Skills progress will need time off to learn

PRESS RELEASE
Union Learning Takes Off

October 04 2006

Unionlearn director Liz Smith will tomorrow (5th October) address the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) national conference entitled Learning Champions: Opening up Opportunities in the Community and at Work. This is the first national event dedicated to discussing the experiences and work of Learning Champions and will showcase their work, which has resulted in the transformation of lives through learning.

Liz Smith's audience will be a key group of business, education, and training professionals. She will share with them the successes of unionlearn's work with employers and unions in encouraging over 100,000 people into learning.

Liz will speak about learning in the workplace and the increasingly important role of the union learning rep (ULR) and will say:

"Ever since trade unions were established they have seen the workplace not just as a place for equipping workers with skills for the job but providing an opportunity to extend wider learning opportunities to meet the lifelong personal and social needs of the workforce.
"Unions would like to see a statutory entitlement introduced for all employees to paid educational leave. We would also like to see many more learning agreements between unions and employers to help to deliver such an entitlement. That is why we have called for training to become a core bargaining issue in union recognised workplaces- just like pay and conditions.
"The ULR profile is becoming increasingly different than that of the union rep as a whole according to a forthcoming unionlearn ULR survey. Over half of ULRs who have never been a union rep before are women."

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Wanda Wyporska

unionlearn Media Officer
Congress House, Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3LS
T: 020 7079 6950
M: 07795 844 728
F: 020 7079 6921
E: wwyporska@tuc.org.uk
www.unionlearn.org.uk

Trade unions are part of the global campaign for social and economic justice. Show your support by joining the world record attempt to 'stand up against poverty' on 15-16 October and wear your 'white band' on 17 October. For more information, go to www.tuc.org.uk/standup