TODAY the General Federation of Trade Unions Educational Trust launches its 2024-25 programme at the annual Durham Miners’ Gala. Building on the success of our programme in 2023-24, in this our 125th anniversary year, we’re clear that our mission is to be a place for education for the whole trade union movement.

As we look back at the last few years, with increasing levels of strike action, ballot after ballot “smashing” the anti-union thresholds, we have seen a renewal in our activist base and also a renewed sense of hope across our movement. This is all backed up by a historically strong show of support for trade unions and the action they are taking across society, characterised by the ongoing YouGov tracker polls.

Despite this incredible period for our movement, the most dynamic since the 2011 united front against the cuts to public-sector pensions, as workers and unions across the economy began to extract better offers from various government and private-sector employers, we have seen the acceptance of deals from unions and an ebb in the levels of formal strike action.

What this period demands of our whole movement is to galvanise that workplace rep who has just organised their first picket line, that union member who has just voted in their first strike ballot and translate their engagement into meaningful workplace and employer levels of organisation.

We must provide avenues beyond “national strike or bust” and create a long-term “class struggle” approach to union activity. This can renew our movement, stopping the retreat of organised labour and the decline of union membership. In practice, this means positively agitating for the use of collective action and understanding the power that comes from the threat of action.

Utilising this power we have visibly demonstrates the relevance of unions to workers and the capacity to improve their lives. This requires re-establishing the idea that a proactive union group, taking on the employer, is far more effective than the union group defending against an attack from the boss. That is why in our anniversary year, the General Federation of Trade Unions has re-committed to our founding principles of education, solidarity and unity in action.

For education this has meant developing this year, and even more so in next year’s programme, the balance between rich and connected residential education — which underpins our roles as union activists — and accessible online learning environments. Not creating a dichotomy or favouritism to one delivery style over the other, but providing blended learning which gives workers the chance to improve both theory and practice.

We have listened to our affiliates, education officers from across the movement, and also the feedback from the thousands of workplace representatives who interact with our work, and we have developed a programme which combines the skills our union members, representatives and branch officers need with theoretical discussion on what the point of trade unions are within our society. This includes the important internal assessment of the health of our movement and overcoming cultural and institutional challenges.

Arguably the most exciting, but exclusive, part of our new educational offering for 2024-25 is our Activists’ Academy. Only available as a small pilot for reps from affiliated trade unions, the Activists’ Academy combines a year of high-quality residential/online blended learning approaches, with an established one-to-one union mentor and peer-to-peer network.

The aim of our academy is to break the cycle of the workplace rep that attends a course, goes back to work full of enthusiasm and becomes either bogged down or sidetracked with the challenges of the day job or individual representation.

We believe by using the relational organising approach of a dedicated mentor — to discuss challenges and barriers back at the workplace — with that collective peer group cohort of reps working together in the classroom and beyond, we can provide the antidote to that one-off trade union education experience that we have all had. We will be reviewing the entire work of the academy and will produce a written analysis to understand if it is effective and something we want to roll out more broadly.

This programme is the biggest both in size and breadth that we have ever attempted. Our Strategy Series is an intervention which looks to replace the idea that strategy is just the preserve of senior leaders and bosses, but instead argues that good strategy is key to what gives the workers’ movement the power it needs.

To help generate that discussion, we have invited incredible thinkers from at home and abroad to deliver a series of six interactive webinars that include; Joe Burns (What is Class Struggle Unionism?), Hahrie Han (How do we develop activists?), Grace Blakeley (What is Vulture Capitalism?), Marshall Ganz (Strategic capacity to win campaigns), Bill Fletcher J (Union strategy and the crisis in organised labour), and Alice Martin (Unions’ renewed power in an age of finance). These webinars are not about talking at workers, but about developing conversations on how we renew our movement and stop our steady decline.

Alongside these important discussions for workers, reps and branch officers, we will be launching the Activists’ Corner. Not to be confused with our pilot academy, discussed above, the “corner” is a set of online courses aimed at trade union activists to develop their skills, led mainly by trade union activists, as part of a grassroots approach to activity within our movement. To end the reveal of our new series, we will also be delivering our Solidarity Series, showcasing organisations and campaigns that work closely with the GFTU.

Our newest courses for 2024-2025 include Bargaining and Organising for Neurodiversity. This course will develop union reps' understanding of the issues affecting members and also provide clear strategies and tactics for bargaining with the employer and organising with members.

Another new course for this year is our Bargaining, Organising and Campaigning around AI and data. This will provide a space for discussion on the role of organised labour in progression around the use of tech, data and artificial intelligence (AI).

Not simply amplifying the noise that progress is inevitably on the terms of the employers, with mass redundancies and robots taking our jobs, but exploring the historical nature of change, and actively acknowledging the role and power of organised labour to bargain and organise collectively around these issues.

We have two other exciting developments as part of this year’s programme. We have been successful in securing a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with SOAS (University of London).

This cutting-edge partnership will help us research, design and in the future deliver the best political economy education and training for workers, starting from conversations with workers across the country. We cannot wait to get this started. In addition, after a hugely successful pilot in Scotland, our Women In Leadership course will be a key part of this year’s programme.

As well as the new courses and series highlighted above, Trade Union and Working Class History (in partnership with the Working Class Movement Library and Marx Memorial Library), Bitesize Employment Law (in partnership with the Institute of Employment Rights) and Bitesize Equalities, Tackling Sexual Harassment, Workplace Reps levels 1 and 2, Health and Safety Reps 1 and 2 will all be available too.

Nearly all of our courses are free for GFTU-affiliated organisations, but even if your organisation is not yet a part of us, we will be offering many of the courses mentioned above for free or at minimal cost for all trade unionists.

We are excited to share this programme in its entirety this weekend, and we actively invite you to come and be part of our educational work.

After all, our education is for the whole of our incredible movement.

For more information and to apply for the courses mentioned in this article, please see the GFTU’s educational trust programme for 2024-2025 in full at www.gftuet.org.uk/education.

Henry Fowler is the head of Education, Campaigns and Organising for the General Federation of Trade Unions.