AUT runs summer camp for activists

University managers beware: the Association of University Teachers is developing a new generation of activists with a concerted recruitment and training drive to help the union fight key battles over pay, conditions and jobs in the changing campus workplace.

The AUT this week began recruiting for its latest summer school, which is billed as the "activist academy". The weekend-long summer school in July will offer intensive courses on effective negotiating and campaigning.

The union has also been bolstered by rising membership figures and the recent go-ahead for a merger with lecturers' union Natfhe from activists of both unions.

"What we're really trying to do is to boost a new generation of activists.

We want to demonstrate that there's a variety of ways in which people can get involved," said Sheryl Hobbs, the AUT's training officer.

The AUT has grown in the past two years, which have been marked by crucial negotiations over the modernisation of the pay and careers framework and a series of redundancies in the sector. Membership rose from 46,500 to a current high of 48,129. Natfhe's higher education membership has increased by more than 500 to 18,545 in two years. A merger, if approved by both unions' full membership in autumn, will create a single post-16 education union of more than 115,000 members.

The AUT set up the Developing Activists Network last July "to identify and train new activists and to equip these activists to address new challenges in the workplace". It met for the first time earlier this year.

Just one day after enrolments opened for the weekend summer school, which takes place on July 8-10 at Ashbourne Hill, Warwickshire, the union said it had received "quite a solid response".

Ms Hobbs said the network was targeting new and established members with the aim of adding new skills and reinvigorating existing talents.

The course comprises nine seminars on issues including equality, pay, negotiating and campaigning. It promises to help activists "effect change locally and nationally".

Members will learn strategies and techniques for effective campaigning, raising awareness of issues and, crucially, negotiating with bosses.

The AUT plans to show union members that there are different ways in which they can become involved. "We're appealing to the kind of things that suit our members, that suit their skills and give them something they can take back to the workplace," Ms Hobbs said.