Transgender Awareness

When learning support assistant Dan Phillips told his Pembrokeshire school he wanted to come out as trans, UNISON’s Wales Union Learning Fund (WULF) team helped organise trans awareness training for all 220 staff.

Dan's Story... The UNISON Transgender Awareness Programme at Haverfordwest High School, Pembrokeshire from UNISON Cymru Wales WULF on Vimeo.

British Airways engineer

Joanne West is an engineer at British Airways (BA) Maintenance next to Cardiff airport. When she decided she wanted to study for a new license she contacted the Unite WULF project to ask for financial support.

Menopause awareness

Suemarie Jones is a Social Worker at Denbighshire County Council. During the Covid pandemic she had some time off work with menopause symptoms and she had a long struggle to be properly diagnosed.

Electric vehicle maintenance

The Welsh Government’s net-zero commitments include increasing the number of electric vehicles in public sector fleets by 2030. But who will fix and maintain all of those new vehicles? In Swansea, Unite worked with the Council to retrain the existing vehicle maintenance workers.

Train driving apprenticeship

In October 2021 the first ever Train Driver Apprenticeship for Wales was launched. This was developed by ASLEF, working in social partnership with Welsh Government, Transport for Wales, the Wales TUC, National Skills Academy for Rail and Qualifications Wales.

CWU and Open University Wales: WULF

Craig Kinsey achieves results by studying an Access course with the Open University in Wales.

Live to learn, learn to live

When I was in school, I was so unhappy. In those days if you didn’t fit the “normal” pattern then you were an outcast. Teachers despaired of my attitude towards their methods. I was the butt of jokes or the victim of the bullies.

Learning Welsh at work

All my adult life I’ve made excuses about why I didn’t speak Welsh like “I didn’t learn it in school” or “my family didn’t speak Welsh”. I was embarrassed every time I was asked. But the truth was the real reason I didn’t speak Welsh was that I had never bothered to learn.

Panasonic

The GMB WULF project started working with Panasonic in March 2018. Since then they have delivered Essential Skills in Maths, English and IT to over 100 people.

Cardiff Council

Gunwant Rathour, known as Gunny, has been employed by Cardiff Council as a Recycling Development Officer for 5 years. He is also a member of GMB.

Teaching assistant

Rhiannon Jones is a teaching assistant in a special needs school. Here she tells us about how taking a WULF-funded photography course has given her new professional skills and inspired her to continue learning.

Mental health

Gemma Davies works as a Checkout Manager at Tesco. A few years ago she experienced a period of poor mental health and was off work for six months. Her experience of coming back to work set her on a life-changing path.

Essential Skills

It’s a situation faced by many workers today – your job becomes redundant and you're asked to take on a different role. But what do you do when your new role requires completely different skills – skills that you are not sure you have?

Dyslexia

Jan discovers she’s dyslexic through helping others with their learning. YouTube short video

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