Unions, the Skills Agenda, and Workforce Development

Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between unions and skills at the workplace. We argue that the significance of the skills agenda is broadly concomitant with a shift in the labour process beyond mass production into newer trajectories, variously described as post-Fordism, post-industrialism, flexible specialization and new production concepts. Unions are increasingly equating their members’ learning (and skills) as much as with enhancing their employability as with broader emancipation or entry into a trade. Through focusing on the contrasting cases of the UK and Sweden we show how the recent pursuit of the skills agenda has gone hand in hand with a strategic reorientation of unions, in response to more challenging bargaining environments and a declining membership base. We also argue that different approaches by unions to skills can be explained not only by national and sectoral factors but also by agency and voice mechanisms.

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