Carl RoperLast night, along with Organising Academy Director Liz Blackshaw and other colleagues from the Organising & Recruitment team, I was at the graduation ceremony for the Organising Academy class of 2008. You can see more pictures from the event here.
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To coincide with the start of the Activist Academy pilots, this clip from the Building Stronger Unions fringe meeting that took place at Congress last week features PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka speak about the importance of union activists.
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The first pilot course of the Activist Academy, a new programme launched by the TUC and unionlearn, got underway at Lewisham College in London yesterday.
The Activist Academy was launched at Congress last week and aims to train 1000 reps and activists in organising, recruitment and campaigning skills over the next three years. The Activist Academy is being piloted in three TUC regions and will be rolled out nationally in early 2009.
I called in on the second day of the pilot programme and spoke with the reps and with Rossina Harris, Trade Union Education Course Co-ordinator at Lewisham College who is leading the training. Rossina told me that she’d been impresed by the enthusiasm of the reps on the programme towards both the training and the organising projects that they will take they skills they learn back to.
The next pilot starts in the Yorkshire and the Humber TUC Region next week at East Riding College, Hull.
More information on the Activist Academy and the unions who signed up to support it, can be found here.
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For those who couldn’t get to the Building Stronger Unions fringe meeting at Congress this year, the Stronger Unions YouTube channel now contains highlights from each of the speakers;
- Arlene Holt-Baker of the AFL-CIO
- Paddy Lillis, USDAW Deputy General Secretary
- Chris Keates, NASUWT General Secretary
- Mark Serwotka, PCS Generaol Secretary
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I’ve given many presentations in which I’ve stressed the need for unions to break into new sectors of the economy and organise the previously un-organised. I have to be honest though and say that I never had members of MI5 in mind, but the FDA, the union that represents top civil servants has won the right to represent members of the security services. You can read more here.
What was that now about the enemy within!
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The following article was written by year 11 student Eleni Astrinakis, who has been on work-placement with the TUC during the last two weeks.
On Monday 8th September I attended a Unions 21 fringe meeting called ‘Tomorrow’s unions: attracting and developing future members.’
There were many speakers including: Wes Streeting, President,National Union of Students; Simon Sapper, Assistant Secretary, CWU, Charlie Sloan, RCN and Grainne McCay, the NASUWT’s young activist of the year!
They were discussing where the activists and members will come from in the future? Each speaker at this fringe described how their union reaches out now and how they are going to try and reach out in the future. They were talking about how students can be the answer to this problem, if they are reached in the right way. Also they pointed out that a union could have lots of members but without activists they are lost!
They also talked about how they could really support young workers and students. They were talking about how the young members need to feel that they are being supported in every possible way. The RCN gives their new members a memory stick with important numbers and information.
So overall in this fringe they debated different ways for unions to get in touch with their young members and how they will try to reach them in the future.
While I understand that this was a fringe for people in the movement and people who use ‘trade union language’, but if unions want to attract new young members they will have to change their language because it was a bit boring for a young person! But I was glad to have the experience of hearing this type of debate. Trade unions should try and connect with young people by finding out their interests and how young people communicate with each other.
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The evidence that union mergers make (the new) unions more effective and create additional resources for organising and recruitment is not (yet!) as convincing as the case to be made for individual unions with shared interests working together more closely.
This post on the blog of Jon Rogers, Unison National Executive member comments on the potential for and the possible merits of both
Paul Nowak
