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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.
 Part one: Please click here to read article in full
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