Learning to grow

I'm in Washington DC for two days at the moment for meetings with the AFT and the AFL-CIO.

This morning I gave a presentation to the Executive Board of the Albert Shanker Institute about union efforts in the UK to link our work on learning and organising; the key to which is the 12,000 Union Learning Reps that unions have recruited and trained over the last 5 or 6 years.

The Shanker Institute has no real direct counterpart in the UK, which is one reason the TUC is supporting the development of the Union Ideas Network. The aim of the network is to help build sustainable links between unions and supportive academics and policy makers. To sign up to the UIN, which is open to union officers, organisers, activists, academic researchers, policymakers and students, and will be launched in April 2006, click here.