ORGANISING ACADEMY

Since landing here  in SERTUC from planet Not-A-Clue in January I have been keeping myself very busy but often with the nagging impression of achieving  little. 
 This doesn’t reflect particularly badly on me.  According to everyone I’ve asked, this is normal for project work.
A lot of the early period has been taken up with mapping and then with planning and [...]

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Followers of my blog will remember that I have recently put together my project plan and that the first item is mapping.
Mapping is just what it sounds like: a process of understanding the important features of a workplace or situation: how many people work in this office, or warehouse or industry, how many are union [...]

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I had this exact conversation on Sunday:
Ditzy mate: “You work at the TUC: whats going on with the aeroplanes then?”
Me: “Oh its not about the strike anymore. Its about the giant volcanic dust cloud”
Ditzy mate: “What?!”

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 Here’s an example of a working week from around the beginning of March. What I notice about this week, looking back is that it’s a remarkably unstructured.
 At this stage I was beginning to think about my work plan and I certainly had some ideas but nothing had been given the go-ahead. I was still trying [...]

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 One of the cool things about working at Congress House is the sense you have of national events unfolding around you. Just lately, the building’s been hosting the  negotiations around the British Airways dispute.
Yesterday the  guy in the phone shop wanted to know  if I thought he’d still be able to get to his brothers [...]

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Ever heard of a Gantt chart? No neither had I!  But a Gantt chart I was asked for and a Gantt chart I have produced.
For the uninitiated this is a way of showing when different parts of a project should be started or finished. It looks a load of lines or boxes on a calendar. [...]

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Well a month has gone by and it feels about the right time for a little update on my progress. I can picture you all waiting with baited breath.  You will remember  that I had arrived in Congress house, wide eyed and naive with scarcely any knowledge of the strange new world I found myself in, marvelling at [...]

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I thought it might be worth passing on this heartening story about “M” a Haringay mother who was initailly refused council housing but won decent accomadation for her family afer occupying the council offices with just a small group of friends and supporters.  The full story is on the  Haringay Solidarity Group website: http://www.haringey.org.uk/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117:housing-action-success&catid=38:housing&Itemid=57 .

This story illustrates [...]

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We have all been shocked and appalled by the images emerging from Haiti. The TUC is collecting funds for life saving humanitarian aid to be distributed via the trade union movement in Haiti. If you haven’t given already then you can do so here: http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-17424-f0.cfm
The Batay Ouvriye Haiti Solidarity Network and Miami Autonomy and Solidarity [...]

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This is a post I’ve put slightly on the back burner. The environment is new to me so it’s taken some time to form an impression.
I’m working for the South East region TUC, based in the magnificent Congress House, just off of London’s Oxford Street (my first pay packet was spent in my mind at [...]

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