The organising method
The BECTU approach is an organising approach. This means we ask our representatives to help people take action on their own behalf rather than do it for them. Our role is to provide the information, advice and guidance for members to make their choices.
Building a strong and well organised union
Whatever your local circumstances happen to be it is a central focus of BECTU's Training Strategy that the work of ULRs should support and enhance our efforts to organise more effectively. By ensuring that the branch team of reps get the training they need to build a solid organisation and improve terms and conditions, you will be an important part of our organising effort. We also hope that your activity at local level will inspire and enthuse existing members and attract new ones so that BECTU can continue to grow in size and influence.
ULR checklist
- Ensure that education and training are on the agenda of every branch meeting
- Create and maintain a record of the training needs of your fellow reps and branch officials with our specially designed learning needs analysis for union reps
- Maintain contact with BECTU head office and keep us informed of learning issues
- Distribute and disseminate information about education and training to your members and fellow reps and officers (we will supply this - though you are free to find out your own information)
- To attend a training course at a time and place convenient to you.
Other activities that BECTU learning reps may wish to take on are described in the ACAS guidelines and in the rest of this section of the learning reps advice centre.
Finally, the role of the Union Learning Rep is not to know everything about learning and is definitely not to work on your own doing everything yourself. By far the best way of promoting learning at work is to build a small workplace team to share out the work and to learn about the role together.
If colleagues at work want to help but don't want to take on the full responsibility of a being a ULR they can simply agree to help out on occasion or be a point of contact.
If you would like one of BECTU`s learning team to meet local members or speak to a branch meeting please let us know. If you would like us to brief your management team also let us know.
Learning as a work-based issue
There is a famous song whose chorus reads, "it ain`t what you do it`s the way that you do it....that`s what gets results", in a nutshell this is what the trade union organising model is all about. Doing things with members and not for them. Helping members do things and not doing it for them.
Trade unions exist to help resolve individual and collective problems at work and beyond. In an "organising union" , problems are described as issues - this means that they can be resolved through collective activity. Learning and skills are a workplace issue - something that matters to members but which needs some kind of action to get a result.
Please have a look at our document called campaigning as a way to organise. It gives a brief introduction to the key ideas about how to organise local campaigns to achieve desired objectives - and although it is not written with learning in mind, you will see that the ideas and suggestions can be relevant to learning too.