"Trade Unionists need to know and understand the problems faced by working people throughout the world if working class solidarity is to be advanced and an end to exploitation ensured." (Peter Potts, the late chair of TUIREG's Management committee)

Until recently, development education was largely the domain of NGOs and charities. Defined by the Leeds Development Education Centre as "an active learning process that enables pepple to understand the links between their own lives and those of other people throughout the world, development education aims to increase understanding of the economic, social, political and environmental forces which shape our lives by examining issues on local, national and international levels.

During the last decade, as transnational corporations have continued to consolidate their hold over the economies of both wealthy and not so wealthy countries, it has become increasingly apparent that trade unions must educate their members about the realities of globalisation. Development education can play a vital role in this process.

Workers in the North and South increasingly share similar concerns about deregulation, casualisation and the resultant rise in unemployment.

David Joyce, Development Education Project Officer for the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, thinks that by exploring these links, development educators can "lead to the building of international solidarity, rather than European workers blaming Southern workers for the closure of multinational manufacturing units and their relocation to areas with lower wage costs."

The Trade Union International Research and Education Group (TUIREG), based at Ruskin College, Oxford, was the first organisation to try to combine trade union education with development education. With this aim in mind, TUIREG organised workshops for UK trade union educators that explored the possibility of introducing international development issues into trade union education programmes and materials. Since then it has become an active bridge between development-oriented NGOs and~ the trade union movement.

TUIREG's current development education programme works to raise awareness of international issues and to highlight the interdependence of workers in the North and South through an active, learning-by~doing educational approach.

For example, a current TUIREGJUNISON project, entitled 'A healthy prescription? - the lives of women health workers in the UK and Southern Africa' aims to demonstrate that those working in the health sector, be it in South Africa or in the UK - have a lot in common and share many of the same problems. Another project involves comparing the lives of women working in the footwear industries in the UK and Kenya. This project is being conducted through TUIREG's on-going work to increase the participation of women in the Kenya Shoe and Leather Workers Union.

TUIREG also uses established trade union educational and organisational structures to promote development. TUIREG co-operates with trade unions in the South to initiate development-oriented trade union work, such as making women's rights a priority, and looking at problems related to the environment and the lack of education and health care in many Southern countries.

The success of TUIREG's work has led Bill Jordan, the ICFTU General Secretary, to state that: "We should wherever ~ussible work with NGOs that shareour values. We should listen to their ideas and explain our views to them. We should co-operate to work for the objectives we share."

Contact: TUIREG, Ruskin College, Walton Street, Oxford. Tel: 01865 554331