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Organising in green field sectors must be driven by vision and enthusiasm but to be effective it has to be focused, prepared and planned with realistic targets and time lines. In new unorganised sectors in India, including the private finance and insurance, Commerce, logistics and mobile phones there is no tradition of organising into unions. As J.S.R. Prasad, the National Director of UNIDOC in India said the tradition of organising has really been lost and now has to be recreated. He was concluding a two day training course for organisers in these new sectors together with representatives of UNITES, the union for IT professionals in India and of the Decisions for Life, a project promoting the organising of women workers, which took place in Bangalore, 12/13 October, 2009.



Some twenty organisers, some only on the job for days or weeks were taken through the whole gamut of organising topics from 'Why do we organise?' through mapping and techniques for organising, reporting and recording work, right up to registering a new trade union. Registering a trade union is perhaps not a normal topic in many countries but the UNI programme in India is trying to create unions where none have existed up to now. It is not just trying to recruit members to existing unions but to get workers to create their own unions. N.R.Hegde, Director UNIdoc, Bangalore, spoke on this topic with his normal inspiration and humour.



The rest of the seminar it was really dominated by the participants and the young group leaders.



There is a mountain to climb but these new young (and some older but new to the job) organisers are capable of getting there. At the end of the training a lot of devoted to the organisers from the different sectors setting out campaign plans with realistic targets and objectives and timelines. These plans are the launch pad for the work for the next few months.



We need to quickly multiply the number of people with real organising skills. The course was planned, programmed and largely run by Anjali Sinha, Director of UNIdoc, Delhi and A. Gaurav, national coordinator for the UNIcom, the commerce sector union building programme being sponsored by BBTK/SETCA of Belgium, a UNI affiliate in Belgium. Both the course coordinators have recently benefited from training in organising techniques and planning offered by UNI's affiliate in the USA, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, UFCW.



And it showed.



This was the first time they had the chance to put their experience into practice. They succeeded beyond what could have been expected. And it was appreciated by all. Anjali Sinha ended up being named the 'Guru Mater,' the guru mother of the group. Not a title she was looking for but it was a complement for work well done.



'By next year we want to see, the organisers trained here, able to organise the same kind of training for new organisers. If we can do that UNI will be well down the road to recreating an organising tradition that works and to multiplying the number of organisers to take the work forward,' concluded UNI DGS Philip Bowyer.



Around the training course opportunities were also created to, meet members of the newly created unions in the German multinational retailer Metro. An informal meeting, forum was held which brought together contacts in companies such as Vodaphone, Airtel and other mobile phone companies, Metro, Big Bazaar, various financial institutions and DHL as well as representatives of UNI’s affiliates ARTEE in the media sector and the AISBSA.