Publications

BULLETIN 137
Change to work, train to change

October-December 1996

 

(Full text available only in Spanish)

 

THIS ISSUE

Vocational training finds itself today, in Latin America and the Caribbean, confronted by a vast, profound process of redefinition of its ways of operating and organizing itself, as well as of its conceptual bases upon which it is supported. We're talking about a process that is inevitable and necessary, at the light of deep transformations that affect the forms of international insertion of the region's economies, the technology applied to production and its restructuring, the configuration of the job markets at the level of enterprises as well as the societies in general.

Reorganize, reconceptualize and innovate in the region's vocational training also represent efforts to assume, once again, the secular challenge to deeply relate with productive reality, labor and technology of our countries.

Such an articulation between training, labor, production and technology, was very strong during the origins of the regional vocational training consisted in an appropriate, coherent and functional response to a model of development that privileged the emergence of a national industry that substituted imports and stated an important challenge: solve the «bottle neck» of the insufficient provision of qualified human resources implied by the new productive effort.

But the relation between the spheres of training, labor, production and technology was established, in the origins of the region's institutionalized vocational training, upon a basis that nowadays has deeply changed. The growing openness of national economies, together with the phenomena of globalization of production, culture and communication –as well as the acceleration never before witnessed in technological change applied to production– has ended up configuring an absolutely different scene: distribution of the active population by productive sector, emerging labor actors, new kinds of productive units, debates and conflicts around the topic of regulation of work activities and relations. All of them are pressing phenomena as are unemployment, subemployment, informality in its multiple facets.

If the terms of this relation change, not only is the need to rethink training planted, but also the need to establish a new nature in the relationship between different terms of that relation and to comprehend the changes in progress to consequently act upon them: new relationships, that is, between training, labor, technology and productivity; and new meanings for that new relationship.

Perhaps one of the first bits of data which vocational training is going to run into in the midst of this task, is that the old supposition of sustained, indefinite growth of employment (fundamentally industrial) has been substituted by a new labor reality in which employment becomes a «scarse good». Jacques Gaude, in his article «Relation between new forms of work, training and professional insertion», contributes elements for the debate, and at the same time presents some key criteria for maintaining employability at a high level in the new labor  context.

On the other hand, the problem of the relation between vocational training and employ- ment doesn't end with a merely quantitative dimension of more or less availability in job openings. Gaude analyzes just how enterprises, within the current economic and  technological setting, find themselves with the demand to develop strategies of organization and competition that directly influence human resources policies in terms of attaining a competent work hand, which provides advantages to the workers as well as the enterprises.

The document Strategic Action NAC 06 «Reconversion and Occupational Certification» of the National Industrial Training Service (SENAI), of Brazil, goes even further in its considerations about employment. There they affirm that employment has been a social device that, during a historic period, permitted labor to be organized into limited groups of competencies, while the production style was of an industrializing type and work was routine, repetitive and standardized. The apparition of the massive unemployment phenomenon, whether it be exposed or hidden, wouldn't be the result of the disappearance of certain types of employment in some industries or in determined regions; what is disappearing in all the world–states SENAI in agreement with W. Bridges and J. Rifkin– is employment itself, because of the fact that the very conditions that created it are altering  and disappearing.  SENAI, a pioneer institution in the region and central protagonist of Brazilian vocational training, assumes the challenge to respond to the demand that the new labor/productive context is setting off among training institutions in terms of professional qualification and requalification, for which they should develop strategies that allow for the widening of their possibilities for action in these areas, one of which is extremely important: the occupational insertion in its most modern approaches, based on norms of labor competency.

A second perspective –and complementary of the anterior one– that is taken up in this number, is that which refers to the necessities and conditions of production adaptation, adapting to new economic and social conditions. If, in its origins, vocational training interacted with styles of production that were massive, standardized, organized with a basis on  «Taylorist» and «Fordist» approaches, and therefore with little capacity to adapt to brusque changes in the economy, commerce and consumers' markets, nowadays both productive systems and enterprises must develop adaptive strategies much more flexible than in the past.

The inclusiveness of the concept of flexibility has made its analysis difficult, like Alvaro Díaz states in his work «Productive flexibility and new models of enterprises in the region's economies». Díaz advances in the clarification of this concept, analyzing its dimensions and classifying its principal models at the level of macro- as well as microeconomics. In definitive, he plants a new style of productive flexibilization through an up-date of its forms, a new model of enterprise and a new labor treatment.

The debate around productive flexibility has profound consequences upon vocational training, in the extent to which the human factor reemerges as a key in the process of the society's industrial transformation, affirms Jorge Carrillo for his part in his article «Flexibility and qualification in the new industrial dilemma». For this author, qualification on the job scene, understood as a mediating concept between the organizational level and that of working conditions, through the flexibilization process becomes a central factor and takes on different meanings according to entrepreneurial strategies.

Crossing these considerations about employment, productive change and diverse micro / macro economic adaptations to new conditioning factors, different approaches can be found with regards to the role technology plays in the processes at a global or particular scale. One thing which is clear throughout the different works is that there is a diversity of postures and approaches on the topic of technology applied to production. Four topics seem to dominate the current debate and make way for a number of questions:

i. There is an uneasiness, becoming more and more accented, about what are the jobs that the new technologies generate or cause to vanish, and about the benefits and costs that they can produce for workers. The shrinking demand for non-qualified workers has been so important, that unemployment or lower relative salaries have affected a great deal of the active non-skilled population. What is the interaction between the adoption of new technologies and the transformation of society's structures for qualification? What are the qualifications that become obsolete? Which ones are sought after? How can current educational/training systems satisfy the demand for new qualifications?

ii. It is fitting to ask about the real benefits whenever using new technologies. Have relations evolved between technical progress, productivity growth, salaries and employment in these last two decades? What role has the service sector played? Do the more productive sector create more jobs than those of less productivity? To what extent does technical innovation constitute an economy of manpower? To what degree has the influence had this characteristic upon different sectors in terms of job creation? What international repercussions have there been? Does technical  progress favor the creation of jobs in some countries more than in others? What are the principal factors, (like for example, internal and external demand) that benefit job growth?

iii. It is also fitting to ask about the demands derived from the use of new technologies, in particular in those markets that might become extinguished or poorly regulated. Are the regulations in effect an obstacle for competition in the product market and for the appearance of new goods and services? Are enterprises discouraged from adventuring into new segments of the market on account of the big risks implied?

iv. Numerous questions are planted, finally, in terms of the organizational changes that should be introduced in the entrepreneurial scene; concerning: the organization of labor (flexibility, «versatility», labor security); the organization of production (more precise production, «redimensioning», flexible specialization); the learning capacity of enterprises (knowledge acquisition, the role of complementary activities). It is also necessary to mention the problem of actual and potential job creation, in small and medium-size enterprises what role this performs in technology and high technology in particular.

This last topic, among others, has been capturing the attention of vocational training. The importance that micro and small productive units have acquired is the result of the constitution of new forms of production, commercialization and organization of labor, and  likewise the result of their fundamental contribution to the generation of jobs in the region. These new types of enterprises carry a double character, as subjects of attention of vocational training that should be responded to with a wider offer and integrated services, and as companions in the task of articulating vocational training with other actions in the frame of active politics on employment. Companions and subjects of yet more strategic attention, if you consider their quantitative participation in the entrepreneurial specter, in the job offer, and in the socio-economic characteristics of the population on which they depend.

Undoubtedly the delivery of this special Technical Bulletin of Cinterfor doesn't cover, nor come close to covering  , the vastness and complexity of the topics it handles. Surely there will be those who consider that perhaps it would have been more appropriate to treat separately problems to be analyzed such as employment, technological change, productive reconversion, qualification and recalification. In preference for the alternative taken up in this number, which consists in planting a wide view of these topics, it is possible to appeal to the direct experience of those who find themselves actively involved in this type of debate: a growing amount of information must be included on more phenomena; and, all the time, make a greater effort to mark the general tendencies of the  moment's change, clarify and act upon these particular areas. The contents of this Bulletin are, therefore, a resource more for that kind of purpose.

Two of our institutions give out detailed accounts of their activities: the National Technological Institute (INATEC) informs us of the new model of vocational training in Nicaragua, an instrument destined to raise knowledge, capabilities and skills of the youth, adults and workers in the frame of a new conception for labor and permanent training. The International Education and Development Center (CIED), of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., informs us of the academic administration developed in 1995, its first year of activity, through its three institutes: Industrial Training, Personal Development and Managerial Development.

Víctor Tokman, General Subdirector of the ILO and Regional Director for the Americas, focused on the topic Present and future of the ILO in Latin America in the seminar organized in Chile in commemoration of the 60st anniversary of the First Regional Meeting of the ILO in Chile. A version of this intervention is published in this number.

 

 

To buy this publication
Sale of publications

 

 

The Inter-American Centre for Knowledge Development in Vocational Training (ILO/Cinterfor)
Avda. Uruguay 1238 - Montevideo - Uruguay - Tel: (5982) 908 6023 - 902 0557 - 908 0545 - Fax: (5982) 902 1305
webmaster@cinterfor.org.uy

Copyright © 1996-2008 International Labour Organisation (ILO) - Disclaimer