Same battle in any language

''Sharan, I have 60 collective agreements that I can show you,'' Abdel Hadi told Burrow, the former president of the ACTU and now general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation.

''I know, Aisha,'' replied Burrow, ''and they all have your signature on them.''

To Burrow, a unionist for 30 years, that fact alone suggested the ancien regime - dispatched a few months later in the second revolution of the Arab Spring, just after the fall of the Tunisian government - was using labour policy as a tool of oppression.

As the revolution in Egypt unfolded throughout February, Burrow was shocked, and furious, to learn that the government-controlled Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions was using hoons on camels to break up the popular protests in Tahrir Square. She immediately threw the ITUC's support behind the nascent, but tiny, independent trade union movement.

''We've opened an office in Cairo,'' says Burrow. ''We've established an Arab forum [of unions], we're determined that a free and independent labour movement will be at the heart of the new democracies in the Middle East.''

Burrow, 56, loves a blue, especially when it is in defence of workers' rights. In her current job she is picking plenty of fights - with union-busting American multinationals, European governments crying poor, the budget-slashing zealots of the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission. But she's well-primed.

In the late 1980s, this former school teacher from Bathurst fought the Greiner government over its cuts to education and, for almost a decade, fought the Howard government over industrial relations. She was part of the troika of union leaders - with Greg Combet, now a Gillard government minister, and John Robertson, now NSW Labor leader - who led the Your Rights at Work campaign in 2006-07 against Work Choices.

The campaign, which mustered grassroots support in around 50 key seats across Australia, was instrumental in defeating the Howard government. As governments around the world use a financial crisis caused by reckless banks and tax-dodging corporations to slash wages, pensions and working conditions, Burrow wants to replicate that campaign on the streets of Athens, Dublin, London, Madrid, Budapest and Bratislava.

''Your Rights at Work had an Australian sensibility,'' she says. ''But the fundamentals are the same. If you ask working people right across the world what are their main concerns, they are job and income security, opportunities for their kids, access to education and health.

''It's no different whether you're in Zambia or Malaysia, Europe or America. Part of the fight about unfair dismissal laws in Australia is now the fight in Hungary, Slovakia, Greece and Portugal.''

Burrow became general secretary of the ITUC, which represents 175 million workers in 151 countries and territories, 18 months ago. It makes her, in effect, the leader of the workers of the world.

Rumour had it, in early 2010, that she would get a seat in federal Parliament and quite likely a ministry in the Labor government. Instead, she chose the job based in Brussels, and the tiny flat near the city centre that she shares with her husband, a retired teacher. She returns to the flat occasionally, when she's not travelling, organising, advocating and agitating for workers.

When we met one Saturday a few weeks ago, Burrow was preparing to board an afternoon train for Paris, where she saw the IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, before returning to Brussels the next day to chair an ITUC congress. To lunch, she chose a neighbourhood bistro, nothing fancy ''but very Brussels, very authentic''.

Burrow now moves in powerful circles - meeting with prime ministers and presidents, facing down CEOs, making sure she is on the inside at summits of the G20 nations - but she has acquired no airs or pretensions, and lost none of the knockabout charm of a chalkie from country NSW. After more than a year in Brussels, she speaks very good French but with a broad Australian accent so her interlocutors understand, but sometimes wince, at every word. At lunch, poulet, for example, becomes ''poo-laaay''. ''Hah!'' she laughs. ''I'm trying, I'm trying!'' She goes, instead, for the fish, ''poissons'' being easier to pronounce.

Burrow wants unions to be at the centre of democracy movements across the Middle East and North Africa, arguing they are the bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism. She says that in Bahrain unions are one of the few institutions where Shiite and Sunni Muslims cohabit. ''One of the challenges in Bahrain is for the union movement to survive,'' she says. ''It's under attack. Why? Because they stand for democracy.

''It is a shared political power environment but it works and this is our ambition: to be inclusive of society but to fight extremism everywhere, whether it's religious extremism, the extremism of corporations, or the extremism of autocratic governments.''

During the uprising in Tunisia, Burrow was in constant contact with the leader of the Tunisian General Labour Union, who was mobilising protesters against Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's dictatorship. At the recent elections, the union-backed Ettakatol and some liberal allies won about 40 seats in the 200-seat parliament.

The ITUC has also helped launch autonomous unions for teachers and tax collectors in Egypt, independent unions in Libya, and is agitating for a free labour movement in Syria. ''I was in Amman [Jordan] recently, with the leaders of the Arab revolutions and [of] Palestine, and their courage and determination to build workers' rights is at the forefront,'' she says. ''They know that's an essential component of democracy.''

Burrow is no longer involved in Australian politics but, as the Labor Party meets in Sydney this weekend for its national conference, her words should echo through the Darling Harbour convention centre. The labour and progressive movement - of which the ALP is, at least nominally, a part - has a chance to tap into the mass disaffection with unregulated capitalism, by challenging corporate power and excessive executive salaries; reforming the banking and financial system to end profit based on speculation, rather than productivity; and supporting workers' rights and public investment in health and education.

''Have progressive parties lost the narrative that connects them with working people in many countries?'' she says.

''The answer is yes, absolutely. But my job is not to worry about the parties but to build the issues on which we can base a conversation with workers.If any smart politician who shares even an ounce of our values can't get elected on the basis of that conversation, that is, frankly, pretty despairing stuff.''

For all the enthusiasm about the democracies emerging from the Arab Spring, much of Burrow's time is spent on old battlegrounds, particularly the US, where union density is down to 10 per cent, compared with more than 50 per cent in many Scandinavian countries.

What especially troubles Burrow is the way the American Chamber of Commerce, through its international ''AmCham'' affiliates, is trying to export its anti-union crusade. ''The chamber is my next target and they have a global footprint everywhere,'' she warns. ''In Bahrain, they accused the [protesting] workers of being disloyal to the government and said they deserved to be sacked. This was an appalling attack on democracy so now they are very clearly in my sights.''

When unions and employers in Romania reached a deal to reform employment laws, AmCham intervened, threatening a withdrawal of US investment. ''Any government would normally go, 'phew, the workers and employers are on side, we'll pass this','' said Burrow. ''But, no, the Romanian government held out because around another table, a secret table, was millions of dollars of lobbying activity.

''We're now looking at [the chamber's] funders and we will release that information when it is complete. Some of the funders are those big corporations, a newspaper empire or two.''

Until then, there is the battle on Burrow's doorstep. The indebted governments of Britain, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland - having cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, or allowed them to evade tax with impunity for decades - are now threatening the mass retrenchment of public employees, changes to labour laws to make dismissals easier, and cuts to pensions and services.

For a woman steeped in the culture of struggle - and whose great-great grandfather took part in the shearers' strike of 1891 - there must be a limit to compromise. ''If you're going to reshape the global imbalances, you have to have income-led growth in the real economy, not growth driven by the markets and the bankers,'' she says. ''We believe in non-violent protest, absolutely. If there's no capacity to resolve the problem, then we are on the streets.''