending members against exploitative landlords, to global solidarity with workers and oppressed peoples in Colombia, Philippines and Palestine, we have stood shoulder to shoulder with movements for justice everywhere, alongside unions across the world. 

Leadership From Below

Nothing speaks more clearly to our values than this: UVW has always been shaped and led by those so often excluded from positions of power: women, migrants and refugees. Their vision and dedication have defined this union. They have not only led workers in struggle, but now make up the vast majority of our staff and Executive Committee, and the entirety of the new Leadership Team.

This is no accident. Their insight, their determination, their creativity are, and will always be, at the heart of everything we do.

My Successor 

Stepping aside does not mean stepping away. UVW is in my DNA and I remain as committed as ever to its mission and its future. And that future is bright because it rests not with one person, but with thousands. 

Which brings me to my successor, Nelly Ospino who, you would have seen, was elected uncontested as they were the only candidate.

I have complete faith in Nelly. They embody everything UVW stands for. On marches, on the Executive Committee, and as a staff caseworker, they have shown over many years that they understand this union: what it is, who it is for, and why it matters. 

They will also make history as the first Afro-Colombian General Secretary in UK history.

Under their leadership I am confident UVW will not only defend what we have built, but push further, opening new fronts, organising new workers, and winning victories we cannot yet imagine.

Thank you 

Standing shoulder to shoulder with so many of you, whether on picket lines, in courtrooms, at negotiations, or in the streets, has meant more to me than I can fully express. You are the most courageous, determined, and inspiring people I have ever met, and likely ever will. I have learned far more from you than I could ever give back. For that, I am immensely grateful.

Victories are forged in struggle and every one of them belongs to you: members, reps, staff, supporters. My role was simply to steady the ship in stormy waters and to insist that we could sail further than anyone thought possible. 

Thank you for trusting me with that responsibility and for your courage, friendship and solidarity.

Thank you for the immeasurable honour of serving as your General Secretary.

The best is still to come.

With unwavering love and solidarity, now and always.

Petros Elia