Unionlearn in the West Midlands helps Upskill a Workforce Facing Redundancy

Polestar is one of Europe’s leading independent printing companies. They produce 42 million magazines and supplements weekly and  specialise in printing magazines, brochures, catalogues and colour supplements. It also prints well known publications such as the Radio Times.

The printing industry has been very vulnerable to market and technological changes in recent times.
Darrin Steven’s, Polestar’s group training Director, set up the innovative Evolve training project with Unite the union and Leeds College 18 months ago, to make sure that Polestar and its employees can keep its competitive edge in the market.

Darrin  said “Training in the workplace is vital for the survival of British industry- we must give people the skills they need to be competitive in the global market. Its fundamental to the success of the business that the union, college and company work together in partnership for the common good" .

Varnicote in Pershore, Worcestershire is part of the Polestar print group. It has suffered 3 rounds of redundancies in the last 18 months, due to the recession and changes in the industry.  The first redundancies took place when its subsidiary, Newspac closed about a year ago, and due to shrinking business, 40 redundancies were announced in November.

With the help of Anne-Marie Hanna from Unionlearn and Unite’s project worker Ian Bayford, they set up a learning centre in July 2009 inside the Pershore factory. A unionlearn project enabled the company to access funding for the learning centre through Advantage West Midlands (AWM) the West Midland’s regional development agency.

Unite’s 2 Union Learning Reps, Kevin Gillespie and Martin Mcnally, help to recruit and support the workforce onto the range of qualifications on offer through a partnership with Leeds College.

 At a recent awards ceremony, 26 members of staff were presented with certificates in NVQ level 3 in management, 5 achieved the IOSH managing safely qualification and a further 5 staff are on an adult apprenticeship programme in engineering, maintenance and print finishing.

Currently, over a 130 employees are studying for a variety of qualifications; which include NVQ’s at level 2 and 3 in

• performing manufacturing operations
• business improvement techniques,
• business administration
• team leaders
• line manager

31% of the workforce are now learning at work and studying in a mixture of company and their own time.

The union and managers know that to stay in employment, whether at Polestar or another company, employees will need to upgrade skills to keep abreast of new developments and be ready for the recovery. Chris Stott, Evolve project manager says that “Union Learning Reps are vital for the company’s training initiative to be successful. The skills that staff are aquiring are transferable and will improve their job prospects at Polestar, the wider print industry and in other employement sectors".  

 Ian Bayford, Unite project worker says “"This has shown another facet of the trade union movement and the support it can give to  this innovative approach to learning and skills. The learning project at Polestar has changed the management’s perception of the union and enabled them to communicate better on other matters".