Developing a quality workforce: Linking a strategic research agenda to industry training; and Higher level skill needs and worker voice: Exploring new ground in skills analysis.

Abstract

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.