YUFA
External
CLC National Labour Education Conference Report
Ottawa, November 30-December 3, 2006
by Carla Lipsig-Mumme, Social Science, Faculty of Arts, York University
16 Feb 07 - The Conference focused on literacy and popular education and inclusiveness in union work, and less on labour education. It began with a Forum on Literacy on November 30 (I arrived December 1), held two days of Workshops, and ended with a Plenary on the morning of December 3. About 150 people attended, from all over the country and from a wide range of unions. The language of work was essentially English with good simultaneous translation. There was a sizeable group of francophones from the Maritimes and Quebec. A number of unions and associations attended as observers, including the CSQ. Observers were fully integrated into the proceedings.
The material was aimed at mid-working-life members in blue collar jobs with some or completed high school education. The written material from the Conference is submitted with this report.
Popular education was the organising tool for the conference, and the theme was inclusiveness. The focus was therefore inward on two levels. First, the focus turned inward towards people who are already members, and already interested in union work. Second, it turned inward, towards a critical examination of the contemporary culture and practice of trade union life: power, hierarchy, gendered barriers, ways of speaking, etc.
No link between education and organising was developed. While the dominant themes included deepening awareness of the causes of discrimination, self-awareness of one’s own racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, etc., and revising union practice in function, almost nothing was said about young workers and their absence from the conference, their inactivity in the movement as a whole, until the closing Plenary.
Further questions:
- How broadly useful is popular education in organising, mobilising and socialising workers and union members? I found it useful, but the usefulness was perhaps not as great as the organisers presented, particularly in a university setting.
- With the focus on popular education, political and critical content was underplayed. Would this be useful for YUFA?
- The central premise was that consciousness raising among union members via popular education was necessarily a step towards deepening their critical faculties and mobilisation as unionists. Does extended focusing ‘inward’: on those who are already members , also contribute to the organising of new members? In other words, is popular education in unions, ironically, the training of an already-recruited vanguard?
- The relative neglect of the importance of recruitment of ‘the next working class’, the young, was extremely important.
- How useful is popular education for white collar workers with education beyond high school?
- Networking was great, and important, for everyone.
Goals of the conference
In her opening speech, Barb Byers of the CLC outlined these goals:
- Building clarity and depth in understanding the uses of popular education for labour education
- Encouraging people to bring popular education back to their workplaces
- Spreading understanding about the role of literacy
- Learning to use popular education for union growth, inclusiveness, political power
Conference structure
Day 1: National Literacy Forum, Welcome and Opening Plenary
- National Literacy Forum: I had not yet arrived
- Welcome and Opening Plenary: Barb Byers, Canadian Labour Congress
Day 2 and 3: Workshops, Union caucuses
- Workshops had about 20 participants each. I participated in the bilingual workshop.
- Each workshop stayed together for two days of work
a. Goal was to introduce and train participants in popular education techniques and vision/ideology:
b. Began with a ‘contract’ for clear language use during the workshop
c. The ideas of Paolo Freire were lightly introduced.
d. Popular education is more technique and less content:
§ It aims to develop sensitivity about exclusions and discrimination, as well as the systemic reasons for these
§ It believes that becoming conscious of racism and sexism and agism will lead, for the individual, to correcting their own attitudes.
§ It looks inward to the individual’s prejudices, and seeks explanations outward, from the inequalities and exploitation of wider capitalist society
e. The question of the link between union education and popular education was raised repeatedly, but no satisfying answers emerged. I think that union education is both oriented towards pragmatic learning of tools for union work, and conceptual work around the structural and political sources of exploitation and inequality. In other words, more content and less technique.
- The Workshop used simultaneous translation and there were two facilitators
f. Alternated in leading an exercise
g. Each wrote in one language, so that all material, even the spontaneous, appeared simultaneously in both languages on the board.
h. The linguistic ease between bilingual francophones (with one or two exceptions) and mostly unilingual anglophones (with a few exceptions), was remarkable: a CLC meeting could not have made a success of this even 5 years ago.
i. An active workshop: small group work produced drawings, answered questions about written material, drew on personal experience, mimed, learned to use the Spiral.
j. Workshop resource material
- Worksheet 1: An exercise in clear language
- Worksheet 2: Union building and labour education: small group discussion of: what is the role of union education in your local?
- Worksheet 3: Learning for action
o Educating for Change (Handout 3)
o A complex diagramme of factors undermining union participation
o Handout 4: Comparing adult education and popular education
o Handout 5: What’s the difference? (Adult education and popular education)
o The Spiral: an omnipresent diagrammatic union tool, which begins from the experience of participants, moves to theorising, developing a strategy, and carrying out the strategy. Considered important to skip no steps. A kind of bible of group work-to-action in the popular education school.
o Worksheet 4: Vision exercise
o Group work to discuss the future of the union movement, directed by text with bullet points: mobilise; train; recruit; form. Some participants disliked the word ‘recruit’, as it seemed too martial.
o Handout 6: The Triangle of Power. Yet little examination of the social determinants of inequality, and no exploration of institutions and actors in Canada.
o Worksheet 5: Triangle of Oppression
o Task sheet 6:Equality in union action. Here we worked, in small groups, on barriers, how to demolish barriers, etc.
o Task sheet 7: Political action scenarios. Active working through of several scenarios: tension within a campaign coalition; calls for solidarity; how to work together; speaking to members.
o Worksheet 8: Action Plan.
o 6 straightforward questions about what we will do differently when we return home.
Day 4: Regional caucuses, Closing Plenary
The morning Ontario caucus discussed a range of ideas about linking to work together. Some were already in play, others were canvassed. Nothing concrete was planned by the caucus as a group, although individuals linked up.
We might consider becoming involved with the Labour Educators Network (a new one), animated by JoJo Geronimo of the Labour Education Centre.
In the Plenary, speakers from the floor finally mentioned the conference’s neglect of the issues surrounding recruitment and representation of young workers. Some criticism was presented about the unions’ unwillingness to open to young workers.
What can YUFA use?
- Contacts
- Popular education techniques, in some measure and in some circumstances
- But popular education may not be the most appropriate for educated white collar workers. It can, however, be adapted and integrated with other approaches.
Other Reports from this Conference:
Joan Allen