This doesn’t reflect particularly badly on me.  According to everyone I’ve asked, this is normal for project work.

A lot of the early period has been taken up with mapping and then with planning and then finally with getting permission to put the plans into action. At regional level in the TUC  permission takes time. You ask your own manager, then a regional  secretary of an affiliated union and then a union branch.  You either do all this before getting near any workers or you build up contacts with workers in parallel and take the risk that this work will be wasted time if permission is refused.

All this stuff is important and especially so for me! I arrived here with no contacts and no reputation to draw on which poses obvious problems for an organiser.  Organising is essentially the art of getting other people to do things. Clearly you can’t get people to do things if you don’t know any  people or if the people you do know have no reason to listen to you!

For me, the mapping period has been an opportunity  to carve out my little foot hold in the movement as much as anything else.

However useful and nessacary this period is however, it is still the case that it doesn’t quite seem like forward motion. You can’t see anything tangible being achieved. You prepare for a plan that is as yet untested. And if you’re like me: you worry that the plan may not work.

It is therefore with great relief and satisfaction that i can now report the following:

Today I began to organise: I phoned people up, contacts i have made, and I asked them to do something, together, for their union. And they agreed.

There it is: Progress is being made. Onwards and Upwards!

Mapping is just what it sounds like: a process of understanding the important features of a workplace or situation: how many people work in this office, or warehouse or industry, how many are union members, who is doing what, with whom and how? What the hell is going on and how could it be improved on?

Since I’ve been given a remit that could easily encompass the entire working class and the area of London, a city of seven and a half million people, the main difficulty presented by this task is where to start and when to end!

Because I had the luxury of writing my own work plan, I left myself a very generous two to three months for this part, got on the phone to anyone and everyone who seemed interesting and started to set up meetings. This is surprisingly easy: any number busy people have found time to talk a newcomer through their terrain and for this I am eternally grateful.

When I think of the readership of this blog I imagine someone like me: perhaps considering applying to the organiser academy, perhaps about to start a placement. I want to be encouraging but I want to be realistic too. So I’ll tell you the truth: There have been moments when I’ve found myself staring at a blank computer screen wondering how to fill my diary or coming back from a meeting  wondering if I’m doing the “right” thing.

You get through it: you look at the contacts you have and the resources in front of you, you get on the phone and you make appointments and talk to people and take notes. Pretty soon filling time isn’t a problem anymore although finding it might be!

You need flat shoes for running about the city, an A to Z and the nerve to talk to a lot of strangers. Apparently in Brazil they call this having a “wooden face.” I would never have known that if it wasn’t for the mapping.

What I’ve found is that generally people are happy to chat and are very helpful. Only very occasionally is someone sarcastic, patronising or clutchy over their knowledge. After a while it’s clicked with me that these are the people who perhaps are not so sure of what they’re doing.

Where people are helpful, I try to cultivate a similarly friendly and open attitude and if possible to do some small favour to show willing: even if this is just passing on a contact or putting them in the direction of some information.

Gradually, gradually, the hopeful little lines on my Gantt chart have begun to look like definite possibilities.

Real things that might get done by real people.

Ditzy mate: “You work at the TUC: whats going on with the aeroplanes then?”

Me: “Oh its not about the strike anymore. Its about the giant volcanic dust cloud”

Ditzy mate: “What?!”

 At this stage I was beginning to think about my work plan and I certainly had some ideas but nothing had been given the go-ahead. I was still trying to get a handle on things, orient myself and work out the parameters of what might or might not be achieved. 

Monday and Tuesday are fairly quiet. I have a little bout of panicky wondering what to do (apparently this happens to all project workers and is normal) then phone calls, emails and facebook. People seem to reply faster and more helpfully to facebook messages for some reason so I try and friend contacts where possible. This is legitimate networking and NOT, repeat NOT time wasting as suspected by certain people in my office (Ok, sometimes it is!) On Tuesday there’s a student meeting at SOAS but we won’t count that because it was only around the corner and I couldn’t find them anyhow!

During this time I also design some flyers for the GMB Equalities conference and send them down to the print room. I don’t really like them because I can’t find any good images so I end up using  naff clip art.

On wednesday things start to pick up a little; I have an appointment with some people in the organising department of PCS. The PCS building is in Clapham and not knowing South London I get a train to Clapham North rather than Clapham Junction and have to find a bus to take me the rest of the way. I get in just in time and am very warmly received.

“Oh it’s great to see an Academy Organiser on the project”

“Really? You realise I’m basically a trainee right?”

We have a very useful discussion on the difficulties of organising contracted out staff, even in workplaces where they already have a presence. The recognition agreement only allows reps facilities time to consult with members working for the same employer. This means that until the contracted out staff have their own rep: they are basically asking activists to take on extra work in their own time. To relieve the pressure somewhat they plan a centralised team to take on casework for a time.

 I then run back to the office to talk to the print room. They can’t get my flyers done for two days, which will be too late because the conference is tomorrow. I am clearly failing to develop the kind of friendly relationship with the print room that can so easily make or break a TUC career. After a brief panic resolve to get in at 8 the next day to run some off on the photocopier.

Then I run over to Hackney to check out a Hackney Unites meeting. Hackney Unites is a pretty impressive project, initiated by Hackney Trades Council and intended to build community cohesion, anti-racism and generally promote progressive stuff. http://hackneyunites.blogspot.com/ The most interesting part of the project from my point of view is their plan for drop in workers advice sessions, feeding into a course in workplace rights and organising. I stick about for a while being quietly impressed, have a quick chat with a few people and arrange follow up meetings then wander up Stoke Newington High Road for the bus home at about 9.30, arriving home soon after 10.

A quick phone call, reveals a good friend, down from Cardiff is drinking in my local. A few beers and a chat later I hit my pillow only to drag myself up about 5 minutes later (That’s what it FELT like!) for early morning photocopying at the office and then onto the train station.

The GMB equalities conference is in Southampton and is an enthusiastic if slightly under attended affair. I needn’t have worried about the printing really. My official business here is to encourage more nominations onto the SERTUC council and committee’s but it’s also a good opportunity to meet and talk to their youth organiser, Rachel Verdin, who puts my gripes about the early morning into perspective by telling me she was up at 4am: 4! One of the participants accuses me of looking like a “demented gnome” because I turn up wearing a jumper with a busy pattern and then stand outside in it with the hood up. I let it go. Then it’s the train home at 10ish and in the front door at midnight.

On Friday I wake up at 8, wanting to do anything else but go to the office. Luckily, in SERTUC world, attending a demonstration is pretty much always a good reason for being out of the office and it just so happens that the English Defence League are in town prompting a small but spirited counter demonstration by Unite against Fascism.

I ring the office explaining that I will be there (The UAF one Obviously!): “Promoting the SERTUC anti fascist strategy” It just so happens my mate from Cardiff is still about and planning much the same thing (minus the promotion of SERTUC) so we team up for a leisurely breakfast and a proper catch up before heading over to Charing Cross. The sun shines down on us as we make our way down Whitehall and I show off slightly about getting paid to do stuff  that I would have done anyway.

The UAF demo is best summed up by this remark overheard by a cop explaining the situation to a passer-by:

“The far right are having a demo and the far left are upset because they can’t do anything about it”

 Not looking good comrades, not good at all.

Still, I give out flyers and I chat. Some old guy in an anorak asks me “Who’s in charge of SERTUC these days?” I explain that Megan Dobney is the Regional Secretary and he says “yes, but who’s in charge, really?” as if he expects me to let him in on some great conspiracy.

Normally of course I’d be happy to help, its just that Megan says if I  betray my secret oath I’ll be  killed and have my tongue buried at a crossroads at midnight and besides, i’m still in my probationary period and i don’t want to rock the boat.

So sorry anorak man, I’ll leave you to it this time. Remember the truth is out there!

Yesterday the  guy in the phone shop wanted to know  if I thought he’d still be able to get to his brothers stag do in Miami. I had no idea of course, its not like they announce updates throughout the building on a tannoy.  

 A whole bunch of journalists are camped outside the main entrance, sometimes until midnight, waiting for some news to happen. I have to push past them to get in and out of work.

This morning Willie Walsh walked past and they all formed a little scrum around him like a flock of camera wielding geese. There is a TV in the canteen and from where I was sitting I could watch events simultaneously in real life and on the screen.

Later on I begin to wonder what would happen if I were to get dressed up in a sharp suit, march out of the front door and make an “announcement.”

“Don’t worry it all sorted out!”

Before I can get any further with this dangerous line of thought, John Ball wanders into the office with the latest news. It seems the talks have broken down.

Too bad phone shop guy, looks like the strike is on.

For the uninitiated this is a way of showing when different parts of a project should be started or finished. It looks a load of lines or boxes on a calendar. If that still doesn’t make sense then I’ll let Wikipedia do the talking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart

 My one shows  the work I plan to carry out for the vulnerable workers project. It started life, over the course of a weekend as a load of post-it notes on a pasting table at my boyfriend’s flat but is now a magnificently eccentric publisher document.

I only understand how eccentric exactly because i ran it past a Gantt Chart aficionado (Fred Grindrod of the Recession and Recovery Team: take a bow!). Still quirky methods are to be expected from the self educated and hopefully everyone who needs to can tell what it means. It’s actually pretty cool to be allowed to plan a project. Planning is not something I’ve ever been asked to do before.

 Initially I was concerned that I would be expected to return from the mountain with tablets of stone to be rigidly pursued no matter what. This led to all sorts of worries that the plan would be “wrong.” How could I hope to produce a plan at all when there is so much I don’t know at this stage?

It’s now been explained to me that of course the plan can change depending on opportunities and setbacks encountered on the way and I have now added set points in the plan for reassessment, if necessary changing things.

At the moment looking at the chart is monumentally reassuring because all that’s down for March and April is “Mapping.” This means scoping out the situation, meeting people, getting to figure out what is generally happening and so on.

When I have occasional (no, make that frequent!) moments of self doubt I can look at it and think that yes, so far all I have done is run about meeting people and chatting to them and yes that’s exactly what I’m meant to be doing. Onwards and Upwards then!

Before you all rush to rip up your union cards, I am happy to report that I am starting to get the hang of things!

The main thing to learn, after locating the toilets and learning how to use the photocopier has been the structure of the SERTUC region, the structure and processes of the affiliated unions and the important personalities within the region.

One of the first tasks I was given was to help build up the Race Relations Committee. This has been hugely useful in orienting me as it has required me to contact the officers of the different unions, learn how their nomination procedures and internal democracy work and then explain these procedures to interested members. This should hold me in good stead for future tasks.

It has also given me the opportunity to get to know my way around the various race relations, black members and equalities substructures in the region, which vary from union to union. I’ve been making contact with these organisations and have a number of invitations to visit meetings so I’m very much looking forward to meeting active members. I’ll be finding out what black and minority ethnic activists are up to across the region and also promoting SERTUC’s activities, in particular the snappily titled ARAFAP.

For the uninitiated this is SERTUC’s Anti Racist Anti Fascist Action Plan.

With the BNP’s steady growth and the startling rise, seemingly out of nowhere of EDL (aficionados of the contemporary cultural history of the football firm can pull me up on this statement: if they must); anyone with eyes in their head can see the urgency of anti fascist activity. Cross union coordination is obviously useful and this is a good example of the kind of situation where SERTUC really adds something to the trade union movement so I’m very pleased to be involved.

 This Saturday is the national conference of Unite Against Fascism which SERTUC supports and which will be held in Congress House. See here fro more info: http://www.uaf.org.uk/news.asp?choice=91217

I will be there on the SERTUC stall promoting ARAFAP and other SERTUC activities and hopefully also getting some new people interested in the Race Relations committee.

This will  be the test of how well I’ve understood all the different structures and procedures as any interested people will have to be signposted to the right person in their own union to talk to!

I’ve even had a go at designing my own leaflet for the event. I’d show you a copy but all attempts at pasting here have failed. Still, I picked up 500 of the little beauties this morning.One email to the copy desk and there they all were just five minutes later. Fantastic! The print room still holds the power to impress!

This story illustrates the effect of London’s houisng crisis on ordinary people but also shows how much can be achieved through solidarity and direct action, even with relatively low amounts of people and resources.

The Batay Ouvriye Haiti Solidarity Network and Miami Autonomy and Solidarity (Miami has a large Haitian community),is also collecting funds for the Haitain union and social movement Batay Ouriye.  Batay Ouriye is a workers and peasants union most well known for their work in the Industrial sweatshops and Free Trade Zones.  Some of Batay Ouvriye’s members have died in the earthquake and many more have been displaced and made homeless. Still others are unemployed as their workplaces have simply been destroyed.

With the IMF reportedly demanding pay freezes and energy price hikes in exchange for help: organisations like Batay Ouriye will be crucial to the fate of the Haitian people in the coming years and must be given every assistance.

Donations can be made  here: https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/811/t/3678/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=5875

For more information on Batay Ouvire your can check out their website here: http://www.batayouvriye.org/English/Welcome.html

For historical background this guardian article here is very good: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/14/haiti-history-earthquake-disaster

For the current situation, check out the facebook group: No Shock Doctrine for Haiti:  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=292737727221&ref=mf

And for anyone who can make it into London on the 3^rd of February Cuba Solidarity are holding a benefit night at Congress House at which you can see Billy Bragg and the Cuban band, Son Mas for a very reasonable £10: http://www.concertforhaiti.co.uk/

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 3^rd floors that don’t connect and must be reached by different lifts!) and cool features such as this guy:

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.

Seeing as I’ll be working on the Vulnerable Workers Project I thought I’d explain a little about what we mean by vulnerable workers and what the trade union movement has been doing about the problem so far.

The TUC’s Commission on Vulnerable Employment (CoVE) defines Vulnerable Work as:

“Precarious work that places people at risk of continuing poverty and injustice resulting from an imbalance of power in the employer-worker relationship.”

If you’ve ever had a minimum or low waged job, particularly through an agency, as a temp or on a zero hour’s contract, working from home or working cash in hand then it’s very likely that you will have been a vulnerable worker.  And you’d be in good company: One in five workers are!

Unsurprisingly enough, the commission found that vulnerable workers were more likely to be women, from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, disabled or migrant workers. This reflects the structural inequalities in society.

More information, including a very informative and readable short report can be found here: http://vulnerableworkers.org.uk/  What particularly struck me about the report were varied and sensitive personal stories which show very starkly the effect that vulnerable working can have on an individual’s well being, mental health and family life.

In the worst case scenario, of course, vulnerable working can cost people their lives; a reality starkly demonstrated by the tragic death of 23 Chinese Cockle pickers at Morecambe Bay in 2004: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Morecambe_Bay_cockling_disaster

By now, the sharper among you will have noted that an “imbalance of power in the employer-worker relationship” is not a  foregone conclusion in any line of work  and that working relationships can be “rebalanced” in favour of the worker if enough people join, and are active in, a trade union.  It will not surprise you, then, that the majority of “vulnerable” work is un-unionised.

CoVE put this down to (among other factors), a failure of trade unions to organise. A particular example is that in workplaces which contract out some aspects of their business, workers who are not directly employed may not be approached to join a union.

There are plenty of good examples of trade unions meeting these challenges. The CoVe short report cites, for example, Unison’s Overseas Nurses Network, the GMB’s project workers who combine organising with ESOL (English as a Second Language) provision and Unite’s involvement with the Justice for Cleaners campaign. This involved organising and negotiation but also demonstrations, media work and a partnership with that mighty powerhouse of community organisation: London Citizens. http://www.londoncitizens.org.uk

I’d also recommend the piece on the GMB’s Polish Workers Branch in Southampton which can be found here: http://www.nosweat.org.uk/node/124 . What I particularly liked about this piece is that it provides a no nonsense account of each step taken towards the eventual formation of the branch, and shows the commitment and work needed to achieve eventual success.

What all these examples have in common is that an innovative and creative approach has been taken, focusing on the difficulties faced by workers and finding practical ways in which the unions can bring collective action to bear on them.

At this point you may well be asking yourself what your humble blogger is proposing to do towards all this great work:

I’ve been put to work on a brand spanking new pilot project funded by the Union Modernisation Fund and run by the South East Region Trades Union Congress (SERTUC). You can check us out here:  http://www.tuc.org.uk/tuc/regions_info_southeast.cfm. A complete plan is in the offing but the intention of the project is improve support for vulnerable workers in London region by working with trade unions branches, community groups and existing networks.

The details will no doubt become clear in time and I’ll fill you in with further info as I have it! In the meantime I find myself busy enough just finding my way around the idiosyncratic Congress House, (my exciting new workplace), meeting people, remembering and failing to remember names and making myself useful (I hope!) around the SERTUC office.

I’m very much looking forward to posting again so stick around for an enlightening and entertaining account of my adventures and misadventures over the coming year!

Ellenor Hutson

She has previously worked as a Welfare Benefits Advisor at Kilburn Citizens Advice Bureau where she was also the union rep for Unite. Ellenor has also been active in the London Coalition Against Poverty, organising in the community around issues of welfare and housing rights.

Ellenor found the selection procedure oddly reminiscent of the Apprentice and X Factor and is amazed and overjoyed to have made it through “the final round” and into the Organiser Academy. She is looking forward to getting stuck into organising Vulnerable Workers in London and feels privileged to have the opportunity to be organising full time.

Ellenor hopes to assist workers to build and maintain strong organisation and to win tangible victories. She would also like to improve her own practice and in particular to learn a more structured and effective approach to organising.

Ellenor lives in London with her housemate and dog. Her favourite food is steak and chips (preferably with a pint) and she is currently expanding her musical tastes with the help of Spotify. Her current new passion is electro-folk band Tunng.