BULLETIN 144
Trade unions and training

September-December 1998

 

(Full text available only in Spanish)

 

THIS ISSUE

Trade unions and training is the subject of this issue of the Cinterfor Bulletin.  A present day  reading on union activity in the area of vocational training is inevitably complex.  This issues from the fact that both labour unions and training find themselves immersed in profound processes of transformation.

On one hand, labour unions increasingly face challenges such as the changes in their representative base.  We move from basically industrial traits with salaried relations, formal employment and a strong masculinization, toward an employment  panorama where the weight of the tertiary sector (services) has incremented, there is scarce employment, informality, and growth in women's participation.  The tasks of organizing, representing and mobilizing such a diverse, problematic, and changing universe inevitably motivate the redefinition of methods of action and the organization of unions.

On the other  hand, vocational training has stopped being strictly a specialized area, and has begun to be considered in relation to its contribution to issues such as productivity and competitiveness, employment, social equity, technological development and transfer, or the social dialogue.  Both its methodological and supposed theoretical approaches are being reconsidered.  Its organizational structures, financial support and management, and the definition of its areas of concern, among other aspects, are also being reconsidered.  Regardless of the weight that each perspective contributes to training, it has almost invariably acquired a growing visibility and centrality within the various strategies set forth by governments, unions, and enterprises.

Within this context, the encounter of union activities and training is inevitable.   Let us merely state the principal, and most obvious, reasons:

First, the relative importance of the "knowledge factor" within the new production and labour structures has visibly increased.   The control of information and knowledge has therefore become as strategic as the control of land or the mediums of production used to be.  Education and training are the only paths to democratic control of this factor.

Just as unions have always struggled for universal access to education,  the equality of training opportunities constitutes a very current banner for union struggle, with the same or more justification.

Second, training is no longer understood as a preparatory activity for employment.  It is conceived of as a permanent or continuous factor, that takes place throughout the life of workers.  This factor carries various consequences, two of which are especially relevant from the union point of view.  First, training as an activity is increasingly relying on more mediums and resources than in the past; now it is imparted not only within the training organizations, but also in the companies and through the most diverse areas of social and cultural life.   This is constituting a social and economic fabric from which unions should not be excluded.   Two, a good part of the decisions are being taken within the individual or private dimensions.  In this sense, labour unions are being called to fulfill an informational and orientative role that will help workers to situate themselves and make decisions within increasingly complex contexts.

Thirdly, the relevance of training takes shape both at a macro-political level and at the level of people's daily lives.  Workers are aware that their employability and their children's employability is directly related to the levels and quality of training acquired.  Training then increasingly becomes a demand to union leadership, and if they don't respond to this claim, workers are willing to find a way to train themselves however they can:  the State, companies, institutes, etc.  How could unions then disregard such a great challenge?

Fourth, as has been said, training has become a fundamental part of employment, technological development, incrementation of productivity and improvement of competitiveness policies.  Unions simultaneously struggle for the creation of more job positions and for a better quality of jobs.  In this day and age, to speak of dignified and quality employment is to speak of employment which requires increasingly high levels of qualification.  Otherwise unions would have to rely on informal and temporary employment.

The modernization of Latin America and the Caribbean today presents two faces:   a progressive face, based on qualifications, quality and strategies for long term and genuinly based competitiveness; and the other, precarious, informal and spurious, based on low salaries, lack of labor regulations, and the plundering of natural resources.   Unions decidedly stake their claims on the first kind of modernization and procure by diverse means, the necessary tools to strengthen it.  In this context it is inevitable to understand the importance of training and to act on its behalf.

Fifth,  training in an area which is particularly favourable to development and the strengthening of the social dialogue.  By social dialogue we mean the strengthening of democracy and the possibilities for its full exercise of democracy by the citizenry.

A fact of today's reality is that the union actor finds him/herself  in a situation of relative weakness.  This is due to both the changes effected at the base of representation, and the fact that the margins for effective and decisive action at the economic level are drastically being reduced.  This has inevitably led many labour unions in the region and in the world to adopt defensive attitudes which have, in most cases, been defeated.  The problem of employment is, in this respect, particularly dramatic:  more than a few unions have been forced to renounce to historical gains in the areas of rights and salaries, while trying to defend the truly decreasing sources of employment.

Dialoguing and negotiating under such weak conditions decreases the possibilities of moulding an effective, sustainable and equitable social dialogue.   In this sense, training seems to be one of the last spaces where unions can still sit at the negotiating table under conditions of equality.

The area of training is particularly conducive to the establishment of agreements between employers and workers even though they may be guided by different interests.  It also constitutes one of the few remaining fundamental tools for unions to decidedly influence in the life of enterprises and in political-economic and social decisions.

Sixth, from the perspective of training, the contribution of the union point of view is necessary, useful, and beneficial.  The same thing happens to training and technology (actually, training itself is part of the transferral of technology to enterprises and workers):  it is neither positive nor negative in itself, it isn't primarily in the service of one or another side's interests.   Training holds the virtue of contributing to diverse goals, some traditionally associated with a business vision, and others closer to those of labour.  It serves to increase productivity and competitiveness, and can also be a tool in favour of the equality of opportunities and social cohesion and integration.  The absence of a labour contribution in the management of training will inevitably produce biases that will negatively affect the concretion of goals that are by nature patrimony of all society.

In this issue of Cinterfor/ILO's Technical Bulletin, we mean to describe the multiple efforts that are being made in Latin America, the Caribbeand and the European Union, both at the level of conceptual development as at the level of union actions.

 

 

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