Swindon STEAM museum, Saturday 12th November 2011

The event was a great success with over 600 visitors. This World of Work exhibition was organised by CWU Union Learning Rep Sandra Absalom to celebrate the creative talents of CWU members, as well as other Unions members and to promote Union Learning.

Work from Gloucestershire Amal members is on display at the Gatehouse Learning Centre - so drop in and take a closer look.

Gloucestershire Amal's Katy Hartland (Lead ULR) and Mike Hartland with Trish Lavelle (CWU Head of Education and Training) and Sandra Absalom (who organised the WOW event)	Mike Hartland with some of the CWU members work in the exhibition

8th Annual CWU Union Learning Event 2011

Matt Joint, the director of group learning and development for Royal Mail, and Andrew Park, employee relations manager for BT group were among the guest speakers for the 8th Annual CWU Union Learning Event which was held in Cardiff.

Matt Joint spoke about how he supported Union Learning Reps and he acknowledged the value learning has for Royal Mail. He recognised that ULRs were most successful where they had senior Royal Mail manager support. He also told us how he wanted Royal Mail to become the ‘employer of choice’ and how he wanted the 165 000 current staff to want to stay. He also said he wanted genuine dialog and partnership and to work effectively together with the CWU. He said he would be fighting our corner and making sure managers realise the importance of supporting ULRs and providing them with enough release time to do their work.

Andrew Park told us that he recognised the value of Trade Unions and that he felt ULRs undersell themselves and what they do; they have done a lot of good work in Royal Mail and BT but many managers don’t understand what they do.

CWU Head of Education and Training, Trish Lavelle, explained how over the last 8 years Union Learning had gone from being a fringe event to main stream ‘business as usual’ for the Union. She said the CWU had a strategy in place should there be a withdrawal of government funding for Union Learning in two years’ time as may be the case; she told us Union Learning within the CWU was self-sustaining.

Kathryn Paine

New College Tutor

Katy Hartland

Lead ULR

Mike Anderton

ULR

Union Learn Case Study - Steve Cottle

Congratulations to Steve Cottle, a postman and Union member for 24 years, who recently gained both his literacy and numeracy qualifications through the G@tehouse Learning Centre.

Steve explained that he initially got involved with Union Learning because a friend at work had just completed a NVQ level 2 in IT and had told Steve all about it and how good he’d found it. Steve was curious to find out more so he came along and signed up for a course and he hasn’t looked back since!

Steve said the best bit about Union Learning was the feeling of security it gave him – with the constant threat of redundancy hanging over most workers heads, he felt gaining qualifications would help him in the job market should he find himself made redundant by Royal Mail. He said, ‘once you start, you have to keep going – it’s something more you can add to your CV’. Receiving his certificates, said Steve, gave him an immense feeling of achievement and something to be proud of.

Well done Steve!