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Working for SERTUC

Ellenor

This is a post I’ve put slightly on the back burner. The environment is new to me so it’s taken some time to form an impression.

I’m working for the South East region TUC, based in the magnificent Congress House, just off of London’s Oxford Street (my first pay packet was spent in my mind at least within about 2 days of being here!)

The building is a marvel of modernist design with a pleasingly solid 50’s type feel, a slightly idiosyncratic layout (for example: 2 separate 3rd floors that don’t connect and must be reached by different lifts!) and cool features such as this guy:

 Congress House Statue

There’s a difference of scale compared to my last job. It’s the difference between having a set of keys to the building or a fancy swipe card thingy and a concierge. Or the difference between a little jar of coins for the office coffee fund and the canteen in the marble hall (It really is called the Marble Hall: How cool is that?)

And Congress House is big! Inside you can find such disparate things as an entire solicitors office, a printing press, an industrial kitchen (for the canteen of course!), and an extremely flashy conference hall.

But what Congress House mainly has is lots and lots of offices containing people at work on extremely interesting things such as mapping the progress of the recession or planning ways to maintain interest in trade unions among the unemployed, or negotiating in major disputes.

If you need to know something: the incidence of employment abuses among home workers say or the effect of the super rich on the wider economy, you can wander down to the publications department and find yourself a report printed right next door in the print room, read it at your desk and, if you’re lucky, chat to the person who wrote or researched it over lunch!

SERTUC is just one tiny piece of what goes on here but there’s still a fair bit to it. The South east region covers London, Kent and East Anglia in the east and stretches as far west as Basingstoke and as far north as Peterborough. 21 million people live here, including 2 million members of affiliated unions.

These are represented by a Regional Council meeting once every three months and an executive committee, elected at the AGM, meeting monthly. So far I have been to both of these meetings, wearing my best gear, smiling and attempting to make myself useful. The most pressing current issues are the threatened closure of the Twinings factory in Hampshire and, of course the ongoing dispute at British Airways but issues such as proposed change to the border of Norfolk and Suffolk were also discussed!

There are also various subgroups and a small staff based in Congress House and made up of: Regional Secretary Megan Dobney, Campaigns and Policy Officer Laurie Heselden, policy officer John Ball, Administrative Secretary Darren Lewis and for 18 months me! Very soon we should also have a manager for the vulnerable workers project who will be my immediate boss.

SERTUC also has a Union Learn department of some 20 people and three branches covering Trade Union Education, Regional Union Learning Centres and Development work.  Some of this stuff, and in particular the work of the Recession and Recovery Unit is pretty interesting so expect to read more about them later.

My previous experience of trade unions has taken me no further than branch level and often not further than my own section. In other words my experience has consisted mostly of sitting about in my own staff room, with my own workmates, running through meetings with the slight self consciousness of people who do that kind of thing only occasionally.

As you can imagine, all of the above is very, very new to me and will take some getting used to. To those readers (do we have readers?) who have been at serious work in the movement for many years, I can only apologise if my tone here is flippant, or blasé or if my observations are just very, very obvious and trite. I am walking around Congress house with the bewildered wide eyed look and irritating keenness of a work experience kid in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I expect we all have some time to wait before this effect wears off.

© Trades Union Congress 2007