Celebrating a Decade of Service to Workers Education

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• Celebrating a Decade of Service to Workers
  Education

www.ditsela.org.za
Presentation to the Parliamentary Portfolio
Committee on Labour 1 September 2006 Gino
Govender Executive Director
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Presentation Headlines

• Part One
• Origins of DITSELA
• Our Structure
• Strategic Objectives of Ditsela
• How we work
• Programme Overview
• Part Two
• Achievements
• Ten key Challenges MPs must embrace
• Conclusions

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Ditselas Origins

• Product of a labour strategy in the 90s to build
  a national integrated trade union education and
  training system (NIETS)
• Create an institute outside of formal union
  bureaucracy that
• strives to be a responsive, innovative and
  democratic learning organisation with a clear
  working class bias that contributes to building a
  strong trade union movement (the Ditsela
  Vision)
• Seek recognition by the new democratic state for
  trade unions as providers of workers education
  and the contribution it makes in
• strengthening worker participation to promote
  political, industrial and workplace democracy
• Strengthening workers intellectual and organising
  capacity
• building and maintaining a strong, vibrant labour
  movement in SA
• promoting the importance of workers education
• Publicly launched on 29th November 1996

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Governance Structure

• Registered as not for profit Section 21
  association with Articles and a Memorandum of
  Association
• National Governing Board of Directors formally
  appointed by the Executive Committees of Cosatu
  and Fedusa (member federations)
• Additional Directors appointed by virtue of
  specialist knowledge
• Guided by the relevant principles of the PFM Act
  and the King Report on good governance as a
  work-in-progress
• Staff of 18 in Johannesburg 2 in Cape Town and
  work with external contracted facilitators with
  knowledge of the labour movement
• Ditsela Western Cape is housed at UWC and is
  managed by an Advisory Committee comprising
  members from Cosatu, Fedusa and Nactu and
  unaffiliated unions

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Funding
Expected Income Amount (R)
DoL SCSF 7 234 043
DoL NSF 3 583 673
FNV (Netherlands) 487 500
DGB (Germany) 527 850
Union Course Fees 72 000
Total 11 905 066
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DITSELAs Core business

• To be a worker education centre that offers
  dynamic, vibrant, critical and inspiring
  education that engages the challenges facing
  working people
• To deliver comprehensive and responsive
  programmes that are at the cutting edge in
  trade union education
• To support in developing organisational capacity
  for federations and unions to deliver their own
  education provision
• To maintain an open space for critical
  reflection and engagement within our programmes
• To promote a culture of democratic debate and
  respect for workers across union lines
• To encourage through practice a plough back of
  learning and reinforce collective learning
• To engage in a dynamic approach to assessing the
  needs of our constituency regularly.

Our understanding of Building Organisational
Capacity?. A continuous process by which
members, leadership and staff develop abilities
(individually and collectively) to perform
functions, solve problems and set and achieve
objectives

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Ditselas Model of Education Provision
NEEDS ANALYSIS
DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
MONITORING EVALUATION
IMPLEMENTATION DELIVERY
A learning organisation as part of building a
workers education movement..what adult
education theorists call the social mobilisation
model
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Planning for 2006 and beyond

• An integrated planning process involving Cosatu,
  FEDUSA, the Department of Labour and Ditselas
  Governing Structure
• Final Draft Programme adopted by the Ditsela
  Board on 4 November
• Three-Year Project Proposal submitted to DoL
• Approximately 3500 direct beneficiaries of the
  2006 programme
• Poised for growth and expanded programme delivery
  at national and provincial level
• Will undertake organisational review on the eve
  of our 10th Anniversary and reposition the
  organisation for the coming decade
• Currently planning for 2007 and beyond

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National Programme

• Communication
• School
• Report writing
• Handling the Media
• Creative Effective Writing

• Administrator
• Development
• School
• Intro to trade unions
• Intro to Labour Law

• Organisational Dev and
• Management
• School
• Financial Management
• Project Design Management
• OD Theory and Practice

New
New
Information and Communication Technology
Courses integrated in every school

• DANLEP certified with Wits
• and UCT (5 Teaching Blocks)
• Advanced Labour Law
• Advanced Women Leadership
• Advanced Organisers
• Advanced Educators
• Leading and Managing TUs
• Annual Graduation Ceremony

New
Health and Safety
New
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Provincial Programme

• Western Cape Modular
• Programme
• Intro to Political Economy
• Writing Skills
• Dismissals and Grievances
• Leadership Foundation
• Workplace Re-organisation
• Womens Leadership
• Arbitration Skills
• Using E-mail and Internet
• HIV/AIDS in the Workplace
• Educator Skills

• WC Comp Courses
• Political Economy
• Labour Law
• Workplace Re-org

• Provincial Schools
• Limpopo N West
• Dismissals Disputes
• Work Re-organisation
• Intro to Political Economy
• Negotiations Skills
• Introduction to Computers

• Special Project
• Tackling Racism in
• the workplace

New
2 WC Rural Schools

• Provincial Educator Development
• Mpumalanga
• Eastern Cape

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Support Programme
To provide needs-based dedicated and innovative
support work and projects for trade unions

• Fedusa Projects
• Media training
• Strategic Bargaining
• How to Use the CCMA
• Policy Development linked to merger
• Sexual Harassment
• Shop Stewards Train the Trainer

• Cosatu Projects
• Shop Stewards Train the Trainer
• Leadership Development
• Office Bearers Development
• Funding Workshop
• Organiser Development
• Administrator Development

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Specialised Tailor-made Support

• Needs Assessment of new Stewards in the security
  industry
• Strategic Education Plans for the Communication
  Workers Union
• Policy development and Leadership Training for
  the SADNU
• Facilitators Skills for NUMSA
• Developing a programme to organise farmworkers
• Leadership Development for NATU
• Developing an education strategy for the
  newly-formed Creative Workers Union of SA
• Roll-out of shop stewards facilitator programmes
  and materials for Fedusa and Cosatu
• Facilitation and support for the Inter-Federation
  Conference on Trade Union Qualification

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Ditsela Networks forums for sharing ideas and
experiences

• Educators
• Organisational Development
• Legal Officers
• Health and Safety Officers

New
New
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Information, Research and Development

• Production in the Siyakhana Booklet Series
  Organising Successful Meetings
• Evaluation of the Mpumalanga Provincial Educators
  Pilot Project and drawing on the lessons for
  further shop steward education activists
• Cosatu Education Review and Educator Needs
  Survey
• Conducting an analysis of workers education needs
  in rural Western Cape in order for Ditsela to
  develop an appropriate holistic delivery strategy
  beyond just a parachute in approach
• Identifying training needs for our Provincial
  Schools
• DANLEP Graduates Tracer Study Where are they
  now?
• Maintain and update our Resource Centre

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The Educators Conference 27-30 November

• Approximately 150 local and international
  delegates
• Meets under the theme Celebrate, Consolidate,
  Innovate
• 29th open session (150 additional delegates) to
  celebrate 10th Anniversary under the theme
  Celebrating a Decade of Service to Workers
  Education
• Minister of Labour scheduled to deliver the
  anniversary keynote address to delegates and
  guests.

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International Collaboration

• Recently signed MoU with Michael Imadou Institute
  of Nigeria
• On-going co-operation, exchanges and training
  programmes for the national trade union centres
  in Ghana and Nigeria
• Collaboration with several global trade union
  federations
• Development of popular education materials for
  the global mining and maritime solidarity
  project
• Co-facilitation of leadership skills for the
  Southern African Trade Union Leadership Academy
• Support towards the development of the Swaziland
  Labour Academy
• Hosting discussions on workers education with
  several international delegations visiting our
  country

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Ditsela Today Achievements noted on the eve of
our 10th Anniversary

• This unique institute has survived the challenges
  in the first decade of the new SA whilst
  pioneering important areas and approaches to
  union education
• Has shown steady growth from a start up budget of
  less than R500 000 to a current one in excess of
  R11m
• To date approximately 24 000 union leaders and
  officials representing tens of thousands of
  members have benefited from our programmes
• Remains the leading education, training and
  support services provider to the SA labour
  movement
• Seen as a vital asset by those associated with
  and committed to the labour movement nationally
• Workers education in SA is expanding and new
  frontiers are being explored to make more use of
  low-cost mass education including e-learning
  opportunities for shop stewards
• After several months of negotiations will be
  signing a Co-operation Agreement with the CCMA on
  education and training on 8 September.

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Ten Key Challenges we need to embrace and grapple
with

• The rapidly changing profile of traditional work
  through business re-engineering such as
  outsourcing, casualisation, contract and agency
  labour and its impact on union organisation and
  density
• Workers education needs for productive employment
  and active citizenship are huge and diverse
  ranging from basic to advanced education
• Current resource allocation must be substantially
  increased
• State funding for union education programmes is
  drop in the lake when compared to what subsidies
  and tax incentives employers receive from
  taxpayers
• All unions without exception are serious about
  empowering members but resources for education
  will always remain scarce in the face of meeting
  other pressing needs of workers

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Challenges cont

• Whilst some companies HR managers realise the
  importance of workers education and good
  industrial relations our studies show they are
  exceptions rather than the rule the social
  objectives of the LRA go largely ignored
• Core ILO labour standards enshrined in SA
  legislation still remains elusive to a very large
  section of the workforce more workers are
  becoming vulnerable to unfair labour practices
• Despite positive legislation to promote skills
  development we need to challenge the old
  conservative thinking of education as mere cost
  and rather than an investment in people
  development
• We need to review the current ET system and the
  extent to which it promotes important worker
  education issues such as access (including to
  higher education institutes), recognition of
  prior learning, equity, portability of skills,
  union education etc
• ILO Convention 140 on Workers Rights to Paid
  Education and Training Leave needs to be ratified
  by the government and translated into law

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Conclusion

• Workers and their trade unions have played and
  will continue to make an enormous contribution to
  society
• Despite the legacy of Apartheid education,
  workers education empowers workers for the
  variety of roles they play- as parents, leaders
  in the workplace and community, politics etc
• Look around (even here in parliament) and you
  will find graduates of the South African Workers
  University
• Workers education remains the life blood of
  democracy in the workplace, industry, society and
  statutory institutions of tripartite social
  dialogue
• Our democracy owes its survival not just to high
  profile union leaders but also to the thousands
  of unsung volunteer heroes and heroines who
  simply get on with servicing the needs of their
  members daily
• Our society must recognise and value the role
  workers and workers education play
• So long may DITSELA and workers education in SA
  continue to grow and be expanded.
• On behalf of our constituency A Big Thank You to
  the Chairperson and members of the Committee, the
  Department of Labour for their continued moral
  and financial support