The campaign to unionize BHX4 set challenges that the traditional framework for trade union education is not equipped to address. We had to create space for workers to learn and organize. The traditional framework assumes a legal entitlement to paid release in a workplace where the union is recognized. Without recognition and paid release, two issues arise:

• 1. How are the workers going to get the free time to undertake training?

• 2. How are we going to ensure that they are not penalized financially for taking on the role of workplace leader?

We dealt with this by workers taking unpaid leave and paying loss of earnings from union funds. This amounts to a substantial investment by the union, but without it, there would have been no realistic prospect of having the time required to train a group of leaders capable of going head to head with a powerful, well-organized and resourced management in a prolonged struggle.

Underlying the approach we applied at BHX4 is a distinctive philosophy of workers education: the idea that there is no task that workers cannot handle and no problem they cannot solve. This fits with the GMB's longstanding commitment to workers’ control and industrial democracy.

Put briefly, workers’ education is a joint process where workers become aware of their own collective power. This means that the role of educators/organizers is not to tell workers what to think, but simply to get them to analyse the situation they face and work out strategies to deal with that situation.