Maria Loves Learning
When she took a job as a warehouse team member
at Wincanton Logistics Corby teenager Maria Tierney knew very
little about unions and what they could do for her. “I didn’t
really hear about learning until a workplace learning centre opened
and I decided to enrol in maths and English,” says Maria, who left
college at 16.
When a post as Union Learning Rep with her
union Unite came up Maria decided to go for it and was elected. “I
decided I wanted to help others get involved. Doing the courses
made me
realise how much I had forgotten and refreshed
me and I thought others could benefit from that too. “In this way
people can still go to work but they can learn at same time – and
when you are learning when you are older you are doing it because
you want to not because you have to.”
Now at just 22 Maria says she loves her ULR
role. “It’s really rewarding. I now meet and talk to a lot of
people that I didn’t know.” Maria and ULR colleagues at Argos have
organised ESOL and literacy and numeracy courses for other
employees and are now hoping to organise IT classes too. For Maria
her ULR role has led to further involvement with her union.
She’s now been elected an equality rep at her
company to progress her work for others. “I’m now hoping to join
the police force and the learning I have done will give me more
confidence in writing. Before this I would never speak to a group.
Now I’m a lot more confident.
“A lot of people leave school without
qualifications and learning gives them the confidence to do
something else, to changes lives,” she adds.
