"The work that our union learning reps are doing is important stuff right across the country in all sorts of different working environments"
TUC Congress, Brighton
10 September 2008
Thanks to Billy and Frances and Liz and the whole team at the TUC and their friendship and really the amazing work that you and all your reps have achieved over the last few years, and I suppose I've got to say a couple of things that are very political just to remind you about the importance of the power of this. The first thing to say is education is a right, it's a right, and the fact that we still live in a society where there have been people who've been denied that right and access to that right and to make the best of their educational opportunities in the past is something that we should be determined to ensure does not keep happening, and that is a political fight.
You know, we're here in a sense at this Congress and at this meeting as a union movement, and we reflect on the fact that in the end the business of unions and the formation of unions is about - as Nelson Mandela would say - that struggle, that struggle for workers' rights that still goes on, and I was sort of thinking about the history on the way down here in the train and there were six farmers in 1834 that were deported to Australia of all places because they wanted to form a union. Later on the labour movement itself was formed because workers came together to fight a really oppressive industrial heritage in which people were being routinely abused by employers, and that journey, that journey connects us today to those people who created the union movement.
Now as we come up to this modern period and the decision to create a union learning fund, that didn't happen by accident. That happened by union saying that employers were not taking the business of learning and education and empowerment seriously. It was a struggle that led to that fund, a fund that began at £2m and next year will be £22m. So we are part of a great movement, and, you know, I say this and I mean it very passionately, I am here able to articulate to you, able to speak to you because once a upon a time, in my own family, my own mother was given that right by her union to take some courses so that she could have a bit more money to provide for her family. And, you know, she joins that chain of people and there are many in this room, and I've heard the stories and the hundreds, thousands of people that lie behind your work.
People with disabilities empowered for the first time because they have qualifications. Women, single mothers empowered for the first time to provide for their families because they'd taken those steps through maths or English or that Level 2 qualification that they never had before. People arriving in this country making their way, empowered with confidence because finally they can speak English and in so doing not just access better employment within their workplace but join all of us in the English speaking world which is a huge and great opportunity. All of that are part of a movement, and it's bringing power in the end, power to ordinary working people. That's the power of education. The power that my own family felt that brings me here today, and I believe passionately as an MP that I have to be an oracle of that power, spreading that power and ensuring that we have a bigger movement.
So the work that our union learning reps are doing is important stuff right across the country in all sorts of different working environments and look, I've listened to some of the stories, and I know that, you know, some employers are better than others on this journey, that there's still work to be done for employers to understand the importance of being able to provide these courses and possibilities actually in the working environment during time. I was talking about the juggling that singles mums have to do in balancing the ability of raising their kids and doing a course. I was talking about the real juggling for cleaners and dinner ladies in a certain part of the country that they have to do to access those possibilities. On the railways, in different private sector companies, in local authorities, this revolution is taking place, and I'm so proud of it.
You will hear a lot. You'll open the papers, you read a lot. We've just had August so you'll hear about the GCSE results, you'll hear about the A-levels. You don't hear enough about this powerful story. This story about adults who are able to read to their grandchildren for the first time. This story about adults, grown men in their fifties and sixties able to understand the change that they've got back in the pub for the first time. This is a powerful, powerful political story, and it's wonderful that we come here today in Brighton to celebrate that success, to celebrate the power of the unions to effect change for working people, and I'm deeply honoured that it falls to me at this time to be Skills Minister to celebrate you guys and to thank you for all that you are doing. Thank you very much indeed.
