Agents of Neoliberalism? The Contested Role of the ULR

Abstract

This chapter explores the way in which the narratives of Union Learning Representatives (ULRs) reflect the contested ideologies and discourses surrounding trade union learning. It locates union learning in the context of the Labour Government’s learning and skills agenda, essentially concerning the promotion of individual employability for national productivity and competitiveness. However, it also considers and challenges critiques of the role of union reps in workplace learning, in particular those of John Mcllroy who has argued that union involvement with New Labour’s initiatives demonstrate the ‘limits of trade union practice in a neo-liberal skills regime’ (Mcllroy and Croucher, 2009, p. 287) constraining union militancy and by implication the consciousness of ULRs. Whilst in Chapter 3 we saw how workplace grievances provoked collective organisation and activism, in contrast union learning is posited as a material benefit or service to members and potential members in workplaces with existing union organisation and thus does not appear to fit within the parameters of mobilisation theory. Whilst learning has the capacity to attract new activists, Eddie Donnelly and Julia Kiely have also suggested that there might be ‘a separation of learning advocacy from workplace adversarialism’ (2007, p. 80) and that the ‘dispositions’ of new ULRs may be characterised by an instrumentalist motivation towards the role and a‘self-imposed restraint’ (2007, p. 83), so that they are unlikely to engage in a sustained fashion with union mobilisation and/or employer ambivalence.