In 1981, he was made Deputy General Secretary of NUPE and served through its merger to become UNISON until 1994.

[2] He stood down at the 1998 Party Conference[3] and was created a Life Peer as Baron Sawyer, of Darlington in the County of Durham on 4 August 1998.

The Labour History Archive and Study Centre at the People's History Museum in Manchester holds the papers of Sawyer, which range from 1985 to 1998.

[5] In 2005, Lord Sawyer became the chancellor of the University of Teesside, replacing former Conservative MP and member of the European Commission, Leon Brittan.

Sawyer has been a life-long admire of William Morris, the socialist writer and craftsman and in 2018 Sawyer began a five year term of office as President of the William Morris Society.