Millions of people still struggle to use their smartphones for more than making phone calls. Which makes life very difficult when they need to find a job. That’s why Community’s ULF project is so crucial for members like Stuart Clarke.
Anyone being made redundent these days better have a Smartphone, a computer and some pretty well-developed IT skills. Because if they don’t, they will have trouble looking for work, applying for jobs and claiming benefits before they find something.
Jobcentre Plus staff might help them put together a generic CV. And family members may be able to help with email and internet support – if they have access to the hardware and the skills to use it themselves. Other than that, they’re on their own.
But what if they don’t have any of that support? What if they’ve never needed a smartphone? What if there’s no computer at home and no one to help? What if they have a learning difference like dyslexia and aren’t fluent readers?
That’s what Community member Stuart had to deal with this summer, when he became one of dozens of people to be made redundant in the middle of the pandemic by luxury shoe-maker Barker’s, in the Northamptonshire village of Earls Barton.
Stuart had worked for Barker’s for the past 25 years – and not only on the shopfloor. Every Saturday morning, he would take his own garden tools from his home opposite the factory gates and spend four hours looking after the lawns.
Stuart said:
They said to me I was a good worker, so why did they get rid of me? It doesn’t make sense. But what can you do? At the end of the day, you’re just a number – that’s all we are. It’s their loss, I’m afraid.”
When the redundancies were announced, Community Learning Organiser Mick Brightman invited anyone affected to come to the union office in the village to access employability skills training to help them in the search for new work.
That was when Mick discovered Stuart wasn’t set up with all the tools he’d need to rejoin the employment market in the digital era.
Mick said:
I asked him if he had a mobile to bring it with.”
It was a JCB device from about 15 years ago with a SIM card inside made by Orange, which went out of business 10 years ago.”
So he doesn’t have a mobile phone that works. He’s restricted to a landline. And he’s never had an email address.”
This remains a lot more common than many might think. There are millions of people on the wrong side of the digital divide in this country, even now.
Yes, the number of internet non-users has been substantially reduced in the last decade, thanks in part to the efforts of union learning reps, the Union Learning Fund (ULF) and individual learning projects like Community’s.
But there are still 5.3 million adults in the UK (10 per cent of the adult population) who have never logged on to the internet, according to the Office for National Statistics.
And around nine million adults (16 per cent) are unable to use the internet or their devices by themselves, as estimated by the Lloyds Bank UK Consumer Digital Index 2020. In addition to his lack of experience with IT, Stuart also has trouble reading and writing, as Mick found out when he handed him one of the union’s beneficiary forms (which collect data for the ULF project).
Mick said:
When Stuart came in, I had a conversation with him and got him to fill in a beneficiary form. But I could see he was struggling to read it so I helped him complete it.”
Knowing Stuart was not a fluent reader meant that, when he returned to The Grange for the employability skills course, Mick was able to alert the tutor to his additional needs, and he also sat in on the course and helped him out where he could.
The course itself was delivered by TCHC, a training provider based in Watford that has been delivering English, maths and IT courses with Community for the past year or so.
Mick explained:
At the end of the course, we made sure he had everything he needed, all the phone numbers for the Job Centre, all the websites.”
We thought he could use them if he had a family member that could get on the internet but it turns out none of his family are younger than him and even uncles and nephews are not really computer-savvy.”
After the course, Stuart asked if Mick could help him with his reading and writing – to which the answer was, “Yes, of course”. Stuart’s struggles with literacy go back to his school days. He attended the same special school that his older brother Bruce went to, even though Bruce is learning disabled and Stuart is not.
Stuart recalls:
They didn’t really bother with me at school and didn’t teach me to read.”
So the first thing Mick did was set up Stuart with an email address so he could enrol on Learn My Way, the popular suite of introductory IT courses that has helped thousands of union members over the past eight years.
He then asked the union’s IT department to find a computer for Stuart to use at The Grange. And whenever Stuart turned up to work his way through the courses, Mick would help him navigate his way round the computer and read out the questions for him when necessary, although it was, of course, Stuart who completed the answers himself.
Mick said:
He was keen because he’d come to The Grange maybe two or three times a week and he’d be here for two or three hours each time.”
But even though he completed Online Basics and Using Your Computer or Device, Stuart is the first to admit that he still struggles with his IT skills, saying:
When Mick was there reading things out to me, I could do it then, but if you put me on a computer on my own, I wouldn’t know what to do.”
That’s not his fault, though!”
Mick hasn’t only helped Stuart in terms of supporting him through the Learn My Way courses. He also helped him fill in his Jobseeker’s Allowance forms so he could claim benefits while he was out of work.
And he was able to file a formal complaint with Jobcentre Plus after a member of staff (who turned out to be an agency worker) told Stuart he’d never get another job because of his literacy levels.
Mick points out:
I put in a formal complaint and Stuart was assigned a specialist employment adviser. But if it hadn’t been for me being part of the union and him telling me what they said, nothing would have happened.”
Mick has also helped him create a CV and sent it around to local agencies and potential employers, with some success.
Mick recalls:
We submitted the CV to a recruitment agency and within a couple of hours they came back and said, ‘This is great, can you send over more details?’,”
That contact led to a job in a canning factory, wrapping pallets and cleaning up. But it didn’t work out because they didn’t treat Stuart with respect.
Mick explained:
He did two days there, Friday and Monday, and then he phoned me on Tuesday to say he wasn’t going back because they were all shouting and swearing at him, which does happen, particularly to agency staff.”
And it’s not that he doesn’t want to work – he would work forever. They made him feel a failure, and that’s not right: nobody, whatever their abilities, should be treated with anything other than respect.”
Since then, the agency has found Stuart another job, this time at Davis Commercial Services (DCS), also in Earls Barton, where he works in the recycling section, breaking up life expired supermarket chiller cabinets and freezers.
Stuart said:
It’s all right for now.”
I’m 45, coming up 46. I wouldn’t want to do it when I’m 50 because it’s heavy work, banging all the fridges out. But it’s all right for the time being.”
Mick is happy to have helped Stuart on his learning journey, not least because he himself had his own struggles with reading and writing as a young man.
Mick said:
I spent 25 years in a factory and the most I ever wrote was ‘m/c down’ for ‘machine breakdown’ because I couldn’t spell ‘machine’.”
But after improving his own literacy skills so he could deal with the paperwork involved in being a union rep for the Knitwear, Footwear and Apparel Trade Union (KFAT, one of the predecessors of Community), Mick went on to help people return to learning first as a ULR and later while working for Steel Partnership Training (run by the ISTC, another predecessor of Community), Midlands unionlearn and now Community.
And, with all that experience behind him, Mick speaks with considerable authority when he says only a union learning project could have helped someone like Stuart.
Mick said:
What other organisation could or would support someone like this?” Stuart is the kind of person you meet and you go, ‘I want to help you, you deserve some help’.
He’s that kind of guy. But I don’t think anyone else would do that – except us.”
This article first appeared in the Spring 2021 edition of the Learning Rep.