Why You Should be a Trade Unionist by Len McCluskey

Author:Len McCluskey
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Verso Books

Local campaigns have included food bank collections, protesting against cuts to school breakfast clubs, fighting to save school transport for children with special needs, resisting the back-door privatisation of NHS trusts, and challenging the unfair treatment of asylum seekers.

This commitment to helping some of the most vulnerable people in society is fundamental to the incredible work that our voluntary sector members are doing day in day out. Unite represents over 60,000 workers in the community, youth and not-for-profit sectors, in a very diverse range of organisations, including charities, advice and legal bodies, youth and play schemes, housing associations and faith groups.

I was particularly proud when we opened the doors of our central London headquarters to homeless Londoners as an emergency shelter during one of the coldest of winter snaps, working with our members at the St Mungo’s charity and the mayor of London.

I set out in Chapter 3 the importance of trade union education in giving working people a voice. I’ve visited many workplaces where we have opened up union learning centres through the Union Learning Fund (ULF), a government scheme which enables workers to learn at work, and from which employers benefit hugely (hence it hasn’t, as yet, been scrapped, even by the Tories). I’ve spoken to older men and women who have effectively dodged their way through life without an education, unable to read and write, but who, directly through their union, have become confident in literacy and numeracy. Some unions have also set up community learning centres with ULF money, providing opportunities for family and friends of trade unionists to drop in and learn new skills, particularly in IT. I’m told that one of the most popular ULF courses has been Spanish, which employees have learned for fun.

I am passionate in my belief that learning should include teaching school children about the role of trade unions in communities and the wider society. Unions feature little on secondary school curricula, despite the fact that we are the largest voluntary organisations in the country. This is not surprising, of course, given what successive education secretaries have done to the national curriculum, but it is little wonder that young people enter the world of work knowing next to nothing about what trade unions do.

Alex Usher has not joined a union yet because she’s still at school. She, probably alone among her schoolmates, understands what unions are because her parents are trade unionists. This is what she says: ‘I think it’s important for unions to find ways to show young people why our rights at work are important, why unions are relevant to us and why we should join one on our first day at work. Give us history lessons – show us how it was for people working fifty years ago and make it mean something to us now.’

And we must.

Back in 1914, pupils at the Burston school in Norfolk demonstrated that they knew a thing or two about unions and about solidarity. That year they embarked on the longest

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