BIG INTERVIEW
JOANNE THOMAS
50 ASIAN TRADER 17 OCTOBER 2025
t’s a big privilege to talk to Joanne
Thomas, who is the new General
Secretary of shopworkers’ union
Usdaw, and not only that but the first
woman Usdaw GenSec ever, following
the retirement of the legendary Paddy Lillis.
Although Joanne said when she took up the
role that Paddy would be a hard act to follow,
it’s clear that no anxieties should be har
boured on that score: Joanne is someone who
has lived the union way all her life and knows
the workplace and its issues inside-out, as I
discovered during the course of our discussions.
Usdaw stands for the Union of Shop,
Distributive and Allied Workers – a title that
encodes the various amalgamations and
conjoinings of smaller unions since the trade
union movement itself was inaugurated 134
years ago and reflects the way the workplace
has changed over the past century, with
certain trades fading away and others evolving.
Usdaw is not so much a heavy industrial,
extraction- or factory-workers’ organisation,
schooled in class conflict, shut-downs,
walk-outs and political strikes. Instead, it
contains warehouse people, customer-facing
shop staff and back-office folk, and represents
workers in all sorts of businesses and sectors
that sell or get things to the public.
The road to GenSec
Asian Trader: Can you tell our readers a little
bit about yourself and how you came to be
where you are?
Joanne Thomas: To cut a long story short, I
was a very young mother. I had my daughter
when I was only 17 and I didn’t realise before
that, how important politics was. But very
quickly I realised that politics mattered in
relation to where I was going to live, what
access to housing I had, transport, work, what
the importance of an employee contract was.
Because when you’re looking after
somebody else, these things are crucially
important. And as a young person, going into
Joanne Thomas, the new General Secretary
of shopworkers’ union Usdaw, talks to
Andy Marino about rights, crime and
community and how the union and
the government intend to improve
conditions for workers in retail
‘Your concerns are our policies’
the workplace, I found that I often got the
worst shift. I was expected to do the longest
hours at the shortest amount of notice, and so
I very quickly joined Usdaw when I was 18,
became a shop steward and started represent
ing my colleagues.
I was very good back then at persuading
others, young people in particular – who were
notoriously difficult to recruit – of the value of
being in the union, just by sharing examples
of how it had benefitted me. I was very lucky
to become a full-time officer when I was 21.
I was promoted at 30 to look after the
Northeast, so I relocated to Leeds with my
daughter, who was then 13, and I did that for
the last 16 years – and then the rest is history!
I became the General Secretary this year.
My whole adult life has literally been
dominated by industrial relations, politics and
things that matter to working people,
because I know what it’s like to be really poor,
to really struggle. That never leaves you.
AT: What comes across to me is that you’re
clearly a great communicator. You were out
there talking to people and getting them to
realise the situation that they were in and
how to make it better for themselves.
Now you’ve taken over from Paddy Lillis,
who had his style. How would you say you’re
different and what are you going to do
differently to Paddy?
J T: I think, with regards to style, Paddy was an
absolutely fantastic leader, no two ways about
it. But it’s more than anything that I’m a