| Background information on regional education The regional executive, in consultation with the brigade education reps have decided to concentrate our efforts regionally on providing training to branch officials.
We recognised that much of the additional work carried out by brigade officials over the past few years appears to be work that could be dealt with by the branch reps.
If the branch is functioning correctly i.e. good branch committee, correspondence is being opened, notice boards updated and meetings arranged to keep the branch informed, then members will be more inclined to contact their branch rep in the first instance and get involved in political campaigning. But in order for this to happen we must give training and confidence to the branch rep
Many of the day to day queries that brigade officials are undertaking are tasks that branch reps could deal with. With this in mind we developed a one day branch official’s course which was initially trialled in 2004. Since that date we have trained approximately 85 branch reps throughout the region. The one day stage one course has been very sucessful in training the branch officials. It has been modified on several occasions in line with end of course evaluation and discussion.
Our intention is to give branch reps basic training in several areas which will alleviate some of the pressures from brigade officials these include grievances and potential discipline issues in the early stages.
- Basic negotiation at branch level
- Understanding of the grievace procedures
- Form filling and branch admin
- Information on the branch, brigade and national structure of the FBU
- Information and services the FBU have to offer
We also do a useful exercise to counter negative views at branch level from members. All branch officials come away with a branch official’s resource pack which can be used by the branch committee.
A contact list of emails has been collected allowing updates and support to be given through a distribution list. The benefits to this programme are now beginning to show, several of the branch reps who have been trained are either putting themselves forward for different courses or undertaking brigade official roles. Taking into consideration requests made from members and officials we have now drawn up an education plan for 2008.
The regional executive oversees the education programme. The regional secretary is currently acting as the regional education rep. Most of the courses are now held at our new office in Nottingham. There is also a brigade education rep in all 5 brigades in the region, they act as a distribution point to branches and at Brigade Committees. Overall interest with education within the region is increasing, in particular, the branch official’s courses which are now proving very popular.
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