Adrienne Bird: Champion of workers’ rights to skills development 1955-2019
● Adrienne Bird, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 64, championed the rights of workers to education and training, and was one of the main architects of SA’s post-apartheid skills development legislation.
An early member of the black trade union movement in SA, she fought to develop a system of training and skills development which would make it possible for any worker without much formal schooling to go, as she put it, “from shop-floor sweeper to engineer”.
She was inspired by the example of her father, Ken Bird, who started his career in the post office as a junior technician and through his studies and a supportive training environment became a fully qualified engineer.
She was motivated by a passionate belief that every man and woman in SA who, regardless of academic or financial background, wanted to improve their qualifications and job prospects had a right to do so and should have access to all the necessary support.
She played a key role in developing the policy and legislative framework to make this possible.
In the early 1990s, as Witwatersrand regional education officer for the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), she spoke to workers on the shop floor who wanted an incremental approach to learning that would allow them to improve their education without having to enter the schooling system, which at the time was rigid and geared towards youth.
Greatest achievements
She was instrumental in drafting a document that became the implementation plan for the first minister of labour in democratic SA, Tito Mboweni. This document led to the dissolution of the Industry Training Boards and the establishment of the Sector Education and Training Authorities (Setas).
She subsequently acknowledged that scrapping the old apprenticeship system was a mistake, when she led the Centres of Specialisation project with the apprenticeship model at its heart.
Her greatest achievements were her roles in the establishment and development of the National Qualifications Framework, which ensured a place for vocational qualifications and work-based learning, and the skills development legislation which she helped implement from the late ’90s to 2005.
During this period she was chief director in the department of labour responsible for skills development, and deputy director-general employment and skills.
Her relationship with the department ended badly when she was suspended on what turned out to be trumped-up charges that she had signed off on a payment without authorisation.
She was cleared but resigned anyway, and began working on a book which she was trying to finish at the time of her death, titled Sweeper to Engineer.
In 2009 she became acting deputy director-general in the new department of higher education & training.
She led several initiatives, including the transfer of the skills development function from the department of labour, establishing the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations, and documenting the skills required to implement the national infrastructure plan. She left the department for health reasons in late 2018.
Bird was born in Johannesburg on February 14 1955 and matriculated at Pietermaritzburg Girls High in 1972. She completed a BA at the University of Natal, an honours degree in English literature and, at Wits University, a higher education diploma.
Black trade unions
She then went to the UK where she completed an MA in adult education, worked as a teacher, involved herself in local Labour Party politics, got married and divorced, and returned to SA. In 1983 she began working for the black trades union movement.
She and several progressive Wits academics started a labour studies course at Wits for shop stewards. It was kicked off campus after a director of the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation said in council that they were communists and were leading the workers astray.
Bird, who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in 2015, is survived by her husband Tony Vis.