On the road

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 14:06

Apologies for not blogging for the last couple of days, I’ve been on the road and hardly seemed to have had a spare minute. It’s been a great few days. I’ve been travelling the country with Liz McElroy, from the AFL-CIO (equivalent to our TUC), and Lindsay Patterson, from the United Steelworkers of America. Searchlight and TULO have brought these trade unionists over to share their experiences of organising US trade unionists during the recent Presidential elections.

It’s been a real insight. Of course, organising is organising and we share many of the same experiences and hurdles, but it is clear that there is much more focus on engaging union members directly in the US.

On Saturday we held an organising day school in Birmingham. It was attended by over 80 people, which was great given the bad weather we have had of late. Sunday was a day off, so I took them around Liverpool. As usual it is only when I am showing people around that I actually get to see many of the sights myself. We went to the Slavery museum and then did the Beatles pub tour. Monday saw us in Manchester, where we addressed 30 key Unison organisers and branch officers. We were joined by Dan from Blue State Digital, who gave his own presentation about the online campaign. Yesterday we were in Leeds, where we did a meeting at the offices of Yorkshire TUC.

We are back in London today. I’m actually on my way to Wimbledon, to the headquarters of the GMB. Later today we are meeting up with Unite the Union.

I’ll write more about what Liz and Lindsay have been saying in due course, but suffice to say it is giving me, and I think everyone who meets them, real food for thought.