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.