Aircelle at Burnley use Learning
Agenda to Good Effect
For Celebration of Learning Day, the Learner
Rep at Aircelle, Burnley organised a stall at a company event to
promote the union. Aircelle is a large aeronautical engineering
company in Burnley with a workforce of around 800.
Every year both staff and management at
Aircelle host a Dignity at Work event to highlight their commitment
to this. Representatives from a wide range of agencies including
among others Burnley College, McMillan’s, Aircelle Human Resources,
and others also attend. The event was held in the main canteen at
the worksite to make sure that it is accessible to all. The Unite
stall proved immensely popular with a number of applications being
made to join the union.
Although Unite the Union has a very good
presence in the engineering workforce Mick was especially keen to
promote the union to those on the management and staff side and
those employees who worked in the composite rooms where skills and
pay were lower. . He was also keen to recruit new reps, ie
learning and equalities reps from under-represented
groups.
Within Aircelle, there had recently been a
change in the union team. Most of the union rep positions
within the company had been newly elected and Mick was keen to
develop their confidence and skills. Mick, who is also the
convener, had organised that the new union team have lessons in
delivering presentations to give them confidence in their new
role.
Each of the union reps found it empowering
with the result that Mick was filmed giving a presentation on the
benefits of the union, appearing on the company presentation that
was being delivered on a looped screen at the event. Leading on
from the day Mick eventually recruited around 70 new members to the
union. Many of those I believe joined to get the new “star of
Aircelle’s” autograph.
Altogether it was a very good day, well
attended and certainly raised the profile of the union. The newly
elected reps felt confident in meeting existing and potential
members and there is now a good relationship between management and
union with both a learning agreement and committee now in the
pipeline.
Mick Morgan
