The sacking of her school teacher among thousands of others was the first sign that Sally McManus' calling would be in the union movement.
It was at a huge protest rally among tens of thousands of people waving placards and streamers in Sydney's Domain that the Carlingford High School student was first struck by its power.
"When I was in year 11, my high school history teacher got sacked because the Liberal government [education minister] Terry Metherell and [premier] Nick Greiner, sacked all these teachers," she said.
"I went along to the big protests that the Teachers Federation organised and, coming from western Sydney on the train, I remember so vividly ... that feeling of strength in numbers."
The second nudge came one morning in 1994 during her final year at university when she woke up to an ABC radio interview. An ACTU official was talking about a plan to recruit trainee union organisers.
"I was studying philosophy and thought, wow, there is nothing I'd love more than be a union organiser," Ms McManus said.
"It was a time of high youth unemployment in the early 1990s."
As the first person in her family to go to university to study for a bachelor of arts, she remembers her parents saying: "We never knew you were good at painting."
On Tuesday she became the first female secretary of the peak national union organisation, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).
Ms McManus, 45, said her highest priorities include growing union membership, winning stronger rights at work and taking on corporate greed.
"That's about making sure that working people have stronger rights but also that we can tip the balance back in favour of ordinary Australians because ... so much wealth has gone to the top 1 per cent," she said. "Part of that is about corporations paying their fair share of tax."
While she condemned corruption within the union movement as contrary to its culture and values, Ms McManus said the federal government's two-year royal commission into trade unions had uncovered only a few cases of corruption.
Had the big four banks been subjected to the same level of scrutiny, Ms McManus believes similar examples of corruption would be uncovered.
"There should be a national anti-corruption body like there is in NSW. Every part of our society should be subjected to that," she said.
The Turnbull government is also warned against any move to return retirement savings to the big banks.
"We will fight them right to the end on it," she said.
When she became secretary of the NSW branch of the Australian Services Union, it had 10,000 members. It grew to 12,000 by the time she left to take a job as ACTU secretary and head of campaigns.
"We did that by running smart effective campaigns that made a real difference to our members' lives," she said.
"I take those lessons to the new responsibility and do exactly the same across the whole of the movement."
As ACTU vice-president and head of campaigns, Ms McManus is credited for mobilising an "army" of volunteers to doorknock and call voters in the lead-up to last year's federal election.
Her achievements as a left-wing secretary of the NSW and ACT branch of the Australian Services Union included a successful campaign for equal pay.
McManus now plans to generate a groundswell of community support through grassroots campaigning to pressure politicians to strengthen workplace rights through legislation.
"The job of the union movement is to lead a movement of people who all agree that we don't want that kind of society," she said.
Ms McManus said powerful corporations and multinationals had avoided paying tax "with their army of lawyers and sneaky ways", and had done the same with workers rights.
She plans to campaign against the growing casualisation and insecurity of jobs. As in the US, many new jobs created in Australia are part-time or casual, contributing to growing inequality with people becoming poorer and less secure in their jobs.
"We will end up like the US unless we change the rules," she said.
As a poster child of the modern day union movement, McManus is social media savvy but also believes in bringing the "best of the past" with her.
The need for organising people remains unchanged because "that's where you get power from".
"Everything else is basically extra things on top. Social media or online organising, it is simply just another way working people can organise themselves. It's just a new way of doing it.
Having represented blue and white-collar workers, including those in the rapidly growing community and health sector, McManus acknowledges the priorities of the union movement have shifted. It must reflect the interests of the majority of its membership who now are female.
But she plans to be a secretary for "everyone" including manufacturing and construction workers.
"Of course ... we will be wanting to focus on growing the union movement in new areas of the economy, but it also means we are going to continue to support all our other areas as well," she said.
Unlike the workplace environment during the Keating-era Accord agreement and Howard government's Work Choices legislation, the focus would be on growing the union movement in new areas of the economy including the health, disability sector and aged care sectors. About 52 per cent of union members are women.
Ms McManus points out the care and disability sectors would not be unionised "overnight".
"It took nurses and teachers about 50 years to do it. It also took the manufacturing unions about 50 years to do it," she said.
"It will be a matter of time."
The recent decision of the Fair Work Commission to reduce Sunday and public holiday penalty rates in the hospitality and retail sectors was proof the industrial relations system was broken.
"If our independent umpire can hand down a decision that just cuts pay for people then is some seriously wrong and broken. So our number one focus will be to try and stop those cuts to 700,000 workers and if we can't stop those cuts, we will be bringing every part of our movement together to demand changes to our laws so it can never ever happen again," she said.
"I'm going to focus on uniting the whole of the movement and that means building up strength in the way we had to during the Work Choices [campaign]."
Ms McManus said the ACTU will continue to remain unaffiliated with the Labor Party. It was up to individual unions to make their own decision. Unaffiliated unions included the unions representing the female dominated teachers and nurses.
McManus follows trail blazers including former presidents Jenny George, Sharan Burrow and Ged Kearney who is currently serving.
Kevin Young, the managing director of Sydney Water, is among employers who have had a productive working relationship with Ms McManus when she was ASU secretary in NSW.
"Sally McManus would be one of the best union leaders I have dealt with in my career because she believes in collaboration. She is fiercely loyal to her members but also believes that for members to be successful the business must be sustainable and that employees should be motivated and engaged," he said.
Ms McManus believes she needs to understand the pressures of the organisations she needs to negotiate with.
"Our union was highly democratic and I always knew what our members wanted and in the end they made all the decisions. However I would always try and find ways of achieving what union members wanted which took into account the interests of the employer.
"These are the most successful negotiations. However, sometimes this is just not possible and it's important to recognise when that that's the case and then you look to other ways of winning."
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