Siptu leader calls on unions to form college

SIPTU PRESIDENT Jack O'Connor has said unions should come together to develop a new university which would teach courses from a social solidarity and social science rather than a business perspective.

Speaking at an Ictu economic conference in Dublin yesterday, Mr O'Connor said the time had come for unions in Ireland to come together and "look at a fresh initiative that would breathe fresh life into the idea that education is about something broader and better than simply supplying a given quota of narrowly-qualified and narrowly-focused professionals to corporate Ireland".

Such a university would need to be "academically proofed and independent", but would also have to be informed by the principles of social solidarity and the assertion of human values over the market.

"It would be a university that provided a seamless progression through the Fetac-Hetac framework of qualifications with a social science rather than a 'business school' perspective of the type that predominates in all the existing institutions that teach subjects such as industrial relations, human resource management and financial forensics."

Mr O'Connor said the only requirement for entering courses would be that students would be members of a union that was affiliated to the university.

He said if the Government was serious about its commitment to create a knowledge society and the need to up-skill up to 50,000 members of the workforce then the provision of funding should not be a problem.

He also said the agreement of strategic partnerships with one or more third-level institutions should also be achievable relatively quickly.

"Even if the Government does not see the obvious merit of such an initiative, I believe we have no choice but collectively or individually to pursue such an objective.

"In reality it will call for collective action because none of us, even my own union, is big enough to undertake such an initiative alone. But greater co-operation and pooling of resources is in- evitable anyway if we are to meet the challenges of globalisation."

Meanwhile, Ictu general secretary David Begg told the conference that when the current crisis in the banking sector ended there should a re-regulation of financial markets.