Information Literacy and Trade unions

Tom Wilson/Julia Jones

Thank you for inviting me. Some of you may be wondering what Trades Unions

have got to do with Information Literacy. I will explain. And I hope to do more

than that, to lay the foundations of an enduring partnership.

My argument is this:

Trades Unions exist to provide their members with a voice. That means

articulating a distinctive view of their work, their workplace and how they see

the wider world. Often it means challenging received wisdom, from employers

or the media or society at large.

In short, Trade Unions help their members to think about information, to

assess what they read or hear or see critically, In other words, to become

information literate.

To put it another way, in the words of your CILIP definition of Information

Literacy, Trade unions help their members to (and this is the definition) “know

when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use

and communicate it in an ethical manner.

Here’s how I will make the case.

First, I want to talk about Trade Union Education, the whole purpose of which

is to help union members to be Information Literate. I will explain what Trade

union Education is and how it works.

Second, I want to explore what the concept of information Literacy adds to our

work. But I will also go on to argue that it may not be enough.

So, first, what is trade Union Education?

It is a story that we are very proud of and an example of Britain leading in

Europe and the World.

You may wonder what is the connection between unions and learning. Plenty

of people think that unions just go on strike and cause trouble. Or you may

think that unions only care about “bread and butter” issues such as pay and

jobs and working conditions.

Not so: Unions care a great deal about learning and they always have done.

In Britain the very earliest Trade Union slogans, from the early days of the 19th

century were: “Educate, Agitate, Organise”.

We care about education for three reasons. First: education, training and

gaining qualifications are the way to a secure well paid job. Second, because

working people are human beings who wish to develop all their potential –for

both personal satisfaction and getting on at work. And third, because unions

rest on basic values about justice, fairness and truth. So we need to be able to

distinguish between poor information and good information; between fake

statistics and genuine figures; between descriptions of reality which are fairy

tales and descriptions of the world that people recognise.

Today, those early Trade union slogans for Education are more important than

ever.

In today’s “knowledge economy” it is essential to gain qualifications.

In today’s workplaces there are often very few opportunities for working

people to develop their personal potential – thousands are stuck in dead end

poor quality jobs.

And despite the apparent bombardment of information, much of it does not

chime with the reality of everyday working lives.

So unions still care a lot about education. And by the way Unions do not just

care about education for their members. Unions are helping everyone in the

workplace and in the community to gain skills – including young people who

are often in acute need of help to get on the ladder to a decent secure job.

So how do we organise Trade union Education?

We have invented an organisation, Unionlearn, which is unique across the

globe and is highly successful.

Unionlearn is based within the Trades Union Congress, or TUC, which is the

club to which British Trade unions belong. The TUC is the oldest Trade union

Federation in the world. It represents almost all the 7 million Trade union

members in Britain.

The TUC set up unionlearn in order to have a new, distinctive organisation. It is

much more than just the Education Department of the TUC.

Unionlearn receives £14M government funding, far more than the £2M it

receives from the TUC. It has 60 staff in London in 6 regional offices in England.

There are similar organisations in Scotland and Wales.

Unionlearn distributes learning grants, totalling £11M and worth an average

£300,000 to 35 Trade unions.

And Unionlearn supports Trade union leaders and Union representatives who

sit on national, regional and local skills bodies deciding on skills policy issues.

We don’t just deliver training to members; we try to influence the national

training system.

Unionlearn supported 240,000 learners in 2013/2014, mostly on short courses.

Over the past 10 years unionlearn has supported more than 1.5 Million

learners. That’s one and a half million people who were able to learn thanks to

their union. Better able to handle information thanks to their union.

How do we do this and what sort of learning do we do?

The foundation of all this workplace learning is the Union Learning

Representative. These reps have legal rights to negotiate with managers, carry

out skills surveys and help their members.

Unionlearn has trained 30,000 Union Learning Reps. They

• negotiate with managers and employers to improve training;

• work with local colleges to improve training opportunities

• encourage their members to go on courses

• set up workplace learning centres

• Help everyone, inside and outside the workplace.

What sort of learning is involved?

Almost everything. Let’s divide it into three main categories:

First are very informal or non-formal courses. These are very popular with

people who are “rusty” and not very confident. Often they may be people who

did not do well at school or college. So we run courses on cookery or family

history or dance or astronomy or Pilates or healthy eating or book clubs or

history. The aim is to help people rediscover the fun of learning, raise their

confidence, learn how to learn together – and at the same time improve

reading, writing and computer skills. Over half the people doing informal

courses then go on to take more formal courses leading to qualifications.

Second are the formal job related courses which lead to qualifications. These

are usually at level 2 which is roughly what a 16 year old would be expected to

have or level 3 which is the level expected of an 18 year old. However we also

have thousands of members learning at University, on Technician level courses

and on Continuing Professional Development programmes. These job-related

courses are often in aspects of computing, English or Maths, Management and

Leadership, or specific vocational courses such as in retail or hospitality or

customer care or health and safety.

Third are the training programmes run by employers for young people such as

Apprenticeships or Traineeships or work experience programmes. Unions help

to make sure these courses are designed in a way which reflects the real needs

of the learner. Learning reps can help to encourage young people who may be

new to the world of work and need a lot of informal support.

All of this trade union learning is strongly supported by employers. Of course

employers and unions often disagree. Employers don’t always like unions or

the other way round. That’s natural. But Learning is different. Learning is a

“win win” situation. Employers and unions both want to increase skills.

Employers don’t want to pay for training if they can avoid it so they often

argue with government about who should pay but that’s a different story.

All of this evidence on Unionlearn’s impact has been evidenced by researchers

from Leeds University. They asked over 400 employers who were all involved

with union learning. The employers were large and small; between them they

employed over 1 Million workers. The results are impressive:

• 87% of employers wanted the unions’ learning activity to continue

• 91% thought unions should do more on learning

• 53% said it had the great additional benefit of improving levels of trust

• 52% said it also improved morale

• 88% of employers gave support in cash, not just warm words, and paid

for time off to learn

• 78% said they were investing more money in learning as a result of their

work with their unions

• And 55% of employers said their employees had gained new

qualifications

In terms of Information Literacy, what this shows is that most employers want

their employees to be highly literate; comfortable handling data, able to

communicate, listen and work in teams. Some of that may be counter intuitive.

You may think that employers would prefer to keep their employees in the

dark and that unions have to fight to get at accurate information. Sometimes

that is true but not often. Few employers would survive these days with such

Neanderthal views. Employers need their employees to be better educated

and better at handling information.

Unionlearn has collected a list of almost 3,000 UK employers who work with

their unions on learning and are glad to support union learning. We have

dozens of warm “testimonials” from employers including a speech from the

head of the main employers’ federation – the CBI – which he recently gave to

the annual TUC conference where he said “union learning is the best thing that

unions do and deserves strong support”.

The new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, said the same when

he spoke to last year’s TUC Congress, praising the work of unionlearn as a

boost to the UK economy.

So why is this success story?

Let me ask you a question. Would you admit problems about understanding

work to your manager? If you were not great at reading or numeracy would

you tell your employer? If you were faced with a new task and not confident

you had the skills would you feel comfortable telling your boss?

Probably not.

Now imagine you are in a precarious, low paid job, on a short term contract –

you would be even less likely to admit any skill needs.

But you would feel more comfortable talking to someone you trusted,

someone like you, who would understand and sympathise – your union

learning rep.

Good employers and managers know this. They know they have a problem if

they don’t know their employees’ skills and knowledge. All the surveys in the

world will not tell the truth if employees are worried that confessing they don’t

understand things might cost them their job.

That is where the union Learning rep comes in. They can talk to the manager.

They can explain what their members’ skill needs are – without breaching

confidences.

Good managers welcome this. They want to know how to help. The union

Learning rep can quickly build up a level of trust. There is a shared interest in

improving information literacy.

Union Learning reps can help design courses that suit employee’s needs and

circumstances. It’s usually better to learn at work alongside work colleagues, in

a familiar environment with people you trust.

There is something special about union learning. It is collective. And that helps

motivate people. Without motivation there is no learning. You can lead a

horse to water but you cannot make it drink. It’s the same with learning.

Learners won’t learn unless they want to. Information Literacy cannot be

imposed.

Our experience is that the vast majority of working people do very much want

to learn. But they may not feel comfortable showing it, especially when they

had a poor experience of school or are reluctant to admit skill needs or feel the

employers is providing the wrong kind of training.

Some employers give up and think their employees don’t want to learn.

Wrong. Learners do; – but they need to be involved.

The most common complaint from learners is that “they don’t want to go back

to the classroom” Adult working people do not want to be treated like

children.

That’s why discussion between the union Rep and the employer or manager is

so important.

And it is so important that learning is designed as a collective experience,

building on learners' experience.

Not based on the idea they are empty vessels waiting to be filled with

Information by an expert; instead based on the idea that they are willing

participants who want to learn together and need support and help from a

friendly and trusted figure.

So that’s why Unions are good at learning.

How do we know this? How do we know that this model of learning works

better than normal learning? We have compared union learning courses with

similar courses that don’t involve unions. Employers themselves say that

involving the union has massively improved the take up of training and success

rates.

Of course the figures vary enormously depending on the course or the

employer but in general:

• We find that take up of learning opportunities doubles when unions are

involved

• There is far higher retention throughout the course and fewer people

dropping out

• Pass rates are much higher – typically around 90% rather than 70%

• And people are much more interested in continuing their learning by

going on to further courses.

The Leeds university researchers found that, on average, being in a union

increased the quantity and quality of training by a third, often more.

What does this mean in numbers? What are the metrics for this branch of

information Literacy? Unionlearn itself has an annual budget of almost £18M.

We distribute around £11M in grants to unions and the remainder supports

central and regional activity such as running conferences, training of various

kinds, publications and of course employing our 60 staff.

The grants we give to unions pay for the employment of around 200 union

staff. In addition unions themselves fund about another 100 staff which makes

a total of about 300 union staff engaged on learning. That is about 1 in 10 of all

union staff.

Unionlearn’s £18M budget is made up of £14M from the British government,

£2m from the TUC and a further £2m in other grants and contracts, including

£500K from the EU.

Our research shows that for every £1 of union support, it generates another £6

(often more) from employers. So unionlearn generates at least another £90M

investment in training from employers.

These are just the easily measurable figures. All our research (for example from

the Leeds university study) shows there are much greater additional benefits

which can’t be so easily measured:

• In help to young people and the wider community, for example many

workplace learning centres are open to the public

• In additional benefits to the employers such as lower sickness absence,

lower turnover etc

• In wider benefits to the national economy by promoting and supporting

the importance of learning.

These wider economic benefits explain why the government is happy to

continue providing substantial support. And this from a Conservative led

coalition government which has not naturally been seen as sympathetic to the

trades unions.

So if you need some metrics to demonstrate the value of investing in

information Literacy you need look no further.

When unionlearn began in 2006 there were many sceptics who thought it

would not last.

When the Labour government lost the Election in 2010 there were many who

felt our funding would be cut back as part of the Conservative led coalition

austerity programme.

The sceptics have been proved wrong.

Unionlearn has strong support from Government, from every British political

party, from thousands of employers including all the leading employer bodies,

and from hundreds of community groups.

If you think of union learning as a means of promoting information Literacy in

the workplace that’s not a bad track record.

So: That was part one, a brief outline of Trade Union Learning. Shameless

boasting really but then we are very proud of it.

Part two of my argument is to ask how the concept of information Literacy

helps, what does it add? What does it lack?

Let’s look at the key features of Information Literacy? According to CILIP; the

Chartered institute of Library and information professionals – but I expect you

knew what CILIP stands for – as I said earlier: “Information Literacy is knowing

when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use

and communicate it in an ethical manner"

Having heard my outline I hope you will agree that’s not a bad summary of the

purpose of Trade Union Education. We aim to provide union reps and

members with the skills to evaluate information, to know what information

they may need and where to find it.

Here is an example:

Let's imagine a typical pay bargaining session. The employer or senior

managers will explain all the reasons why, with the greatest regret, it will not

be possible to afford anything more than a pay freeze. Conversely the union

will advance all the reasons why a decent pay rise is perfectly affordable. So

the discussion is about rival kinds of information. Union reps and members

need the skills to examine management's account and find their own,

hopefully more persuasive, information. So it's crucially important that, in the

words of the CILIP definition, they know "when and why they need

information, how to evaluate, use and communicate it.”

Let’s explore that a bit further.

Management do not usually invite their union reps to consider that there may

be another way of looking at things. In pay negotiations the facts presented by

management will be given the status of incontrovertible truths. So the very

first challenge facing the union reps is to identify where information is not, in

fact, the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That’s what we do in

trade union Education. We do exercises based on real negotiations where the

facts presented by management could be looked at in a completely different

way.

For example when universities are considering a pay rise for their staff they will

look at income and expenditure. So we train reps in looking at a balance sheet.

But we also train them to ask questions about other kinds of information. Have

there been changes to VAT or other taxes? Or has capital expenditure been

unusually heavy? Or is income about to rise substantially through fee

increases? And so on. Typically, managers are not keen on union reps

challenging their view of what counts as relevant information. Or at least not

initially. Sometimes they can be all too ready to provide more information if it

backs up their case against a pay rise.

That’s an example of needing to know when and why you need information.

What about evaluating it?

Again we teach that using real bargaining case studies. For example in the

recent discussions on academic pensions (You will notice I am deliberately

choosing university examples) much hinged on actuarial statistics about

longevity and life expectancy. Those are obviously forecasts with varying

degrees of probability. It’s all highly technical stuff but it madea crucial

difference to the outcome. So the pension negotiators needed information and

skills on how to evaluate the information they were given.

Or to take an example from outside academia, there was a major dispute

earlier this year in the NHS. The health unions, led by Unison, took strike action

against the government’s decision not to implement the recommendations of

the NHS Pay review Body. The government argued that 60% of nurses would

be getting a pay rise through incremental progression up the NHS pay scales,

so they restricted the recommended 1% rise just to those stuck at the top of

their scales who would not be getting an increment. Initially the unions sought

to challenge the 60% figure which is obviously a crude and blanket average but

in fact 60% is about right. However what government did not say was that the

NHS is spending £5Bn a year on agency staff who cost about 50% or more than

their permanent equivalent; that £5Bn is about 8% of the entire pay bill.

Reducing the agency bill by just 10% would liberate enough cash to fund the

Review Body recommendations for everyone, whether stuck at the top of the

scale not.

So that was a case of evaluating the information presented to discover that it

was broadly true but was far from being the whole truth. In the end the two

sides managed to negotiate an outcome which the unions accepted. A rare

victory for public sector unions and one which was very largely due to

contending views of what counted as the relevant information.

The bit in the CILIP definition about communicating information in an ethical

manner is just as important. Unions are nothing if not about fairness and

justice. It is vital that union information is seen as straight, direct and clear. Of

course that’s easier said than done. Many years ago there was a famous union

campaign against defence spending and in favour of Health spending. Unions

ran adverts in the national papers, one of which showed a fighter jet launching

a missile against the slogan “Bang goes another kidney unit”. It was certainly

clear and direct but was it straight? Some said it was wrong to present complex

spending issues in such a simplistic way.

Or take another example. A few years ago there was a dispute involving a

company called Gate Gourmet at Heathrow. They prepared airline meals and

employed hundreds of Asian staff, many of whom were women. They were

taken over by a Texan Private equity fund which tried to sack a third of the

staff. The union fought a strong campaign arguing this was an attack on low

paid women workers. That was straight. The nightly pictures on the news

bulletins showed the sari clad women picketing outside the company entrance.

So it was incontrovertible. In the end the company backed down and offered

much better redundancy payments. Part of the union’s campaign was to

present simple clear information. But it was a sophisticated campaign and

relied on the union being seen as a source of ethical information about fairness

and justice for a group of low paid women workers.

The CILIP definition also talks about knowing how to use and communicate

Information. The examples I have just given all include use and

communication. Again, this is something we discuss at length on Trade union

education courses. Union reps can be pretty good at challenging and

evaluating and finding alternative sources of information. They are often very

strong on ethics and principles. But when it comes to using and communicating

information; that’s often a big problem. Union reps can be curiously shy. There

is an unspoken view that putting up a poster on the notice board or sending

round a couple of e-mails should be enough. Eminently rational people often

make the mistake of thinking that the force of reason and evidence is enough.

Alas not so. The medium is often the message. Dominating the media is often

half way to winning the information battle. This is why we place great

emphasis on communication in our trade union education courses.

If you can cast your minds back to the winter of discontent in 1979; that was

an example of unions spectacularly losing the communications battle. It was

hard to contest the lurid and mostly false headlines about the dead lying

unburied and rubbish piling up in the streets.

Fast forward five years to Miners strike and the communication battle was very

different. There was ample coverage on TV, radio and in the print media which

presented the dispute from many different angles. Many of the unions felt

strongly (and still do) that the mainstream channels such as ITV and the BBC

presented a distorted picture which exaggerated the apparent violence on

picket lines and barely covered the case against the pit closures. But, unlike the

winter of discontent 5 years earlier, this time there were also plenty of other

voices, presenting very different information much of it from the unions’ point

of view.

A picture tells a thousand words. Information literacy includes managing

pictorial information. In the Winter of Discontent the images of chaos were

very powerful but pretty much against the union message. In the Miners strike

the images were much more varied. The national Union of Miners produced a

famous poster showing a mounted policeman leaning down to strike a woman

protestor which became an iconic image of violence against the Miners.

Whatever your view of the strike, the information battle was much more

sophisticated and hard fought on both sides.

The national Union of Mineworkers put a lot of effort into fighting this

information battle. They trained their reps in how to identify, evaluate,

challenge and communicate information of all kinds – words, figures and

pictures. They may not have called it Information Literacy but that’s what it

was.

Since then, for the past quarter of a century, Trade union education has been

teaching people the same skills. But there are two main differences today.

First, the country has moved on from the days of pitched battles. Employers

know they have lost before they began if exchanging information becomes a

branch of warfare. Hence their support for our union learning work. Both sides

need the skills of information literacy in order to survive in today’s knowledge

economy. Partnership, dialogue, information sharing and knowing how to

agree to disagree are essential.

Second, the advent of computers and social media has changed the nature and

pace of information beyond recognition. The problem now is not too little but

too much. In Unionlearn the problem is teaching the skills of discarding the

irrelevant; focussing relentlessly on the key issues. That’s not easy when there

are so many seductive side avenues.

So far so good. I have described Trade Union Education, or unionlearn, and the

way it matches the concept of Information Literacy.

Now I want to move on and discuss some of the ways it may not be such a

good match.

You may have seen Made in Dagenham, the film about the famous 1968 strike

among the Ford Sewing machinists. They were employed to make car seat

covers which was a highly skilled job. Yet they were paid much less than the

equivalent skilled rate for jobs that men did.

They enlisted the support of their union, no easy task in those days but the

union stuck by them, and took on the might of the Ford Motor Company. After

a historic struggle which involved the Labour cabinet and Barbara Castle they

won, paving the way for the 1970 Equal Pay Act.

But this was not a strike about different kinds of information, or different uses

of information. This was a strike about completely different values and ways of

looking at the world. The Ford argument was that the company was legally

entitled to pay the women less. The Women’s argument simply said that was

not fair. No amount of information would have made much difference to an

argument that was about opposing values.

Or take another example. In the early twentieth century there was a union

drive to organise the coal industry in America. It ran into problems because

many of the miners were from different backgrounds: Polish, Italian, German

immigrants. It succeeded by tackling that problem head on; famously it ran

under the slogan that it’s not German, Italian or Polish coal; its American coal.

The constitution adopted by the delegates to the very first United Mine

Workers of America Convention in 1890 barred discrimination based on race,

religion or national origin. The UMWA founding fathers clearly recognized the

destructive power of discrimination at a time when racism and ethnic

discrimination were accepted facts in some parts of American culture.

Again, that was a lesson in learning the importance of values.

Trade union Education has always included those kinds of values as an

absolutely central part of union learning.

Does the concept of information Literacy include those kinds of values? It is

certainly right that information should be communicated ethically. But that is

not the same as accepting that values are as important as information.

And there is another problem. Some might say that the concept of Information

Literacy is itself problematic. Does it imply that there is such a thing as an

impartial and objective body of information? On the one hand that is obviously

true. Facts are stubborn things. Unions are nothing if not pragmatic. We do not

tend to go in for metaphysical speculation about the nature of reality.

But on the other hand the history of Trade unionism has been the history of

persuading the powerful to see the world differently. To challenge the version

of reality that is presented as immutable truth.

The early nineteenth century weavers used to read Shelley as they were

working. Having taught themselves to read they would have a copy open

alongside the loom. That was because they knew their world was brutal and

materialistic; they wanted poetry and a vision of a better world.

The early Trade unionists, the chartists and pioneers founded Brass Bands,

Choirs, Allotment Societies, you name it. They founded the working men’s

Institute’s and Mechanics Institutes that have become today’s colleges. All of

that was driven by a thirst to teach themselves and understand the world as

they saw it.

In short they wanted both Bread and Roses. Within Unionlearn we hold fast to

those values and teach both. I am not convinced that the concept of

information Literacy entirely covers the Roses. I would be happy to be proved

wrong.

So, to sum up. I have tried to describe Trade Union Education and the work of

unionlearn. I hope you will agree that it fits very well within the business of

“knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to

evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner".

Information Literacy is a very helpful concept to the extent that it highlights

the importance of being able to manage Information in the fullest sense of the

word. We all need that more than ever in an age when we risk drowning in too

much ill digested information. We fully support your work in raising the profile

of information literacy as an essential 21st century skill.

Where we may part company is the possible implication that there is such a

thing as an impartial body of information. Trade union History shows that

what counts as information has often been hotly contested. Many disputes

have been about unions asserting values against those who would dismiss

values as irrelevant compared to so-called “cold hard facts”.

This is not necessarily a criticism of information Literacy. It cannot possibly

cover everything. It is only sensible to be clear what it does not cover. Whether

you believe in a wider or narrower definition it is certainly an essential skill.

It certainly provides the bread.

But let’s not forget the roses.

Thanks for listening.