In Brussels today and tommorow for a conference looking at the challenges of organising professional and managerial staff .

I'll be speaking tommorow about the role the TUC Organising Academy has played in helping UK unions, including BALPA, organise professional staff.

While unions in the UK, such as BALPA, Connect and the NUJ have quite successfully developed this area of work, there is still a very clear public/private split - one which reflects a wider challenge for unions in the UK.. Why is it scientists working for central government or univerisites join unions while their counterparts in Proctor and Gamble do not? How can we begin to make unions a natural option for whole layers of managerial and professional staff who have little or no experience of trade unions (never mind 'trade unionism')?

Staff at national betting shop chain, Ladbrokes won two prestigious National Customer Service Awards , - and in the process attracted comment from Community, who are attempting to give Ladbroke's staff a union voice.

'Commenting on the awards, Community Head of Organising, Kevin Pass, said:

"Community is delighted to congratulate the two award winners and Ladbrokes staff as a whole for achieving recognition for their efforts at work. We believe these awards reflect the hard work of Ladbrokes staff to achieve a high level of customer service.

"However, many shop staff earn little more than the minimum wage - a paltry reward for award winning service - while safety concerns, single staffing, and extended opening times are real issues for workers. It's time Ladbrokes recognised the value of their workers with more than words. They should look into some of the key issues being raised by staff and plough back some of their enormous profits into better pay and conditions for the workforce."

You can find out more about Community's campaign here.

Following the US presidential elections the debate about the future of the US labour movement has become more intense.

SEIU president, Andy Stern, recently called on the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to adopt a 10-point plan aimed at revitalising unions in the US. Part of the plan involves merging the 60 or so AFL-CIO affiliated unions into fewer than 20.

With US union density standing at less than 13% - 9% in the private sector - few people disagree about the need for radical change and increased investment in organising and recruitment. What is not so clear is the best way to do this - and the stance taken by the SEIU and the other unions in the 'New Unity Partnership' have come in for criticism from other unions, including the IAM.


You can follow the debate by logging on to Andy Stern's new web-site and blog.

Travelling to Cheltenham this morning to speak at an event organised by the TU studies unit at Gloscat . The event is focussed on how unions can maximise the organising and recruitment potential of the work we are doing around lifelong learning and skills.

This is an area of work unions and the TUC are becoming particularly interested in. A recent TUC report showed that just under 60 per cent of recently surveyed Union Learning Reps thought union membership had increased in their workplace as a result of the work the union had done on learning and skills. Over two-thirds said this sort of work had improved the perception of the union amongst members and non-members, and nearly three-quarters said it had improved union/employer relations.

Met this morning with Paddy Lillis the new USDAW deputy general secretary, to talk about, among other things, the ongoing development of USDAW's Organising Academy.

The second intake of the Academy has just finished - and plans are already in hand to run another intake next year. Effectively the Academy takes reps out of their workplaces for six months and places them on a number of key organising projects, backed up by a pretty intensive training programme.

The Academy is one of the factors behind the fact that USDAW is probably the fastest growing private sector union in UK - achieving increases in its total membership figure every year since 1994. Since 1995, Usdaw's membership has grown by nearly 50,000 (an increase of 17 per cent) - taking the union to over 335,000 members.

USDAW has also been a big supporter of the TUC Organising Academy since its inception in 1998 - and in fact three of this year's TUC Academy graduates were also graduates of the USDAW Academy scheme.

Travelling to Newcastle today for the launch of the TUC's new partnership with Newcastle College to develop and deliver the Organising Academy programme.

Since 1998 the Academy has recruited and trained nearly 200 new union organisers - and the new partnership with Newcastle College will hopefully help to broaden the Academy programme and drive up the numbers of union organisers being trained each year.

My name is Paul Nowak - welcome to my new blog!

I set up the blog following an event held yesterday at the TUC looking at union use of the internet. You can find a related report written by Will Davies at the IPPR here : http://www.tuc.org.uk/organisation/tuc-8993-f0.cfm

This blog is my contribution to bridging the digital divide! I am really interested in how unions can use the internet and new technology not just to keep members informed or deliver services, but - crucially - how we can use it to recruit and organise the next generation of union members.