Louise Nousratpour in Bournemouth
Sunday May 23, 2010
The Morning Star
Incoming cuts to union education funding are a direct attack on the working class and will stop activists gaining the skills they need to fight for social justice, delegates at the CWU conference has warned.
Further education colleges in England face an average budget cut of 16 per cent for adult learning as part of "efficiency savings" worth more than £200 million between now and 2011.
Around 30,000 union activists are trained every year using union education programmes publicly funded through colleges.
But this could become a thing of the past as "catastrophic" cuts to adult education begin to take effect, the conference in Bournemouth was told.
Head of education and training Trish Lavelle called on the CWU to mount a "vigorous campaign" in conjunction with other unions to fight the cuts.
"Every single union is suddenly seeing their education programme either disappear or drastically reduced. That's going to have a massive impact on our ability to organise workers and to train the next generation of union leaders," she said.
Moving a motion on the issue, Ms Lavelle argued for "ring-fenced funds" for union education, pointing out that the current cuts are the legacy of Labour and do not include the new government's austerity plans for the sector.
"This is before the 'chuckle brothers' even got going on cuts," she warned.
Ms Lavelle also expressed grave concern about plans that in the future only courses that are fully supported by the Sector Skills Councils will receive funding.
"SSCs are employer-led quangos. So it will be only funded if it fits with employers' agenda and not in terms of wider education values for the individual," she warned.
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An excellent article in the Morning Star recently highlighted the problem of cuts to trade union learning. This is a major problem in Preston, Lancs, where we are campaigning to retain the Trade Union Education Department at Preston College.
This unit is one of the few remaining in Lancashire devoted to the training of trade unionists in matters relative to the working environment in which they earn a living and has been in operation for the past 30 years
We have leafleted the college on its open day, had a meeting with the principal and urged our three local Members of Parliament to assist us in our fight to keep the department and its dedicated staff in operation.
We at Preston & South Ribble Trades Union Council are requesting a modest share of the proceeds that go into further education to ensure that working people can be trained in matters relative to their health safety and well-being within their respective occupations.
Let us for once see education which is beneficial to working people as the vast majority of educational programmes are designed to benefit the employers of this world.
So congratulations to the CWU, whose conference was the source of the report, and the Morning Star for highlighting a problem with which we are already grappling.
Terry Bayes
President, Preston & South Ribble Trades Union Council
Thursday June 17, 2010
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