This presentation will pivot around the relationship between industry training,
workplace productivity, worker voice, and the role of unions. Two, linked mini-papers
will be presented. Both built on material presented to last year’s forum. The first minipaper
summarises a template developed by the researchers in response to
approaches from Industry Training Organisations. Its focus is on labour market skills
forecasting. The second mini-paper breaks new ground. It outlines the broad thrust of
a new research project that explores the more advanced skills required by workers in
order to participate effectively in high performance (manufacturing) workplace
schemes. Underpinning both mini-papers is the researchers’ central focus on the ways
in which on-the-job union activity, the redesign of work, workers’ education and
training, and employee involvement at the workplace can come together in order to
provide workers with a ‘voice’ both in their work and in the wider society.
The mini-papers assume that workplace productivity is central not only to the growth of
the New Zealand economy, but also to union renewal and the achievement of the
union movement’s social agenda. But they also recognise that for unions and workers
the present emphasis on the ‘knowledge society’ will fall short of their economic and
social aspirations unless it looks well beyond the myopic horizon of narrow, inherently
self-limiting, skills training.
The presentation will end with an integrative conclusion.
