European Trade Union Committee for Education

This project aims at supporting the collective capacity of trade unions to address changes in employment and work in the education sector, by increasing solidarity, improving coordination among ETUCE member organisations, and encouraging inclusive participation and actions intended to bring about change. ETUCE relies on the contribution of its internal Advisory Network on Trade Union Renewal to build even stronger and more democratic unions at national level.

• Introduction
• First training workshop
• Second training workshop
• Final conference
• Repository of good practices
• Practical guidelines

Across Europe, cuts in public investment and labour market deregulation, changes in the context and organisation of the work of teachers and education personnel are increasingly challenging the working lives of all workers in education, especially of those that are new to the profession. 

Fixed-term and precarious employment, the erosion of the status and security of teachers, de-professionalisation and lack of professional development opportunities, limited autonomy and influence over curricula and teaching practices, unrewarding working conditions, including low pays in increasingly competitive working environments, and the deterioration of work-life balance are affecting in particular the new, young and female teachers. 

It is no surprise, therefore, that teachers’ worsening working conditions and wellbeing have become a prominent challenge to recruitment and retention in the education sector and to the attractiveness of the teaching profession all over Europe.

In parallel, threats to the working conditions and professional identity of the newly recruited teaching workforce pose particular challenges to education trade unions, whose role is to defend all teachers and education personnel from such attacks, with consequences on membership growth and levels of unionisation among young people. 

In line with the priorities set by the ETUCE Conference 2021, the political and conceptual framework of this project is the ETUCE “Action Plan on Organising and Renewal”. The Action Plan presents a strategy to ensure that all ETUCE member organisations are supported in their efforts to address within their structures issues related to the evolution of the labour market and its impact on job creation and retention in the education sector, with a particular emphasis on youth employment, namely focusing on the link between labour market fragmentation, terms of employment and education. 

During this project, two in-person training sessions are organised to allow a platform for horizontal exchange of good practice among education trade unions, moving from the results of the collection of examples organised by ETUCE around the four political priorities identified by the Action Plan: i.e. mobilising the under-represented; organising around ideas and campaigns; organising around work, community, and society; organising around professional issues. The online repository of good case examples and practices and the Practical Guidelines, translated in several languages, are to be presented at the final conference.