exactly right. It picks up a long-standing campaign for paid educational leave but updates it for today’s economy and labour market. Unionlearn and unions are working hard across the UK to help working people through the recession. Where unions are organised and have developed their learning agenda, ULRs are already trained to negotiate ‘learning agreements’ with their employers. There have been 200 learning agreements signed through projects supported by the Union Learning Fund in the last year alone and many more that are informal or have not been officially recorded. Some of those agreements have commitments from the employer that workers should benefit from an agreed amount of paid educational leave on an equal opportunities basis. In many cases this is mainly for employers’ training programmes but other training for personal development is also included. The challenge for unionlearn and unions is to expand the number and improve upon the quality of learning agreements to drive up good practice on learning leave and improve dialogue and representation, the quality of the learning experience and ensure all workers at all levels have a genuine, equal chance to learn. However, the challenge of delivering best- practice learning leave will not just be met through trade union agendas but also through the necessity of responding to changes in the skills environment. One massive challenge is the introduction of the statutory right to request training which should be in operation from April 2010. This will require that all workers (after a 26-week employment qualifying period) have the right, annually, to request a formal hearing of their training needs and for the employer to give due consideration to their request. The Government’s regulation impact assessment estimates that 1.3 million workers could make
18 ADULTS LEARNING NOVEMBER 2009
use of the new right within its first three years, most of whom will be ‘new learners’ seeking training from employers offering too little. This could lead to employers re- examining their training review systems to make sure that all workers actually have the opportunity to discuss and meet their training needs, to mitigate the risk of over- extensive use of the more formal proceedings required by the statute. Trade unions will be concerned to make sure that policies on paid time off and funding for training are not diluted by potential higher levels of employee demand but instead that all learners get the learning leave they deserve. The report calls for improvements to the quality of work by, amongst other things, encouraging skills utilisation, which is key to raising job satisfaction and productivity in the UK. The skills utilisation agenda is a huge challenge. The failure of UK employers to maximise performance and productivity owes much to their endemic command and control culture that prevents high-performance worker involvement practices from flourish- ing. There is also the task of defining ‘skills utilisation’ and ‘high-performance working practices’ to everyone’s satisfaction. UKCES has produced a definition for the purposes of UK policy development. Some definitions of high-performance working practices (HPWP) have not included unions as participants even though the emphasis on worker participation and influence on job design is exactly what trade unions do. Rightly, UKCES has a definition of high-performance working practices that does include trade union involvement and dispels the notion that implementation of HPWP is a management- led strategy where employees are simply consulted.
Learning Through Life sets an agenda for high-performance working practices that trade unions working with other partner
organisations are pursuing. UKCES has brought together partners such as the TUC, the CBI, and the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development to consider ways that high-performance working practices can be encouraged. This is particularly important in a recession where engaging the workforce to find ways through difficult times and prepare for the recovery should be a more productive strategy than the alternative. Trade unions use their influence on Sector Skills Councils, through collective bargaining processes and social dialogue, to push for high-performance working practices. However, this agenda would benefit significantly from much stronger signals from Government that UK industry should adopt these practices and align itself with the best of international practice in order to compete in today’s international markets. There are many more ideas in Learning
Through Life than are mentioned here. But, to summarise, I believe that the three key policy challenges for unions are: first, trade unions are strengthening and broadening union learning representative networks which will mean bargaining for more and better support from employers and working within communities; second, better learning leave arrangements could be stimulated by the introduction of the right to request – trade unions will be making the arguments for best practice and agreements that include paid time off, funded learning, equal opportunities and consistency; and, third, improving the quality of work through high- performance working practices (already high on the trade union agenda) will need much stronger signals from Government. Including some of these ideas in the new skills White Paper would be a good start.
Richard Blakeley is Policy Officer for Learning and Skills, TUC
Richard Olivier
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