Dean Stroud

Workplace Learning: Dilemmas for the European Steel Industry

The focus in recent studies of workplace learning has been on ‘communities of practice’ and the ways that learning is shaped by such communities. In the process, there has been a downplaying of the importance of broader institutional arrangements, including the impact of organisational structures and management practice, as well as national systems of Vocational Education and Training. This paper draws attention to the importance of these organisational processes in structuring workplace learning. We argue that the institutional arrangements that define organisations are decisive in defining the parameters of workplace learning. In relation to traditional industries, such as steel, the opportunities for time‐served workers employed in production areas to learn their work and enhance their expertise is characterised by a set of embedded and regressive practices. These practices hinder the adoption of new forms of working practices and leave many steelworkers vulnerable to the broader effects of industry restructuring.

Workplace learning: a trade union failure to service needs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to open up discussion about the relationship between trade unions and workplace learning.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on an analysis of a series of case‐studies of restructuring in the European steel industry, incorporating interviews, observation and documentary analysis.Findings – The paper argues that trade unions often fail to address the significance of workplace learning for members, because they address workplace learning as a service. This approach fails to exploit opportunities and possibilities to extend workplace‐learning provisions, and thereby meet the wider learning and employability enhancing needs of members. The outcome is that trade union involvement in skill formation and workplace learning is marginal, and contributes to the perpetuation of traditional sector practices and regressive learning provisions.Research limitations/implications – The paper focuses on a discussion of trade union involvement in workplace learning in the ...

Organizing training for union renewal: A case study analysis of the European Union steel industry

The central proposition of this article is that trade union involvement in training is essential to ensure that workers are in a position to adapt readily to changing circumstances and bargain from a strong position. The context in which this proposition is advanced is with reference to the restructuring of the EU steel industry. The argument has two dimensions. First, trade unions need to engage with training and workplace learning in more direct and involved ways than allowed for by current partnership arrangements. This involvement is to protect workers’ interests, promote worker development and to develop jobs as decent jobs. Second, such engagement requires that unions consider their organizational capacities in two respects, within national contexts and across borders. The article employs evidence from ongoing steel industry focused research, which includes observations from the EU Steel Sector Social Dialogue Committee and its steering group on Workforce Development, Recruitment and Retention.

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.

The limits and prospects of union power: Addressing mass redundancy in the steel industry

Worker and union responses to mass redundancy announcements are complex. This article explores a mass redundancy announcement with the purpose of shedding light on the way collective responses are shaped at such times. The article focuses on steelworker redundancies in South Wales (United Kingdom) in 2001 and 2002, which occurred at the Corus plc steelworks at Ebbw Vale in Blaenau Gwent and Llanwern, Newport, and argues that management handles such announcements in strategic ways to neutralize collective responses. Further, the article contends that the way trade unions organize and operate can result in union members being demobilized, thereby restricting alternative courses of action. Central to the analysis are understandings of the ways information, in the form of rumour and through more formal channels, flows between management, union and the membership/workforce.

Skill development in the transition to a 'green economy': A 'varieties of capitalism' analysis

Many traditional regions are being transformed as industries restructure. Paradoxically, the global economic downturn offers opportunities to innovate on policies to regenerate areas experiencing deindustrialisation, with one emerging focus being the development of ‘green skills’ to facilitate the transition of these places to ‘green economies’. In this article, we explore similar policy objectives (i.e. regeneration activity based (in part) on green economy transitions) across three deindustrialising/deindustrialised regions – Appalachia (United States), Ruhr (Germany) and the Valleys (South Wales) – to provide an account of the ways in which different regions with similar industrial pasts diverge in their approach to moving towards greener futures. Our argument is that the emphasis in such transitions should be the creation of ‘decent’ jobs, with new economic activity and employment initiatives embracing a ‘high road’ (i.e. high skill/high pay/high quality) trajectory. Utilising a ‘varieties of capitalism’ analysis, we contend that an effective, socially inclusive and ‘high road’ transition is more likely to emerge within co-ordinated market economy contexts, for example, Germany, than within the liberal market economy contexts of, for example, the United States and United Kingdom. In identifying the critical success factors leading to ‘high road’ green economy, the implications for any such transition within the liberal market economy context of Australia are highlighted.

Greening Steel Work: Varieties of Capitalism and the "Greening" of Skills.

An important driver of change in work, employment and skills is European Union policy aims of sustainable economic growth and the cultivation of a green economy. Part of the latter – which is supported by increasing environmental regulation – focuses on the development of a ‘green skills agenda’, which involves the ‘greening’ of existing occupations as well as meeting the skill needs of new environmental sectors and occupations. In this paper, we compare attempts to ‘green’ work and skills through an examination of engineering apprenticeships within the German and British steel industries. We argue that efforts to ‘green’ skills are taking place at varying degrees of intensity, mostly because of variations in institutional context. The evidence we present suggests that implementation of change is much more dynamic in the context of Coordinated Market Economies such as Germany, where development is shaped by robust VET frameworks and wider processes of environmental innovation. In contrast, within Liberal Market Economies such as the UK, there are significant barriers to the vision for and investments in skills generally, as well as those necessary for greening the labour process, with an extant development paradigm that is driven by short-term benefits and a limited focus on environmental compliance.

Labour Union Strategies in the European Union Steel Sector

Labour unions need to develop policies and demands appropriate to the changing political economy in which they operate. Thus, for example, it is important for unions to seek to place members at an advantage within the extant processes of ‘modernisation’ and restructuring. It would seem, however, that on a range of different issues it is management that dictates the shape of change, with union leaders and activists failing to engage employers (or their own members) in ways that challenge policy and practice that disadvantage workers. The evident danger is that workplace union influence is marginalised. In this chapter, we identify how unions have failed to respond in effective ways to the restructuring that is occurring across the European steel sector. We suggest that unions have found it difficult to address the shift in corporate form within the sector, from nation-based and focused corporations to both multinational (and increasingly transnational) ones — a key development that is at the base of the sector’s restructuring activity. The specific contention is that unions have maintained an approach to interest representation that focuses on the state and/or supra-state, rather than the emerging corporate form that is beginning to characterise the sector. We suggest that one initial issue for unions to focus on is the articulation of alternative perspectives to prevailing corporate practice, as part of union strategy development (see Hyman 2007).

Training and workforce transformation in the European steel industry: questions for public policy1

The Lisbon process is aimed at laying the foundation for a dynamic, flexible and inclusive European Union (EU) economy. It is within this context, amid wider processes of restructuring and ‘modernization’, that traditional industries, such as steel, are engaged in transforming their skill base and creating a more diverse workforce. In this process, corporate management has a decisive role in reshaping the steel workforce, in the process exploiting the intersections between different aspects of policy. Our contention in this article is that EU policy prescriptions for transformation, aimed at fostering social cohesion and inclusion, are undone by corporate management strategies. In turn, national policy (on vocational education and training, for example) struggles to influence historically entrenched practices that operate at the sector level (such as on training and learning), which leaves some workers vulnerable to industry restructuring processes and at risk of social exclusion. Hence companies are able to restructure on their own terms, with workers’ representatives seemingly unable to intervene in effective ways. The analysis that follows thus focuses on the tensions between national and supra-national policy making in the EU, and, within this context, sector policy and practice and the role of corporate management in shaping work and employment.

Aspects of mutual engagement: school of engineering and industry collaborations

Abstract This paper is a case study of collaboration between a large steel company and a university’s school of engineering. Our aim is to contribute to understandings of engagement between employers and higher education institutions and explore some of the complexities of such collaborations in their initiation and propagation. The analysis derives from case study research of a Centre of Excellence, as a collaborative venture. What becomes evident in the analysis is the often uneven and complex nature of collaboration and the difficulties that derive from the specifics of (higher education and industry) sector (contractual and organisational, as well as learning) practices, policies and cultures. Of central importance to propagating a relationship is moving beyond initial customer–supplier relationships towards more deeply embedded forms of engagement. The aim in this respect is to develop and diversify collaboration activities. This, we argue, necessitates close consideration of the respective partners’ operational goals and structures – across, we suggest, three aspects of mutual engagement – and the way in which they are accommodated and mutually recognised within (and beyond) contractual relationships.