Learning, labour and union learning representatives: promoting workplace learning

Abstract

The initiative by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and affiliated trade unions in the UK to appoint trade union learning representatives (ULRs), to promote learning among their members, is a significant development in adult learning. Understandably, the initiative has attracted the attention of academic researchers, but primarily from the discipline of industrial relations, or human resource specialists with a focus on the institutions and practice of relations between the employee, their trade union and the employer. This paper, instead, addresses the role of learning advocates in promoting participation in formal workplace learning and draws on a wide selection of data and surveys to consider the contribution of ULRs to access and participation in learning by employees. In addition it is informed by an interview with the trade union founders of the Barnsley and Doncaster TUC/TEC Bargaining for Skills project (BDTUC/TEC, 2010).