Trade Union Learning: What I've Learnt

Colleagues,

Just a brief(ish) post from Warwick University library as I work on my doctoral thesis. I thought I'd write up some personal notes/reflections on what I consider a trade union education pedagogy to look and feel like.

This is partly because I am wrestling with emerging findings from interviews with alumni and current students of the MA in international labour and trade union studies (ILTUS at Ruskin College. As a reminder of my thesis focus, a key goal is to explore personal impact, but also the contribution (if any) the MA makes to activity, strategy and policy of trade union renewal.

MA ILTUS Students at Ruskin College: Sharing learning and understanding -

a community of practice.

In thinking through my findings and discussing them with my supervisor (Cilla Ross: Vice-Principal, Co-operative College) she reminded of the way that what is emerging from my research with trade union learners, has some coherence with research that she (and others) completed for Unionlearn on the experience of members engaged in learning (formal and informal) initiated by their unions:

https://www.unionlearn.org.uk/publications/research-paper-14-learning-journeys-trade-union-learners-their-own-words

I'll write a further piece on the nature of my findings. What I felt it useful to do as an aspect of my reflections though was write something simpler on what I consider is my pedagogic approach to working with trade union learners (and add photos from my teaching) . I also wanted to draw no distinction here between my MA or BA ILTUS experience at Ruskin, and teaching with the many groups of trade union learners I encounter every year - the kind I write of regularly.

At this year's TUC Black Workers' Conference I ran the session on black workers

and precarious employment.

So, what am I trying to achieve with trade union leaners?

Primarily to build confidence in themselves and their capacity to engage with the myriad challenges they face in the workplace and wider society.

Confidence, I feel, comes through a combination of self-esteem and the idea that agency/action reflects the power/influence of the activist and members.

This means that I focus on validating the experience of activists. Stressing that their knowledge and experience has value to others.

I try and illustrate also that our learning - from one another - can generate understanding of (a) linkages vertically and horizontally with the political economy of work (e.g. why is this happening to us, and to others in the union?) and (b) how shared knowledge and understanding is possibly the most powerful tool we have. Too much trade union education focuses on legal remedy rather than workers' power.

So a focus on experience (even the worst kind) is critical, as the deconstruction of this allows us to identify commonalities (thus networks and movements are borne) and strategies.

CWU reps attend the BAME Leadership weekend in February this year.

In linking the issues above together, I try and do some simple things:

Remember names, workplaces, case studies of experience. Using colleague's names from the outset means that we create a dynamic, engaged learning environment: a community of practice. Remembering workplaces and experience not also evidences respect but allows us to build a sense of common experience and capacity to critique this and develop common solutions.

Underline that politics and history is everything and everywhere. Too few trade union learners (in my experience) feel confident in their political and historical knowledge. It is fundamentally important that their experience of the workplace can be seen to have vertical (national, European, international) links to that other workers also, and horizontal (other unionised and non-unionised workers in their sector/city) otherwise we cannot build consciousness.

Concentrate on the ways in which most employer strategy attempts to exert power and control in micro and macro ways. Much of what I see in the public sector represents a need, for example in local government, to maintain service delivery despite massive job losses. The resultant ill-health workers are exposed to is managed (in my experience) through arbitrary and punitive management of the disciplinary and capability procedures.

Recognise that some of the basic theories of accruing trade union/workers' power has not changed. In his seminal book, The Frontier of Control, Carter Goodrich focuses on those staples of disruption and solidarity. In his attempt to 'modernise' Goodrich, Gregor Gall draws on Eric Bastone to argue, correctly in my view, that an acknowledgement of the influences of market and society (what I've suggested are the vertical and horizontal linkages to the workplace) and the relationship between capital and labour is critical to understanding how to effect change at work, and in society more broadly.

Read Gall's article on sources of union power here: http://www.l-r-c.org.uk/files/gall_union.pdf

MA ILTUS students attend Levellers' Day 2015

So much of trade union work feels isolated and disparate. Thus, I see the approach to pedagogy in trade union education as providing a means of (a) connecting the local to the global so that (b) the politics of globalisation and neo-liberalism can be made real and understood in order that (c) workers' experience (locally and globally) can be seen as part and parcel of developing strategy to challenge exploitation at work and in society more broadly.

This 'nutshell' perspective on my approach to teaching and learning with trade union learners is predicated also on the simple view that I am (always) a learner too.

As ever comments/thoughts are very welcome.

In Solidarity

Ian