Church "smothers" union education

TRADE union education should be allowed to "stand on its own two feet" without interference from the Catholic church, a labour history conference has heard.

Fresh attempts were being made to "smother" the independent system of trade union education, Mr Jack Gannon, a SIPTU tutor, claimed at a conference organised by the Irish Labour History Society in Dublin on Saturday.

Mr Gannon said when the Catholic Workers' College (CWC) was set up in 1951, the church had hoped to put itself "at the steering wheel" of a collaborative educational project between employers' organisations and trade unions.

Although this policy had been resisted initially, recently, a fresh attempt to have it implemented had partly succeeded. It had been claimed that FAS funding of trade union education was conditional on certification and this could not be obtained without the involvement of the National College of Industrial Relations (NCIR) the successor to the CWC.

However, Mr Gannon said certification was not a requirement for EU funding and the awards' body, the National Council for Educational Awards, was not permitted to be so selective.

Today, unions had only one third representation on the board of the National College of Industrial Relations (NCIR), with employers and the Jesuit order sharing the remaining seats.

Trade union education was burgeoning but the same success could not be attributed to the NCIR, he said.

Management students were well served by bodies such as the Irish Management Institute. There was little history of the church trying to "undermine, infiltrate or replace" management education, said Mr Gannon, who was speaking in a personal capacity.

The real reason for certification, he suggested, had to do with people "eyeing with interest" the financial potential of so many students whose activities had previously only been credited to their trade unions.

A substantial section of the trade union movement now seemed to be "nobbled" by its preoccupation with the educational interests of employers and Jesuits.