update - Southern and Eastern Region (Winter 09)

Southern and Eastern Region

WINTER 2010

update

Clued up about learning Crime writer Val McDermid backs our skills drive

The image which won the Labour Photo of the Year competition run by LabourStart, the online labour movement news service, (reproduced on the back page of this issue) must surely remind everyone who sees it of the urgent need to eliminate child labour from the worldwide workplace.

The photograph itself was taken in Bangladesh, where official statistics acknowledge there are currently 4.9 million children aged between five and 14 at work, with a total of 1.3 million children estimated to be working 43 hours or more per week.

As in many other parts of the developing world, education (and the lack of it) is one of the crucial factors behind the continuing vicious cycle created by child poverty.

Low awareness of the importance of learning combined with low adult literacy levels mean many parents without basic skills themselves are in no position to challenge children about quitting school (50 per cent of Bangladeshi children don’t complete their primary education).

In addition, the education on offer is often very poor (not least because teacher-student ratios of 1-100 are not unknown) and very expensive – while the Bangladeshi government provides free basic primary education in terms of direct costs, it’s left to families themselves to find the money for everything from pens, pencils and notebooks to transport and uniforms.

When it comes to vocational training, the picture is equally bleak: neither the government nor many of the non-governmental organisations have the capacity or expertise required to deliver effective skills training in the workplace. So much for child workers being “apprentices” (as they’re often called) – they’re not learning a trade in any way that a trade unionist would recognise (witness the absence of any safety equipment in the photograph), and they shouldn’t even be at work in the first place, they should be in full-time education.

Working on behalf of our members in the Southern and Eastern regions, absorbed in the detail of funding and providers, it’s all too easy to forget global problems like child labour continue to blight parts of the rest of the world. This year’s World Day Against Child Labour falls on Saturday 12 June. What can you plan to do to mark the date now?

Barry Francis, Regional Manager

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Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk

Children need to learn, not work

Learning centre goes for Olympics gold The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) and unionlearn SERTUC have got together to set up a learning centre on the 2012 site in East London offering literacy and numeracy courses to construction workers and the local community.

“We’re a learndirect centre, offering literacy and numeracy up to Level 2, and offering IT courses from beginners up to Level 2 as well,” says Learning Centre Manager Phil Spry.

Situated on the fringes of the massive infrastructure project, the centre is designed not only for workers on the site but also for members of local unions and the local community.

The team has been meeting a range of local unions to fill them in about what’s on offer, and is also working with the Communities Champion at a local Tesco superstore to help promote the centre to local people.

The centre will be formally opened in early 2010, and will remain onsite until March 2011, after which it is hoped to move it elsewhere in the locality as part of the 2012 legacy.

For more information, please contact Phil Spry or Jane Warwick. Tel: 020 3288 5520

Keystone staff welcome learning deal Retail union USDAW signed a learning agreement with McDonalds suppliers Keystone Distribution and opened learning centres at Hemel Hempstead, Haywood and Basingstoke on the same day in November.

The Hemel Hempstead official opening attracted a lot of interest from staff onsite, with over 20 signing up for courses on the day.

Four ULRs are coordinating the new learning opportunities onsite at Hemel Hempstead: Alun Jackson from the maintenance section; Georgie Henderson from transport; and Keith Mahoney and Steve Reardon, who are covering different shifts in the warehouse.

Keith, who is also a health and safety rep and a rep on the company forum, says he’s looking forward to helping people gain skills that will help them inside and outside the workplace and sees the ULR role as an opportunity for his own personal development.

Georgie wanted to become a ULR because she’s interested in helping others to learn and in turn increase their confidence in the same way she did by going on an IT course herself.

Keen learner Alun, who’s been with the company for 15 years, has organised sessions on watercolour painting in the past while Steve actually joined USDAW in order to become a ULR.

EEF Regional Director David Seall (right) presents Christopher Worrall with his award, flanked by Hamish Mcnaughton and Mike Underhill of award sponsors IET; (below right) Anton Barrick

Unite duo do the awards double Two young Unite members at Perkins Engines in Peterborough have taken two of the four awards for apprentices in the South East of England at the first-ever Engineering Employers’ Federation (EEF) Future Manufacturing Awards.

Anton Barrick (20) was named winner in the Final Year Apprentice category in recognition of his unparalleled enthusiasm for engineering and his commitment to continuous improvement.

Christopher Worrall was runner-up in the First Year Apprentice category, having completed a number of qualifications at Peterborough Regional College and Perkins Engines and excelling within the company’s Global Engine Development department.

Unite Head of Lifelong Learning Tom Beattie congratulated the two young members on their achievements.

“Unite is very proud of the achievements of our two young apprentices from Perkins Engines.

They demonstrate once again that with proper investment and support from their employers, young people are capable of great things,” he said. “Unite is committed to supporting the apprenticeship system and calls on other employers to match that commitment by investing in high quality training such as that demonstrated by apprenticeships.”

EEF South East Region Director David Seall said Anton and Christopher were a credit to themselves, their employers and industry as a whole.

“Apprenticeships provide an excellent route into the world of work for young people and play a key role in developing the talent and skills that our manufacturing, engineering and technology-based companies require.”

Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk

Putting the ‘you’ into ‘uni’ Unionlearn SERTUC has signed a deal with Kingston University which will give union members 50 per cent off the cost off Foundation degrees, aimed at the workplace, and a selection of free taster courses.

“We want to develop flexible, accessible programmes that reflect what is needed by employers and employees,” explained Kingston University Executive Director of Enterprise Deborah Lock.

Unionlearn SERTUC Regional Manager Barry Francis signs the Memorandum of Understanding with Kingston University Executive Director of Enterprise Deborah Lock.

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Feature interview

Making crime pay 4

All photos: Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk

Val McDermid was one of the keynote speakers at unionlearn SERTUC’s annual conference. She explains how her working-class Scottish upbringing helped her become the successful writer she is today.

What was the best thing about growing up in a working class community in Fife in the 1950s?

My father was a great Burns man and I grew up with the notion of “a man’s a man for a’ that” – and that for me has been a lifelong legacy of importance. I had a very strong sense that I was as good as anybody else.

Did you enjoy reading as a child?

When did you become a full-time writer?

I loved reading – I was a complete book addict. I was lucky – when I was a kid we moved to a house across the road from the Central Library in Kirkcaldy and that really became my home from home.

I also spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ when I was a kid and they only had two books in the house – a copy of The Bible and (for some reason that no one’s been able adequately to explain) Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage.

I read that book again and again and again – I read it every time I ran out of other reading material and went on to read lots of other crime fiction, and I suspect I grew up thinking that grown-up books had to have dead bodies in them.

What was your experience of school?

I went to a school that took the view of pushing everybody towards academic excellence, but there was also a sense that girls went off to be secretaries or nurses, so there was a kind of cognitive dissonance! We had one set of messages that there were limitations on what you could do but there was another set of messages that you could do what you wanted.

When I decided I wanted to go to Oxford University, there was a sense at school of “We don’t want you to apply for Oxford because you won’t get in and that will reflect badly on us” but it was a very different story when I did get in (“We always said you’d do well”) but that’s human nature!

You worked as a journalist at the Mirror Group for 15 years after you left university.

Did you always want to write fiction?

I always wanted to be a story-teller from when I realised that it was a job, that people wrote books that appeared in the library and were paid for it: everything I did was geared towards one day being able to write a book that could be published.

When I graduated from university, I started writing the “great English novel”. When you are 20, you think you know the secrets of the universe but actually you know bugger all, and I wrote this unbelievably callow novel – about which the only good thing you could say was that I finished it.

Val McDermid CV

I think it was rejected by every publishing house in London – by the end, people I hadn’t even submitted it to were sending me letters saying “Please don’t send us this book!”

I persisted because it was the thing I wanted to do and it never occurred to me not to keep trying – and that comes back to my background and my experiences growing up, that you don’t give up because you fail the first time round.

I gave up the day job in 1991, four years after my first novel Report for Murder was published. I thought I’ve got to make the jump, I’ve got to take the risk, I’ve got to bet on myself.

I did my sums on the back of an envelope and I figured if I cut my expenses right back to the bone, basically if I kept the roof over my head and fed myself and didn’t do very much else I could afford to live on two books a year at that rate of payment.

I was very lucky: I’d always been with Mirror Group and we had a very good redundancy agreement so after 15 years’ service, I basically went out the door with a year’s money – and that kept me afloat for 18 months, which made it possible for me to keep my head above water while I got myself established.

What did you make of the stories in the new Quick Read collection Life’s Too Short, for which you’ve written the foreword?

I loved the way that this collection really takes you inside people’s lives. I really enjoyed reading people’s take on their world – I felt like I’d been given privileged access.

We all make assumptions about people who do particular jobs – what those jobs entail, what those people must be like to do that kind of job – and what’s surprising about this collection is that it makes you stop and question your own preconceptions, and that’s always good for all of us but particularly good for writers: we think we know how the world works and we need to be shaken up.

When will your own next book be published?

I’m currently working on a standalone novel called The Cost of Everything which is due to be delivered at the end of March and published in September. The journalistic habit that persists is that I can never do anything until the deadline looms. I’m feeling my way in, I know what it’s about, I’m writing – I say that in the slightly desperate voice my editors have come to know and fear!

Born in Fife 1955, Val was the first student from a Scottish state school to win a place at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she studied from 1972 to 1975.

On leaving university, she trained as a journalist with Mirror Group Newspapers, where she stayed for 15 years, and where she was still working when she

published her first novel Report For Murder in 1987.

A full-time writer since 1991, Val has already contributed her own title to the Quick Reads series, Cleanskin, and has written the introduction for the new Quick Reads collection of workplace stories Life’s Too Short, published on World Book Day in March.

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Annual Conference

All photos: Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk

We’ve reached the skills crossroads This is a critical moment in the development of the learning and skills agenda, unionlearn Director Tom Wilson told the fourth annual unionlearn SERTUC conference in November.

The country was facing stern economic and political tests, he argued, and was in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, triggered by greed in the City, and felt by everyone except those who caused it.

On the political front, the impending general election would be fought between those who argued for a return to business as usual versus those who believed in controlling the banking and financial sector which got us into trouble in the first place, he said.

Learning made a real difference to the economy by helping keep businesses afloat (companies which didn’t train were two-and-a-half times more likely to fail, he pointed out).

It also built bridges between management and workers.

“Many employers says learning has improved industrial relations and gives a real boost to the quality of working life,” he said.

“We’ve got to get our message through the election campaign – we’re going to have to make those arguments regardless of who’s in power,” he said.

Learning was now more central to union work than it was a decade ago, he pointed out.

Training 24,000 union learning reps around the country had been a fantastic achievement: “You’ve got a lot to be proud of,” he told participants, since one in four ULRs come from the Southern and Eastern Region.

He applauded the new Community and Trade Union Learning Centre recently opened on the 2012 site by the Olympics Delivery Authority and unionlearn SERTUC as “exactly the kind of flagship project” unions could deliver.

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There remained much to do, he argued. “I still get asked the question what have unions got to do with learning – I’ll count it a great success when people stop asking me that.”

Let’s get to work!

Participants attended workshops including: learning in a recession; access higher education; and apprenticeships.

How to get world class skills Another way to learn as you earn By combining academic study with workplace learning, Foundation degrees offered significant opportunities to adults in the workplace, explained Foundation Degree Forward (fdf) Director of Workplace Learning Strategy Susan Hayday.

Foundation degrees helped people to find the time to study.

One Foundation degree student had commented: “One of the first things that attracted me to enrol was because it was workbased and part-time,” Susan said.

They could also encourage progression at work, leading to higher level NVQs, professional qualifications and Honours degrees. Another student had said: “Achieving the Foundation degree has opened doors at work that would otherwise have been closed.”

The Government was committed to ensuring greater access to higher level skills, she said. The higher education framework Higher Ambitions had declared: “We will expand new types of higher education programmes that widen opportunities for flexible study for young people and adults and reflect the reality of modern working lives.”

Originally set up in 2003 to support the development and delivery of Foundation degrees, fdf soon realised that the focus of its work needed to be with employers, she said.

Unionlearn SERTUC and fdf were running a project aimed at developing joint activity to support employer and employee engagement in higher-level skills development, she said.

The pilot aimed to raise awareness and aspirations; produce information and resources; publish guidance for negotiating with employers; and promote links with higher education colleges.

There are significant challenges ahead if the UK is to drive the skills levels of its workforce to world-class levels, Unite Head of Lifelong Learning Tom Beattie told the conference.

Britain’s biggest union wanted the Government to set up a training levy to generate funds for learning and development and to encourage employer buy-in, he explained.

And while it welcomed the new right to request time to train at work, it believed the legislation didn’t go far enough – the Government should introduce a right to training with paid time off, he argued.

The union was looking for firm commitments from the Government to plough additional resources into apprenticeships, said Tom, himself a former apprentice with British Steel.

Since low pay was a major reason for non-completion of apprenticeships, the union continued to press for apprentice pay to be aligned with the National Minimum Wage, and with the lowest-paid concentrated in traditionally “female” sectors, it wanted more to be done to combat gender segregation.

“Skills, training and education have always been central to what unions do – they’ve been inscribed on our banners for over 100 years,” he pointed out.

What’s your story?

Michelle Treagust from the Reading Agency encouraged participants to enter the BBC My Story competition by setting everyone a quiz, featuring anagrams of famous films based on true life stories and photographs of TV actors playing real life characters. The competition itself is now closed, but you can read many entries online and the winners are due to be filmed later this year.

Visit: www.bbc.co.uk/mystory

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Contacts Unionlearn Southern and Eastern Region

Š KM Asad

Congress House Great Russell Street London WC1B 3LS 020 7467 1251 Outreach offices Haywards Heath Harlow London

014444 59733 01279 408188 020 7467 1342

Regional education office: 020 7467 1284 Regional manager Barry Francis

bfrancis@tuc.org.uk

Regional union development coordinator Jon Tennison

jtennison@tuc.org.uk

Regional development workers Mick Hadgraft Adrian Ryan Trish Raftery

mhadgraft@tuc.org.uk aryan@tuc.org.uk praftery@tuc.org.uk

Project workers Rickey Denton Jane Warwick Sean Ruddy Jaspal Ghtoray Gabi Upton Stuart Barber

rdenton@tuc.org.uk jwarwick@tuc.org.uk sruddy@tuc.org.uk jghtoray@tuc.org.uk gupton@tuc.org.uk sbarber@tuc.org.uk

Child labour image tops poll Bangladeshi photographer KM Asad won the LabourStart Labour Photo of the Year competition at the end of last year with this striking image of a young Bangladeshi boy in a shipbuilding factory, where unpaid apprentices work in extreme conditions without safety equipment for many years. Over 3,000 people cast their votes in the 2009 competition run by the LabourStart web portal, with KM Asad’s picture winning by a wide margin.

Cambridge college wins Quality Award Val McDermid presents John Pritchard (left), head of the Learning Shop at Cambridge Regional College, with the unionlearn Quality Award for the delivery of its ITQ (Level 2) City & Guilds Certificate. With them is Martin Harding, the Fire Brigades Union Cambridgeshire Union Learning Coordinator.

U-Net support workers Sarah-Louise Lacey slacey@tuc.org.uk Phil Spry pspry@tuc.org.uk Recession and recovery workers Katie Curtis Fred Grindrod Colin Lloyd

kcurtis@tuc.org.uk fgrindrod@tuc.org.uk clloyd@tuc.org.uk

Regional education officers Rob Hancock Angela Perry

rhancock@tuc.org.uk aperry@tuc.org.uk

Administration Sonia Dawson Kelly Hillock Johanna Garcia

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sdawson@tuc.org.uk khillock@tuc.org.uk jgarcia@tuc.org.uk

Cover photograph of Val McDermid by Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk