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Engaging research: European attempts to develop links between research institutions and trade unions

Keith Forrester, Department of External Studies, University of Leeds

Abstract

Within a European context aimed at strengthening the links between research institutions and trade unions, it is suggested that adult educators can play a valuable enabling role.

Introduction

The return, once again, of ‘the trade unions’ to the centre of the political stage in Britain in recent months with, moreover, strong public sympathy in a number of cases, must have come as somewhat of a surprise to the adherents of the end-of-history thesis. Like trade unions in the 1980s, Industrial Relations specialists and Industrial Studies staff in Adult Education Departments within a number of British universities experienced the harsher climate of the last decade, finding themselves marginalised or as part of some new enterprising, income-generating, mega-business faculty.

For British trade unions and the majority of their active members, these university developments and associated internal ideological re-alignments were not of tremendous significance. Historically and organisationally absent from the institutional concerns of British higher education, the enthusiastic university endorsement of the relationship between higher education and industry merely confirmed to the trade unions the previously hidden research links, assumptions and agendas. The context is however changing.

The European trade union research initiative

In 1987, the European Commission initiated a rolling programme of national conferences within member states[1]. Following the Brussels Conference, national meetings have been held in Denmark[2], England[3] and France[4] with future conferences planned in Italy, Spain and Greece. Organised in conjunction with the national trade union centre(s) and attracting a wide variety of participants, the conferences had as their primary concern the exploration of how ‘the two side of industry jointly discover, in an atmosphere of trust, appropriate answers to the changes engendered by the new technologies’. As was stated at the Brussels Conference, any ‘genuine dialogue presupposes a balance and an equal level of knowledge between two sides of industry. In this context, co-operation between the universities, research centres and trade unions is therefore of the utmost importance’.[5]

The British context

Despite the creation in 1925 of the TUC’s own Research Department with similar developments within individual trade unions in the 1950s and 1960s, British trade unions have as Brown states rather polemically ‘neglected academic argument in favour of organisational muscle’. Relying instead on a strong tradition of workplace organisations and collective bargaining, trade union research activity has tended to focus on data collection tasks necessary in the servicing of bargaining committees. Additional factors accounting for the insignificant research role with British trade unions would include the dominating presence of the Labour Party and the historically indifferent, and at times ideological hostile attitude within many research institutions towards labour organisations.

As a result of this historically complex and peculiarly British legacy, the attempt to strengthen research links between trade unions and universities in this country will require overcoming formidable obstacles. Unlike the situation in a (small) number of universities in Belgium, France, Germany or, of course, the Scandinavian countries, there are no institutionalised academic links with labour organisations in Britain. Such academic, political and social isolation between universities and trade unions partly contributes to the caution expressed by some Industrial Relation specialists, about research being too close ‘to the battle lines of collective bargaining ... 0It raises the legitimate wrath of employers’. Within the British research context, worries that ‘academic values become casualties in the crossfire’ must ring a little hollow to British trade unions.

There has always been, of course, a healthy research interest, with a deserved international reputation, in the affairs and minutiae of trade unions in Britain. However, accepting the risk of crudely oversimplifying the variety and perspectives within this area of research, it might be helpful to construct a matrix that contrasts the conceptual and methodological approaches of researchers in this area. Such a figure, it will be argued, suggests fruitful areas for adult educationalists within the overall context of ‘strengthening the links between trade unionists and research institutions’.

Figure l

Conceptual approach

Radical

D

Active

/

Pluralist

A

Passive C /

B

Although in practice, each dimension within the conceptual and methodological approaches may be more appropriately considered as a continuum, they are treated as dichotomous in the figure above to illustrate the argument. By ‘pluralist’ is meant a self regulating system of industrial relations with conflictual elements seen as an aberration from the norm: ‘radical’ by contrast implies a theoretical acknowledgement of conflict being endemic within the employment relationship[6].

Undoubtedly, the majority of academic research with a practical application in industry represents active co-operation with employers in the resolution of technical problems (box A): problems invariably embodying managerial assumptions. The views and aspirations of the operatives remain largely invisible: the identified solutions open resulting in work intensification or job losses. A second, equally persuasive mode of academic research in industrial relations may similarly be characterised as substantially excluding trade unions. Irrespective of whether the research activity tends to be located more within the passive-pluralistic ‘B’ cell or, the theoretically distinct (often Marxist) passive-radical ‘C’ cell, the relationship of the trade unions to these research efforts is largely reduced to the provision of data ie. working on trade unions rather than against trade unions. Such a designation does not deny the importance and usefulness of the research results and reports to the trade unions. Much of the research has relevance for both parties engaged in the bargaining process and has, in the last 20-30 years, informed successive generations of industrial relations managers and union officials alike.

It is within the active-radical ‘D’ area that research activity is weakest in Britain ie. within a conceptual framework sympathetic to the unions (working with the unions). It is within this area that the most exciting developments in trade union-research centre collaboration have taken place in Scandinavia under the banner of democratising the research process.

Democratising the research process and the possible contribution by adult educationalists

The present context in Britain provides the most favourable opportunity for addressing the historical shortcomings of the trade union/research institution relationship. The European Commission’s research initiative coupled with the issues of the Single Market within a ‘Fortress Europe’ has provided an impetus for trade unions to develop a serious and systematic research capability. This task will be made easier in the long run with the help and support of sympathetic researchers from within the area of adult education. For the academics, in return, there is attraction of research results forming part of the collective bargaining process, of being part of the contested terrain that the European Commissions notion of change on a ‘socially acceptable basis’ requires.

In British university adult education departments with existing links to trade unions, there are a number of initiatives that could be explored in the period ahead. At an institutional level, these could include jointly agreed, externally funded research projects through to the formal involvement of labour organisations in designated research centres involving interested academic staff from a number of departments. At a less formal level, there is the possibility of adult educationalists developing a sympathetic trade union research resource within a region through research seminars, fulltime officer staff development programmes and liaison between trade unions and subject specialists with the university. At an international level, there is already evidence that the variety of direct links between adult educational providers and indirect links through international organisations can provide a hospitable base for particular trade union research projects, often funded through one of the European Commission research budgets.

But perhaps the most exciting contribution of adult educators within the research-trade union initiative is the development of the methodological innovations demanded within collaborative research processes[7]. Such a model entails a restructuring of the traditional relationship between researchers and workers in the attempt to create teams capable of combining research skills coupled with the intimate knowledge of lay union members within the collective bargaining context. Collaborative research practices requires the creation of those conditions whereby, as Gustavsen[8] puts it, ‘the different contributions will enter into a developmental relationship with each other, generating an end product that is more than the sum of the original inputs’.

None of the suggestions above are straightforward and, within the British context, possibly represent an unfamiliar agenda. Elsewhere within Europe, however, such considerations on research are less foreign. The French Conference, for example, subtitled ‘Towards new ways of working?’ contains a number of valuable papers and reflections around such agenda items. And within a context whereby ‘the Europe we know in July no longer existed’[9], there is the example and encouragement to situate research as part of a programme of genuine empowerment when the research process itself is democratised.

[1] LE Andreasen (ed) (1988) Joint research by trade unions and universities into the technological society of tomorrow. Brussels: C