May’s Trades Council was preoccupied with the breaking news that Blackburn College was expected to announce yet another round of redundancies, and that this time the damage would include the closure of the Trade Union/ Health and Safety Education Centre.
The College subsequently confirmed this: 29 members of staff were declared to be at risk of redundancy because of plans to reduce headcount by 11 (7 full-time equivalent jobs). Trade Union Education would be closed.
Although the College is a public body, and publishes the minutes of its Board meetings, it has a history of being less than transparent. When, for instance, it last declared a tranche of redundancies in December 2018 we noted that one would have been hard pressed to guess this from looking at the minutes of its meetings. The same observation applies this time round. It was, for instance, noted that the “Policy and Resources” committee on the 2nd March received an “explanation of the reasons for the current deficit position being worse than expected” – but these reasons are not explained in the minutes, nor has any explanation been given for the College’s actions other than the very generic ”difficult decisions to maintain the sustainability of the College”.
We might not have much confidence in the College Board, but we would hardly expect them to say anything different.
We appreciate that Government has been undermining Further Education over several years. The IPPR 2018 Report on education spending in England said that spending per student in Further Education had been the big looser over the last 25 years and that it was one of the few educational areas to see real cuts since 2010.
The question that must be raised, however, is one of whether the position at Blackburn can be explained by this alone. Just over a decade ago, Blackburn College was a booming establishment, being rated “outstanding” by OFSTED and with new buildings going up left, right and centre. Now it looks like an organisation in nosedive. It has fallen into, and is struggling to get out of, an OFSTED “requires improvement” rating and staff losses have become an almost annual ritual.
During the 18/19 term the Trades Council secured figures through a Freedom of Information request that showed a 17.8% reduction in the FTE establishment from 14/15 to 18/19. A part of the problem the appeared to be recruitment difficulties in the “University” centre – but we never could pin down if the rest of the College was effectively paying to keep this dream alive.
Did the College expand beyond what it could sustain, or are there other forces at work? Whatever the reasons, being perceived as a failing organisation will not help resolve adverse enrolment trends. The College needs, before anything else can be achieved, to regain the trust and engagement of its staff and to work with them to turn around its fortunes.
The attack upon Trade Union Education also has roots in Government policy.
From the academic year 2016-17 the Skills Funding Agency made Further Education money for Trade Union learning aims subject to the same eligibility rules as applied to other Adult Skills Budget provision. This was a step undoubtedly designed to make Trade Union Education fail, since the very nature of its “market” is that it cannot depend on a steady and predictable volume of throughput. Its educational ecology is niche and one in which there is bound to be variation. It generally operates on such a low resource level that it needs a guaranteed minimum of support to survive – and this can only be calculated on pragmatic, experiential grounds. In Blackburn, we are talking about a couple of tutors, a couple of rooms and relevant technical and administrative support.
The ACAS Guidance on “Rights and Responsibilities at Work” recognises that an employee who is an official of an independent trade union which is recognised by an employer, must be allowed reasonable time off with pay during working hours to undergo training for union duties (as approved by the union or by the Trades Union Congress). That right is meaningless, however, if there is not an accessible provision of Trade Union Education to back it up.
There is already a gross disparity between the support given by Blackburn College to employers and that given to Trade Unions, despite the claim in its Strategic Plan that it is “committed to ensuring the best quality education for all” and aims to be “renowned for partnership work and collaboration that increases the opportunities for different groups of students and helps communities grow and thrive”. We do not think it unreasonable of us to expect some support from our local College for what is a substantial portion of our local community.
Trade Union organisation is fundamentally based on self-reliance. Union representatives and workers traditionally come together to talk about problems and find solutions. This simple activity is the basis for solidarity and unity within a union. But that is not the whole picture. Part of our mission must be for us to be accepted as having a social benefit and for the contribution of our local Trade Union representatives to be considered something respectable and admirable and worth a modicum of public encouragement. And that, essentially, is what is at stake here. We claim our place in the public space.
Trade Union education is not impartial. It is aimed resolutely at the strengthening of workers as they struggle for better working and living conditions. It is education for social and workplace action with its aims set by members or affiliates.
Trade Union education contributes by building involvement and confidence through the development of skills and knowledge, and by providing local representatives with the opportunity to share ideas and experiences in support of policy development and implementation. Unions can use education as a tool to assist in strengthening negotiation, representation, and campaigns.
As Harry Lees put it, in a memorial pamphlet published in 2015 to celebrate the life of Blackburn Trade Union Centre’s founder, Clive Edwards: ”..we were all so much more confident and competent in representing our members, whether this was as Full Time Officers, Works Convenors, Shop Stewards, Health and Safety Stewards and Branch Officers” .
It is particularly inappropriate for Blackburn College to shut the Trade Union/ Health and Safety Education Centre at a time when the knowledge and expertise of trained safety reps has never been so crucial. According to the TUC, “evidence shows that workplaces with union safety reps and joint union-management safety committees have major injury rates less than half of those without” . Unions across sectors have been pressing both government and employers to make maximum use of the skills of safety reps in addressing the issues presented by the current pandemic.
Rather than cutting its training of Trade Union workplace Health and Safety Representatives Blackburn College should, even before now, have been looking at how its Trade Union Education Centre could support the public in this regard.
Unfortunately, being responsive to the local community seems to be a matter of little concern to the College Board. De
It is estimated there are 180,000 Trade Union members in Lancashire, a number that is growing as a proportion of the workforce. Having well trained workplace representatives is fundamental to the welfare not just of these members, but to a wider penumbra of employees also. As Mathew Walters and Laurence Mishel argued in their 2003 paper for the “Economic Policy Institute”, “How Unions Help all Workers”: “Unions have a substantial impact on the compensation and work lives of both unionised and non-unionised workers”.