The importance of workplace learning for trade unions: a study of the steel industry

This paper is concerned with the relationship between trade unions and learning in the workplace, particularly in relation to the enhancement of worker employability profiles. With the restructuring and modernising of the European steel industry as its context, this paper argues that the organisational and structural features of a sector have a profound influence on the way workplace learning is organised. Equally, trade union organisation and approaches also shape the learning agenda. In the steel industry, trade unions have failed to address the significance of workplace learning, partly because of the ways that they approach this topic. In the context of traditional sectors, with relatively vulnerable workforces, the weakened state of union bargaining positions means that they have limited capacity to address workforce employability or workplace participation. The outcome is that trade union involvement in skill formation and workplace learning is marginal.