Working Lives Research Institute

text size: medium | large

skip navigation

Last updated: 05/10/08

TUL: Evaluation of UK's Union Learning Fund and its impact upon UK employers and Government Employment Policies

To download a copy of a recent report outlining research findings please click here.

To download a copy of a Conference Report, "Workplace Learning: Who Controls the Agenda?", please click here.

Timescale

Dec 15 2003 - Dec 14 2004

Researchers

Senior Research Fellow: Dr Sian Moore
Research Fellow: Hannah Wood

Funding

This research is funded by the European Commission Employment and Social Affairs DG, Employment and ESF Policy Coordination Employment Strategy.

With the election of the New Labour government in 1997, trade unions in the UK began to be viewed as key social partners in delivering the notion of a learning society¹. As a result in May 1998 a Union Learning Fund (ULF) was established to encourage and provide government funding for innovative trade union projects that promoted workplace learning. During its first four years of operation the ULF supported in excess of 350 individual projects involving over 50 unions and provided learning opportunities for approximately 28,000 people.

The unions concerned range from the relatively small Northern Carpet Trade Union through to Britain's largest union UNISON. According to the most recent data (2002) these projects have most typically have centred on developing learning representatives (22%), providing basic skills training (17%) and setting up individual learning accounts (14%). Moreover, the average funding per project was around £57,000 with the total awards representing £6.9 million of government funding and a further £3.23 million of external financing (Shaw et al, 2002b)².

The fund has also been instrumental in creating 180 learning centres, developing around 560 accredited courses and provided training for 6,500 union learning representatives (Lifelong Learning News, 2003). It is suggested that these representatives are increasingly young, female and from ethnic minority backgrounds (ibid.). Research also suggests that the ULF has been very successful in engaging non-traditional learners, including older males, those from minority ethnic groups and shift workers. It is estimated that around 80 per cent of ULF learners have qualifications below NVQ level 2 or equivalent.

An important recent development has been the introduction, in April 2003, of legal status for Union Learning Representatives (ULRs), a move which underlines the government’s belief that training is an important aspect of the employment relationship, but which may also encourage its inclusion in the bargaining agenda and/or the promotion of partnership between employers and unions.

Although the performance of the ULF is monitored annually by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (Antill et al, 2001; Cutter et al, 2000; Shaw, 1999; Shaw et al, 2003a) this monitoring appears to be limited in two main ways. First, they focus primarily on what can be described as hard quantitative outcomes, for example the ability of unions to achieve predefined governmental targets. Secondly, they have increasingly begun to emphasise employer practises. Ian Add a line here about the research done on union learning and employer productivity, albeit anecdotal. Whilst this is important, it tells us little about the internal dynamics of trade union learning.

Although, a number of unions are beginning to commission research in order to evaluate these issues within their own organisations there is currently little data relating to trade union learning fund activity as a whole. One clear example of this need is in the case of Union Learning Representatives. The data within the DfES reports relates to the number of individuals who have received training. Nevertheless, how many of these become active representatives, and what their ‘activity’ as a learning representative actually consists of, remains largely unknown at the UK national level.

Given the limited scope of existing ULF evaluation there is clearly a need to gauge the ‘softer’ outcomes of these projects as part of a more integrated and wide-ranging evaluation. This would capture the specific advantages of workplace learning over and above learning accessed outside the workplace and the particular role which trade unions can play in encouraging the take up of learning at work and boosting the capacity of employers as learning organizations. A more comprehensive approach would include the implications of the ULF for the UK government’s wider agenda of partnership as a model of industrial relations. It would examine how far Learning Agreements between employers and unions encourages unionization or expands the employer or union bargaining agenda.

The specific research questions fall under three headings:

• The role and experiences of learning representatives;
• The impact of the ULF on union agendas and organization;
• The impact of the ULF on the bargaining agenda and on industrial relations in the workplace - unionization and partnership.

1. The role and experiences of Union Learning Representatives

1. How did the ULR first get involved in union learning?
2. What type of union learning have ULR’s themselves been involved in?
3. Have they been involved in any other post-school learning and what are the specific features of union learning that encouraged their participation and activity?
4. How do ULR’s promote learning in the workforce, what techniques do they use and what works?
5. What barriers to learning in the workplace do ULR’s identify?
6. What sort of time off and facilities do ULR’s have?
7. What support needs do ULRs identify in meeting the demands of their role at the workplace and to what extent does (i) the employer and (ii) the union meet these needs?
8. What involvement do ULR’s have with the employer, at what level, how frequent and how formalized?
9. Have ULR’s been involved in the development of any policies on learning or training in the workplace?
10. What do ULRs feel they have achieved through union learning in terms of (a) professional development (b) personal skills and (c) union activity?
11. How far has involvement in union learning changed attitudes towards learning?
12. What evidence is there of career progression (i)within the organization (ii) in the wider labour market as a result of union learning?
13. How far has it altered career aspirations?
14. How far does learning extend beyond union membership to other family members and the wider community?
15. (xv) Is there a difference between union learning at the workplace and union learning which takes place off-site?

2. The impact of the ULF on union agendas and organization

1. How far is the learning agenda complementary to or in conflict with existing union bargaining agendas and policies?
2. Does the training of Union Learning Representatives (ULRs) bring a new layer of activists into the union?
3. What are the characteristics of ULRs in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, job role, and employer and how far do they differ from existing union representatives?
4. Are ULRs different from existing representatives in their values and in their attitudes towards unions and employers and do these attitudes and values change over time?
5. Are those accessing learning opportunities through the ULF existing union members or does the ULF act as a recruitment tool for the union and /or build a broader union audience?
6. Does any recruitment through the ULF attract workers who are different to the union’s existing membership base in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, job role, or employer (or sector)?
7. Do those accessing learning opportunities change their attitudes towards the union or unions in general?
8. How far do ULRs see themselves as recruiters for the union, how do they do it and how successful are they?
9. What proportion of learners subsequently become ULRs and/or active in the union?
10. How does any recruitment achieved through the ULF reflect the union’s existing recruitment and organising agenda (in terms of methods e.g. personal contact, like-for-like recruitment, mapping techniques) and how far does it extend and develop that agenda?

3. The bargaining agenda

1. To what extent are unions able to build relationships with employers where it has (a) no members and (b) no recognition using the Learning Agenda and Learning Agreements?
2. Does the Learning Agenda enable the union to build relationships with employers to whom members are transferred as a result of business transfers?
3. How far is the union able to build on Learning Agreements to extend the bargaining agenda with employers?
4. Is the Learning Agenda integrated into the wider bargaining agenda, in terms of agreements and bargaining structures, or is it separate?
5. Does the existence of Learning Agreements change bargaining relationships or the bargaining agenda with employers?
6. Does the existence of Learning Agreements or union learning projects change the attitude of employers towards unions?
7. Does the existence of Learning Agreements encourage ‘partnership’?
8. Does the existence of Learning Agreements support unionisation in the workplace and does this extend beyond facilities time for ULRs?

Research Method

This tender proposes to evaluate the impact of the ULF investment in lifelong learning within the UK by means of:

1. National Union survey

This will entail a survey of national union officers responsible for Union Learning. It will collect some hard data on the number of Union Learning Fund projects, number of Learning Agreements and number of ULRs and learners. However, the focus of the survey will be the implications of the ULF for the union°Øs bargaining agenda (Section 3 above) and for its recruitment and organizatal strategies (Section 2 above).

2. Focus on four unions - survey of Union Learning Representatives

The project will build upon research on Union Learning Representatives that the Working Lives Research Institute is currently developing with the finance union, UNIFI. It will bring in three other unions (there have been some initial discussions and unions have shown interest) and obtain aggregate data from these unions on the characteristics of ULRs, the type of learning provided and numbers of learners in order to answer a number of the questions in Section 2 above.

The questions on the bargaining agenda and relationship between union leaning and the union’s wider policies will be answered by examination of documentation of Learning Agreements, supplemented by interviews with officers responsible for Learning Agreements and wider bargaining in the four unions.

The questions on the experiences of ULR’s, how they operate within the workplace, their perceptions of the impact of union learning and their relationships with the employer will be answered through a large-scale survey of a sample of ULR’s in the four unions selected.

3. A national conference of Union Learning Representatives

The project would aim to organize the first national conference of Union Learning Representatives. Support for the conference would be built throughout the research using the contacts gained and we would aim for every union to be involved and to send a delegation of Union Learning Representatives. The conference would aim to present the findings of this research and to bring together other evaluations of union learning undertaken by individual unions. Primarily the conference would aim to provide a forum for ULRs, union officers and researchers to discuss research findings with a view to producing a report identifying the key elements of evaluation in ULF, and to capture the added value which union learning brings to national employment policies on training and lifelong learning.

References

Antill, M., Cutter, J., Brass, J., Morrtimore, C,, Rodger, J. and Shaw, N. (2001) 'An Evaluation of the Union Learning Fund in Year 3', DfES Research Report No. 282, July, London: HMSO, File at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR282.doc.

Cutter, J., Brass, J., Cowen, G., Dodd, M. and Turner, R. (2000) 'A Second Evaluation of the Union Learning Fund', DfEE Research Report No. 208, July, London: HMSO, File at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR208.doc.

Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1998) The Learning Age a Renaissance for a New Britain, Cm3790, February, London: Stationary Office.

Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1999) Learning to Succeed: A New Framework for Post-16 Learning, Cm 4392, June, London: HMSO.

Lifelong Learning News (2002) '£34 Million for Union Learning Fund-Lewis', Lifelong learning News, 15th November, File Accessed at http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/iln/late47.htm.

Lifelong Learning News (2003) 'Unions to be Given Key Role in Skills Strategy-Clark', Lifelong learning News, 2nd July, File Accessed at http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/iln/late62.htm.

Shaw, N., (1999) An Early Evaluation of the UNION Learning Fund', DfEE Research Report No. 113, May.

Shaw, N., Armistead, C., Rodger, J. and Hopwood, V. (2002a) 'Evaluation of the Union Learning Fund Year 4', DfES Research Brief No. 378, October, File at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RB378.pdf.

Shaw, N., Armistead, C., Rodger, J. and Hopwood, V. (2002b) 'Evaluation of the Union Learning Fund Year 4', DfES Research Report No. 378, October, London: HMSO, File at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR378.pdf.