COMPETENCY BASED TRAINING IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Recent developments. Some experiences. January, 2003

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5. UNIONS AND LABOUR COMPETENCY

The increasing incorporation of the competency focus eventually gave rise to initiatives for action from union organizations. Numerous facets of labour competency were being incorporated into business life, and changes in the organization of work, concepts like multi-functionality, competency-based selection, remuneration by competencies and evaluation by competencies were all aspects which began to emerge in labour relations.

The subjects of training and labour training have been becoming more important in bargaining in the ambit of labour relations, and this can be seen, for example, in the growing number of collective agreements in which the question of training figures as another factor, as does the incorporation of training into labour legislation16.

Social dialogue is bringing the union organizations closer to this discussion. In bipartite or tripartite schemes, opinions and initiatives from the workers are being considered in the setting up of labour competency systems. Workers' associations are participating in the deliberations and work meetings for setting up a competency certification network in the framework of a project which is under way in Brazil, in which the SEFOR, the Secretariat of Vocational Training of the Ministry of Labour, is participating. The same sort of thing is happening in the Labour Competencies Project being carried forward by the National Board of Employment in Uruguay which has a tripartite consultative council that includes union organizations.

In Argentina the training school of the Union of Pastry, Cake, Pizza, Ice Cream and Biscuit Makers, a union organization in the foodstuffs sector, is taking part in the offer of training programs. In 2001 it initiated a labour competency training and certification project financed by the IDB/FOMIN. Also in Argentina, the Training Centre of the Union of Mechanics and Associated Transport Workers has proposed a similar project in the ambit of labour competency.

In 2000, the "Força Sindical" union in Brazil presented a program called "Bargaining by Competencies", which is an active approach to the offer of training in labour competencies oriented to training union members so they can perform better in labour relations and collective bargaining connected to training.

The five phases of the Força Sindical of Brazil's project for training for the negotiation of competencies: 1. sensitization 2. sectorial diagnosis 3. training of leaders 4. dialogue 5. negotiation of profiles The proposal of the project derives from three suppositions: 1. Vocational training is one of the variables which affects the capital-work relation 2. the role of competencies must be an object of negotiation 3. vocational education is complementary to education

Its current objective is training to negotiate new competency profiles, and so facilitate a vocational education program for union leaders and workers. What stands out in the project is that bargaining emerges as an essential factor in ensuring participative equity.

The Unitarian Centre of Workers (CUT) in Brazil, is mounting a training program oriented to responding to the new demands for training which have negatively affected less well-educated and less well-trained workers. It is specifically aimed at workers in the metallurgical sector in Sao Paulo, and is being run in alliance with the Secretariat of Labour in that State.

It is formulated on the basis that the demands for training and knowledge applied to work have increased. The new technologies and new forms of production now require a new worker profile. In contrast, the traditional way that a worker connected to the sector was that he learned as he went along, getting familiar with the job. This situation has now changed; the workers now have to handle equipment which requires greater knowledge, as well as new forms of work organization.

The project generates training in four basic areas:

• Work and technology
• Mathematics
• Computers
• Reading and design interpretation
  

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROJECT: It deals with cognitive skills and the values and attitudes of general knowledge, associating general and technical concepts. It is for workers without basic education. It has materials from the first grade of basic teaching so it facilitates the assimilation of technical knowledge by the workers. It is developed with a modular content and includes organizational, social, technical, behavioral and communicative competencies. It includes the training of trainers who will be able to spread and expand the system. The methodology is oriented to valuing the knowledge accumulated by the worker. It sets up learning situations in which this knowledge is re-worked in a wider concept.

It is very probable that in all the areas connected to training in which the unions have taken a hand, either in planning or in execution, the introduction of the labour competency focus is starting to be discussed and advanced.

Union participation in this field vindicates a conceptual focus on labour competency according to which nobody knows better than the workers, the protagonists of the process themselves, what has to be done, how it should be done and what problems are involved. Therefore, the workers should openly participate in the identification and evaluation of competencies. This interpretation of the situation is opposed to that of many companies which pre-establish their key competencies and orient their human resources management processes to meeting the defined levels of competency. They provide full support for training and developing the worker, but they do not involve him in the definition of competencies.

In any case, vocational training is a natural scenario for dialogue, and now this is also true of the subject of labour competency. But although the competency focus has burst onto the scene and become generalized in the past three years, the speed of its advance and the number of conceptual and methodological connections which it has, are quicker and more varied than the previous training model's tempo of expansion.

From concepts of competency that originated in McClelland's conduct theories, there has been a rapid advance to more complex concepts. These leave behind the idea that the individual is the only possessor of competencies, and enter into the collective creation of competencies, their relation to the ways work is organized, the difficulty in making their evaluation objective, and, in short, to revealing elements of competency born from experience and from practical knowledge17.

 

 

 

 

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16. Further information on this point is available from: Cinterfor/ILO, Unions and Vocational Training, Bulletin 144, September-December 1998. Cinterfor/ILO, Vocational Training and Collective Bargaining, the Tools for Transformation series, 1998. Cinterfor/ILO, Training and Labour Legislation, the Tools for Transformation series, 1997.
17. On this point see Rojas, Eduardo. Worker Knowledge and Innovation in the Company. Cinterfor/ILO, Tools for Transformation, Montevideo, 1999. Especially chapters 5 and 6.

 

 

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