Organising to win

Unite Education in the London and Eastern region recently set up a training day for reps focusing on organising.

Over 40 Unite reps took part in the “Organising to Win” event, which was held at Unite’s Moreland Street office on May 18.

Mark Boothroyd, chair of Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital branch (pictured below), opened the day with a speech outlining some of the numerous organising campaigns the branch has run along with some of the lessons learnt from his experiences.

There were separate workshops throughout the day, including finding workplace issues, first contact, workplace mapping, identifying leaders, and ‘closing the deal’.

Unite organiser Rachel White (pictured below) told delegates, “This is what we are doing in the organising department, and Unite as a whole. It brings the focus in our union back to organsing, back to building power and back to winning real change for our members.”

Unite rep Athena attended the day and found it very helpful, saying, “A few years after a dispute at my workplace, I wanted to get more involved with essentially just helping workers.”

Sean Collins, Unite senior organiser (pictured below) said, “The main reason behind today is to spread, organise, and to win in the workplace. I hope some of those who turned up and don’t know what organising is can see how we can make change, how we can get the power back in the workplace.”

Sean added, “We felt it was an ideal way to spread the theory and reasoning behind the organising process; an opportunity to show not only reps but members how to organise to win in their workplace, through issue-based campaigning.”

You can watch a special video of the event below:

Unite London and Eastern will be holding another “Organising to Win” session on July 12. This workshop will be online via Zoom and is designed to advance the skills and knowledge of all experienced and newly elected reps and branch officials, so that we can continue to work together to win for our members.

For more information, talk to your branch officers and the Unite London and Eastern Education team.

By Keith Hatch