Reaching the hardest to reach

With the help of the Union Learning Fund, Unite the Union is helping London’s migrant workers and domestic workers overcome barriers to learning and play a bigger role in their communities and workplaces.
Every weekend, 150 workers gather to study IT and take literacy courses with English for Speakers of Other Languages embedded (numeracy courses are just getting underway for the first time)

So successful has the project been, and so positive the word-of-mouth, that Unite has had to move the courses out of its Transport House building into the more spacious surroundings of the nearby Faraday House(the home of Syracuse University’s London Programme), were the learners can spread out over six classrooms, a 30 piece IT suite, and the student lounge.

In addition, the young members section of the Justice for Cleaners campaign (where many of the migrant workers first made contact with the union) runs the workshops for up to 40 young people (mostly children the learners bring with them) on photography, video, art, drama, music, dance, food and Spanish.
Without the backing of the Union Learning Fund, the migrants would have to fall back on the courses run by their employers (and take up has always been low on those courses) or somehow find the money from their minimum wage pay packets to sign up with a local college,

“We couldn’t have achieved any of this without the backing of the Union Learning Fund,” says Unite National Union Learning Organiser Steve Rowlatt.
“The workers themselves couldn’t communicate with their employers or the union around industrial issues, but now they’ve taken the courses, they’ve got a bit more confidence, and they’re taking the agenda forward now”.