Unions win praise for training efforts

Citation

(2003), "Unions win praise for training efforts", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 27 No. 9. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeit.2003.00327iab.002

Unions win praise for training efforts

Unions win praise for training efforts

Trade-union learning is achieving success in both large and small unions and increasing its impact on the UK economy year on year, education and skills secretary Charles Clarke told the annual Union Learning Fundconference in London.

"There are now 180 learning centres open and tens of thousands of members have taken part in learning," said Mr Clarke. "Their work is vital to our productivity and underpins our drive to close the skill gaps holding back our competitiveness".

He continued: "A key part of the drive for workforce development is the growing network of union learning representatives. Some 6,500 have now been trained and we aim to have 22,000 in post by 2010. They are making a huge contribution to learning and have rightly won a legal entitlement to paid time off, enjoying similar rights to shop stewards.

"Thanks to the union learning fund, this new kind of activist is helping unions to reach the parts otherorganizations simply cannot. Increasingly recruited from younger female members and ethnic minorities – around one in six in the south-east – they are improving the quality of workers' lives immeasurably.

"Just as unions play a key role as social partners in Europe, unions in this country will increasingly play their part in policy development through partnership with government and employer organizations.

"Unions are making their mark in workplace learning and are participating in several initiatives, including the ground breaking employer training pilots to support employers and in e-learning, where unions are helping to remove barriers to employment and widen participation.

"Union learning projects are especially successful at reaching non-traditional learners such as shift and part-time workers and people whose first language is not English. They succeed because they know the people they work with".

Charles Clarke highlighted several unions and sectors where the government's union learning fund has been delivering successful lifelong-learning projects:

• •

  Building workers – construction unions are helping members to progress from basic skills and IT to level 2 construction-skills certificate scheme, which gives union members a registration card showing they have reached the required health and safety standard as well as level 2 accreditation.

• •

  Rail workers – working together, rail unions created the passport to learning project to reach out to people working unusual shift patterns, who previously had few learning options. These workers now have access to IT courses and a range of other learning activities.

• •

  Nurses – the union learning fund helps to finance a learning zone where nurses can log on forpersonal as well as professional development, and thousands ofunion members are taking up this opportunity.