Educational Trustees Meeting

From: Andy Hodder (Birmingham Business School) Sent: 01 May 2018 11:29 To: Doug Nicholls Subject: GFTU follow up

Hi Doug,

It was good to catch up with you again at the Youth Festival in April. Following our discussion, I wanted to get in touch and keep things going. We discussed a number of potential future activities and I’m working on the practicalities of some to get them off the ground.

1) Relaunching Federation News/Viewpoint.

We talked about potentially relaunching this once a year. Having thought about this further, I now believe there is scope for two journals/pieces. The first would be as we discussed, an annual ‘state of trade unionism’ journal that could include contributions by trade unionists and academics. I’d imagine this being similar in length to Federation News, containing 8-10 contributions, including the editorial. This could be then a topical, relevant, e-journal published as a pdf and (hopefully) held on the GFTU website? I can also get links to it through our online pages here at Birmingham. Following the success of the Youth Festival, I think a similar journal/piece could be produced annually specifically for young trade unionists. Again, this would be similar in format (with contributions by trade unionists and academics) but the focus would just be on young people and unions, and would be one way of getting more information about what unions do out there to young people. This could then be publicised by the GFTU and its affiliates etc. Something simple like ‘GFTU Young Members’ would suffice for a title.

I’d be happy to edit both of these, if you think there is scope. I think both of these could get off the ground relatively quickly, too.

2) Event on activism/organising; young people in unions; social media/communication.

We also talked about hosting a workshop type event with academic speakers to participate in the running of sessions on these three topics. I’ve tentatively explored this with the University and there is scope for joint funding. I’ll be exploring this more over the next month and should have a definitive answer if we can get funds. Once I can get confirmation of this, I’ll be able to approach colleagues to assist in participating in the delivery of sessions. I’ve not asked them yet, but people like John Kelly, Mel Simms and Jane Holgate are the kind of people I’m thinking of.

3) Education partnership

You mentioned scoping out the potential for Birmingham to enter into a partnership to offer education/short courses with the GFTU. I’ve discussed this with my Head of Department and others in the School and there may be scope. What sort of courses would you be thinking? If I have a little more info, I can investigate our resources and interest here.

Let me know what you think of the above.

Thanks and best wishes,

Andy