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UK Trade Unions, Lifelong Learning and the UK Skills 'Crisis': Part 4 |
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Written by tom farnhill
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Sunday, 16 December 2007 |
Unions and Learning Part Four: Conclusions
It appears unfair to argue that unions ONLY developed an interest in learning AFTER learning that everybody else had lost interest in unions. But the specificity of union activity in the learning and skills field reflects wider social, economic and political phenomena. It has also been shaped by unions own Rhinish aspirations and by the legacy of 'New Unionism'. Learning and Skills efficacy as vehicles for union resurgence are capable of being overstated. Nevertheless, unions have benefitted from their involvement - up until now - and the UK's learning and skills agenda is probably better off as a result.
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UK Trade Unions, Lifelong Learning and the UK Skills 'Crisis': Part 3 |
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Written by tom farnhill
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Sunday, 16 December 2007 |
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Unions and Learning Part Three: the Rise and Rise of Union Learning Reps
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UK Trade Unions, Lifelong Learning and the UK Skills 'Crisis': Part 2 |
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Written by tom farnhill
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Sunday, 16 December 2007 |
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Unions and Learning Part Two: Unions, Learning and New Labour
After 1997, union learning policy intersected with New Labour's obsession on improving the nations stock of skills. Unions were offered 'fairness not favours', but their commitment to workplace learning impressed, and they were able to establish influential relations with a range of skills policy and delivery agents.
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UK Trade Unions, Lifelong Learning and the UK Skills 'Crisis': Part One |
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Written by tom farnhill
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Sunday, 16 December 2007 |
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Part One: Unions and Skills, 1800 - 1997 - Union participation in learning and skills is historically specific, conditioned by changes in the UK political economy, unions relations with industry and government, and practical considerations including providing members and activists with what they want. The agenda remains economistic: privileging the workplace and exposing employer's lack of commitment to staff development; recently creating headroom for an instrumental industrial (depoliticised) union learning agenda. Union activity in learning is creating new functional specialists from 'hard to reach' groups, but there is less evidence that it is spearheading improved collective bargaining arrangments or attracting new members. Unions hope to benefit from any Leitch-inspired institutional realignment - including membership of an inchoate policy community. Learning and skills utility as vehicles for union resurgence is dependent on unions ability to establish sustainable qualitative and quantitative roles within the nascent policy network; the networks ability to keep employers 'on side'; the behaviour of the UK labour market and - paradoxically - on a critical mass of employers continuing to 'do' training badly.
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From voluntarism to post-voluntarism |
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Written by Bert Clough
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Friday, 27 July 2007 |
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The emerging role of unions in the vocational education and training system.
The paper is a revised version of the chapter "From Spear Holders to Stakeholders: The Emerging Role of Unions in the UK Learning and Skills System" by Bert Clough in the monograph Trade Unions and Training: Issues and International Perspectives edit.
This paper traces the history of union involvement in training from the neo-corporatism of the 1960/70s, through the voluntarism of the 1980s/90s, to the present "post-voluntary" era, as described by Gordon Brown when Chancellor of the Exchequer. It concludes that, although that there has been significant capacity building in unions under New Labour, the lack of significant collective bargaining over training limits delivering the broad union learning agenda at the workplace.
Bert Clough, unionlearn
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