Learning with Trade Unions

A Contemporary Agenda in Employment Relations

Moira Calveley, Steve Shelley, Steve Shelley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351922456
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

This edited collection provides an understanding of the range of learning that is enabled by trade unions, and the agendas around that learning. It comes at an important time as, in the UK, recent years have seen significant new opportunities for unions' involvement in the government's learning and skills policy. At the same time, trade unions have had to cope with declining membership and changing employment patterns, and thus have a keen interest in defining their role in contemporary employment relations and in pursuing strategies for union renewal. Therefore, in order to explore these dynamics, a strong feature of the book is its drawing together of informed, research-based contributions from the fields of training, skills and education, and of industrial relations. International and historical perspectives are included in order to better understand the contemporary issues. There are important conclusions for policy-makers, practitioners and researchers.

Foreword

Brendan Barber

Unions have always been active in the world of education and skills, both through the delivery of their own education and training programmes, which develop the next generation of activists and officials, and through influencing governments and employers on behalf of their members. The launch of Unionlearn in 2006 signals a step change in unions' commitment to this agenda, and that is one reason why this book is so timely. It provides a valuable assessment of the opportunities and challenges facing Unionlearn, and those working with education and skills through trade unions more generally.

More and more union members are recognising that their employability and career progression are dependent on having transferable skills. In addition high skills levels lead to better productivity and better wage returns. And lifelong learning also reduces social inequality. All key issues for unions.

In the league table of the top 30 developed economies, the UK still lies eleventh in high skills, it is twentieth in intermediate skills and seventeenth in essential skills. This means that we have a mountain to climb. To reach the top employers are crucial. For without employer commitment, real progress is impossible, but a powerful partnership approach, and strong union representation is the key to success.

Without question, Unionlearn is the single most important development in trade unionism in a generation. It can act as a catalyst for a trade union resurgence in the years ahead. This will show that we are fully attuned to the challenges posed by globalisation and labour market change. And it proves we are in step with the aspirations of today's workers.

Brendan Barber
TUC General Secretary
May 2007

Section I
Union Learning: Setting the Scene

Chapter 1
Introduction

Steve Shelley and Moira Calveley

Rationale and Aims of the Book

This book has been written at an important time in the development of trade unions' roles in learning activities and in employment relations more widely. The last few years in the UK have seen new opportunities for unions to become involved in education, training and particularly 'learning' activities as part of the government's learning and skills policy. At the same time, trade unions have had to cope with a declining membership and reduced influence, which has led to a keen interest in a variety of strategies for union renewal. Three issues for examination are therefore, firstly, the nature of the learning itself, its variety of forms and purposes, and the outcomes for individuals involved in learning activities. Secondly, the role of union learning in public policy and political economy of skill; in overcoming disadvantage in qualifications and access to training; in linking to national competitiveness and economic growth; and the learning and skills policies of government and agencies. Thirdly, around the relationship between the learning and union renewal agendas and the role that learning plays for trade unions and the trade union movement as a whole. Paramount in this, as will be seen, is consideration of the distinctiveness and sustainability of trade union learning activities and links to the power of unions to influence employment relations at workplace and national level.

The book brings together chapters that between them explore the range of union learning activities across the terms of 'learning', 'education', 'training' and other descriptors for this field of work. It is only relatively recently that the term 'learning' has been used in government and union policy circles in the UK, although the terms education and training have been synonymous with trade union activity for more than a century in the UK and are similarly long-lived in other countries. Historically, as Moira Calveley shows in Chapter 2, unions have been actively involved with worker education, campaigning on employment practices and education policy to enable access to education, and providing their own education programmes through, for example, Ruskin College, the National Council of Labour Colleges and the Workers' Education Trade Union Committee. Although 'neutral' definitions suggest that education is 'to develop the knowledge, skills, moral values and understanding required in all aspects of life' (Reid el al. 2004, 2), trade union education can be delivered in a specific context for a specific agenda. In varying ways, such education was seen as a way out of poverty and had a political and class based agenda of liberation and equality. On the former, education was seen as a way for individual workers to obtain economic advancement and a share of the profits of capitalism. On the latter, workers' education was intended to bring about societal change, although whether this was through radical change and teaching on an explicitly political agenda or whether through more incremental change based on less partial liberal humanist education, has long been a point of controversy. Nevertheless, as Chapter 2 shows, the class based and collective nature of this education was distinctively for and by the trade union movement. There were also strong elements of financial independence and sustainability, with much, but not all, funding from union sources, albeit that a decline of such education is partly linked to reduced trade union income during the mid twentieth century.

In addition to these education activities, trade unions have also ran their own training programmes for activists, developing their workplace representatives with the necessary skills for effective workplace bargaining and representation and also including knowledge of contemporary workplace 'issues' and of union context, labour history, economics and politics. This training came much more to the fore in the second half of the twentieth century, with the formation of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Training College in 1957 and then using legislation such as health and safety and equal opportunities as a basis for training in the 1970s and 1980s, with the need to organise in the face of union decline in the 1990s a more recent cause. As Liz Rees shows in Chapter 13, this training of activists is high on unions' and TUC agendas, clearly with a union and collective oriented purpose and is funded from within the union movement albeit not without some recent external scrutiny. In 'traditional' terms, the general terminology used by those working in and researching this field, is of trade union 'education', that encompasses education and training of representatives.

A third area of trade union involvement has been in workplace vocational education and training, in providing knowledge and skills required in job training for employees to perform their work. Historically such involvement was limited to particular crafts and occupations and to restrictive practices such as recruitment and the 'closed shop', and was for the economic benefit of individuals and to strengthen the bargaining power of the specific unionised group of members. Albeit rather exclusive in nature, such arrangements were clearly distinctive in favour of the workers involved. Union involvement became more formalised with their inclusion in tri-partite Industry Training Boards at sector level, and at national institutional level with the Manpower Services Commission of the 1970s. However, both sources of power dwindled during the 1980s and 1990s, as institutional structures were disbanded and traditional occupations closed down.

Finally, in the last decade trade unions in the UK have been increasingly involved in an agenda of 'learning', the terminology of which appears to be replacing the former nomenclature of education and training. This is particularly following the election of the 'new' Labour government in 1997. Current policy context is witnessed in government documents 'The Learning Age' (DfEE 1998), incorporating a vision of 'lifelong learning' in a 'learning society', this being reinforced further with the establishment of the Learning and Skills Council in 2001 resulting from the Learning and Skills Act (2000) and, most recently, the Leitch Review of Skills in 2006 (Leitch Review 2006). As the Leitch Review makes clear, the UK has skills shortcomings, including a large proportion of the workforce unskilled and low skilled, does not compare well with other countries in terms of productivity, and has social problems of disadvantage and relative poverty. In this set of policies all 'learning' is deemed inherently 'good' to the benefit of all, individuals, economy and society, enabling economic growth and greater social inclusion and advantage. This is in a generally voluntarist non-interventionist government approach to training, with, as Caroline Lloyd and Jonathan Payne observe in Chapter 4, a prevailing low skill emphasis in the UK economy, with minimal training efforts by many employers.

In this context unions have increasingly re-established their involvement in this policy arena. There is trade union representation in the Learning and Skills Council, edging slightly towards the tripartite models of countries such as Germany. In 1998 the government established the Union Learning Fund (ULF), funding the development of Union Learning Representatives (ULRs), union-run learning centres and other union learning initiatives in the workplace. Although this, to some extent, may be viewed as an attempt by the 'new' Labour government to mollify the trade unions (they had already announced that they were not going to reverse the restrictive trade union policies introduced by their Conservative predecessors), an explicit rationale for this has been empirical correlations between training incidence and union recognition and the access to hard-to-reach learners that trade unions are thought to have (CIPD 2004). Thus there is now a substantial amount of public funding for learning channeled through trade unions and, in addition, a partial reinforcing of trade union rights in the statutory recognition for paid time-off for union learning activities given to ULRs under the 2002 Employment Relations Act. In line with these policy moves, trade unions and the TUC have established their own organisations as support to the government's learning and skills agenda. To support ULRs and their role in the workplace, the TUC Learning Services was established in 1998 to train ULRs and provide them with advice on moving the training agenda forward. The TUC's Unionlearn, originally set up as the Union Academy in 2005 and renamed in 2006, is now responsible for both the traditional education and the emerging learning activities (see Chapter 13 particularly), exemplifing the use of 'learning' as the over-arching terminology for the field of activity.

There is undoubtedly a positive enthusiasm for learning, and one which has been reified in government policy and management practice as well as trade union circles over the last decade or more, suggesting that all learning is good. However, there are also critiques which question this, particularly in the context of examining who makes judgements about what is 'good' and how this is measured. Prevailing understandings tend to be neutral in tone, so that learning is 'any experience or event whose outcome (whether or not intended) develops or changes peoples' knowledge, skills, values or behaviour' (Harrison 2000, 2).

However, in examining what he terms the cultist character of 'learnerism', Holmes (2004) exposes weaknesses in this prevailing mainstream policy context, warning that the learning process can result in outcomes that are detrimental as well as positive. Further, the emphasis on the learner, who is no longer a passive recipient of what others have decided should be learnt and how it should be learnt, but who may be actively engaged in and manage their own learning, free to determine for themselves what and how they should learn, is also open to critique. The current learning context is predicated on the basis of normative understandings of what are correct learning outcomes, all too often, as the likes of Karabel and Halsey (1977) and Ainley (1999) have stated before, based on existing occupational and societal structures. Pressures for learners to conform with normative standards, behaviours and to reproduce identities and social practices, may mean, as Holmes (2004) asserts, that the current learning paradigm is oppressive rather than emancipatory in nature.

Nevertheless, it would seem that trade unions now have 'workplace learning' much more at the forefront of their agendas. Unions and the TUC play an active role in promoting the Government's strategy of 'lifelong learning' the aim of which is to create a 'learning society' seeking to link vocational education with learning for career and personal development. This increasing role in the learning agenda requires examination and critique not only in terms of the meanings of the learning for the individuals involved, but also in terms of the contribution that trade unions make to national economic and social improvement through participation in learning and skills policy.

This examination also sets the scene for analysis of the role and orientations of trade unions in employment relations more broadly, getting to the heart of what the trade union movement is about – the purpose of trade unions and their independence, and their role in the employment relationship between employer and employee and between capital and labour. Thus whilst trade unions represent workers' opposition to employer and state authority, they are, recognise Spencer and Frankel (2002, 169):

at best, contradictory social formations [for they also] negotiate the terms of workers' compliance to that authority. However, they are still important organisations of working people, and represent the potential for democratic challenge at work and in society ... even if this challenge is to be understood as a relatively weak countervailing power to that of capital, a power that can only moderately influence terms and conditions.

This may be all the more so in the contemporary situation of declining union membership. In the UK, between 1979 and 2006 the number of trade unions declined from 453 to 186 and union membership fell from 13.3 million to 6.5 million (Certification Officer 2006), with declines also experienced in other comparator countries (see Chapter 3), under the influence of legislative changes, management practices and occupational changes.

In this context, trade unions have adopted a number of strategies in their need for renewal and resilience (Stirling 2005). These include those that might be seen as passive, reactive and acco...