Joint Union-Management Workforce Development Model

1

Running head: AN EFFECTIVE MODEL FOR EDUCATING AND RETRAINING WORKING ADULTS

An Effective Model for Educating and Retraining Working Adults: Lessons Learned from Joint Union-Management Training Programs

Daniel Marshall, The GeorgeWashingtonUniversity

Ellen Scully-Russ, The GeorgeWashingtonUniversity

Full Paper

International Labor Process Conference

RutgersUniversity

15-17, March 2010

Introduction

In their early synthesis of the features shared by joint training programs, Ferman, Hoyman and Cutcher-Gershenfeld (1990) argued that these programs represented a distinctive innovation in worker training and career development with the potential to become “a stable and significant domain” in labor-management relations. The authors described joint training programs as an emerging set of institutional arrangements that included large-scale, negotiated, and jointly administered trust funds that provided technical training, personal development, and access to education for union members. Though there were many examples of joint union-management training activity prior to the appearance of the industrial joint training program model, earlier programs were narrowly focused on single issue training or time-bounded training efforts. In contrast, the new model spanned many areas of training activity, covered divergent populations of workers and managers, and incorporated service delivery strategies guided by a philosophy of worker involvement and jointly-determined decision-making. Among other research implications, the authors identified the classification of joint training activities as a challenge for understanding the structural tendencies within these young organizations.

Notably, the authors speculated that the emergence of these innovative joint training programs marked a historic change in traditional collective bargaining practices and past attitudes of both union and management toward the centrality of education and training activities. Writing during a time in which union density was near its post-war high and the mechanisms of collective bargaining were finely tuned, Gomberg (1967) argued that special labor-management committees, including those covering human relations issues, were transitory formations that reflected (inherently unstable) experiments in class collaboration and focused on supplementary issues (such as worker displacement.) Such efforts would survive, he said, only if they remained subsidiary to the collective bargaining process. Contemporary industrial relations experts disagree. Based on the experience of employee involvement programs, Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Kochan, and Verma (1991) concluded that jointly-sponsored participative initiatives that involved unions as full partners and were directly connected to collective bargaining contracts were likely to be sustained over time because they bore the capacity to broaden out to encompass many issues, helping to institutionalize the program into the overall operations of the organization. Joint programs were not isolated phenomena, these authors argued, but signaled a fundamental restructuring of labor-management relations. As both management and labor came to understand the need for continuous workplace learning for employees and adjusted the services in joint programs according to competitive pressures, scholars predicted, such programs could become “permanent social institutions” (Ferman, et al., 1990, p. 160)

Our research into the current status of joint training and continuous workplace learning programs bolsters the argument of latter day scholars. We examine the extent to which these programs have been institutionalized as well as the potential role of the joint union-management training model in helping to craft the comprehensive workforce development system called for in this volume.

While diminishing resources have forced several existing programs to modify their offerings and for some, to shut their doors all together; new programs have emerged and some existing programs have expanded their offerings beyond the provision of formal education and training in the workplace and now include a wide array of services that intervene at the point of production to improve quality and firm performance. In addition many joint union-management training programs now engage in regional and sector partnerships, taking on new functions as workforce development intermediaries in the external labor market to extend to new population groups in the wider community. Importantly, the joint training program model has spread its reach across the domestic economy.

Our review suggests that joint training programs have proven to be resilient institutionswith the capacity to respond to the great need for ongoing worker education to active and laid-off workers. In this paper we argue that the involvement of joint union-management partnerships in internal and external labor markets not only strengthens the joint training program model, but also adds value to the broader workforce development system, helping to improve the effectiveness of the system in those industries and regions where joint programs exist. Furthermore we argue that joint training programs not only represent a shift in the strategic importance of jointness within the U.S. labor movement, but that these efforts were the primary mechanisms by which this shift occurred.

The paper begins with a discussion of two seminal works on joint training programs that together codified the joint training model, including its organizational structure(Ferman, et al., 1990) and worker-centered pedagogy(Sarmiento & Kay, 1990). It continues with a review of the literature about joint training published between 1990 and 2009. The aim of this review is to 1) to identify the features of the model that have beeninstitutionalized, and2) to discuss the innovations that have occurred in the model. We conclude with a discussion of the policies that may help to strengthen and expand the role of joint training programs in the 21st Century workforce development system.

The Legacy of 1980’s: The Joint Training Program Model

The joint training modelfirst emerged in 1982when faced with massive industrial restructuring, the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America(UAW) and the Ford Motor Company negotiated the UAW-Ford Education, Training, and Development Program to retrain thousands of displaced auto workers in new careers(Ferman, et al., 1990). The parties realized before long that industrial restructuring required active workers to develop deeper technical skills and broader capacity for critical thinking and problem solving. The UAW-Ford program was broadened to offer education and training to incumbent workers. The UAW quickly distributed the model throughout the auto sector, first by negotiating new programs with the other twoUS automakers, General Motors and Chrysler, and then with the larger auto supply firms. Soon the Communications Workers of America (CWA) the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) took up the model and negotiated a joint training fund in the 1986 contract with AT&T forming the Alliance for Employee Growth and Development.

By the early 1990s, the model had become widely distributed among large, unionized firms. In their early years, joint programs represented a significant new investment in the education and training of segment of the American workforce, frontline industrial workers, who had been largely ignored by the training sponsored by employers and the public system. The new programs were massive, well-funded operations that offered servicesto thousands of workers across the country. In addition, training delivery was largely decentralized, designed and administered by local committees and functioning through contracts with local education providers. The limited history and the complex nature of these programs meant little could be known about their operations and their outcomes.

Ferman, Hoyman, Cutcher-Gershenfeld, & Savioe (1990; 1991) were among the first to attempt to codify the model. To compensate for the lack of systematic research on joint programs, the research team drew upon data from a survey of 102 labor management pairs and the anecdotal accounts of program leaders and practitioners in large, national programsto outline the basic program modeland explain how joint programs were an innovation to workforce development and training (see Table One: Distinguishing Features of Joint Training Programs). In its simplest form the model consisted of three basic elements: 1) a negotiated training trust fund, 2) a joint governance structure including a single union and a single employer, and 3) a mission to upgrade the skills and meet the personal development needs of union members.

• Rooted in and defined by collective bargaining which specifies mission, governance, coverage, and provides a financial formula
• Broad target population including both displaced and active worker
• Emphasis on career development, employment security, and broad training and education that would increase workforce flexibility
• An implicit agreement that joint training programs would not replace existing union and company training obligations such as apprenticeship training and specific job or production related training
• Co-determination in decision making
• Participant driven content; training based on worker’s expressed needs and aspirations
• High degree of local control over training; local joint committees determine needs, organize training, develop service delivery system and relationships
• Extensive use of local community networks for counseling, assessment, and training
• Evaluation based on outcomes for workers

In the same year the AFL-CIO Human Resources Development Institute (HRDI) published Worker-Centered Learning: A Union Guide to Workplace Literacy(Sarmiento & Kay, 1990). Rather than focus on the institutional arrangements,funding mechanisms, and institutional relationships, these authors offered a prescription for a worker-centered pedagogy to guide the development of joint training programs and their relationships with workers. By combiningtrade union values for workplace democracy and equity with established principles of adult learning, worker-centered learning places the learners’ needs and interests at the center of the educational process. Workers are engaged in every step of the process from design, delivery, to evaluation. In addition, basic education and job related trainingare broadly contextualized so that the participants are encouraged to explore the social, economic, and political structures that shape their work and skill requirements. The authors articulated several worker-centered learning principles (as depicted in Table Two), which they suggested union leaders and program operators use to guide the development, delivery, and evaluation of education and training provided by joint training programs.

• Education builds on what workers already know, taking the workers’ strengths, not their deficiencies, as the starting point in the educational program
• Education for the whole person, not just the learning needs related to the workplace
• Codetermination in development and planning of program
• Participatory, bottom-up decision making to ensure that programs are responsive to needs of workers and learning goals
• Equal access to programs; barriers to entry like current skills and responsibilities are mitigated by a compliment of support services
• Worker involvement in the design of skill assessments which in turn are used to support individual learning goals and to provide feedback on individual progress and not as tools to screen workers for placement in jobs
• Classroom records are confidential
• Basic skills education is integrated into a larger education program

Since 1990 the literature on the industrial joint union-management training programs has largely followed these two tracks. Authors often anchor their discussion of joint training programs on the basic structural and pedagogical principles set forth in these seminal works, providingvery little systematic analysis or critical inquiry to confirm, extend, or invalidate them. Ironically, though Ferman, et al. (1990) called for rigorous research to refine the joint program principles and cultivate the model, no one, not even the authors themselves, took up the systematic study they proposed. While much has been published about joint training programs in the last twenty years it is largely anecdotal, drawing upon the accounts of program leaders and practitioners as well as publicly available documents, program materials, and journalistic accounts to describe individual programs.

This anecdotal research on joint training programs lies in stark contrast to the rigorous and substantial line of research that exists on joint programs focused on single issues like health and safety (Israel & Schurman, 1990; Schurman, Hugentobler, & Robins, 1990)as well as extensive research that exists on broad, strategic, and firm or industrial level labor-management partnerships (Kochan, Eaton, McKersie, & Adler, 2009; Luria, Vidal, Wial, & Rogers, 2006; MIT, 2001). Indeed, many authors acknowledgethe lack of rigor in the literature on joint training programs and offer several explanations. Some claim joint programs lack the resources to invest in data collection and program evaluation (Tao, Richard, Tarr, & Wheeler, 1992), so they also lack the systems and knowledge to track program quality and performance (Bloom & Campbell, 2002). Harris (2000) attributes this lack of investment in data collection and analysis to the politicized nature of the union-management partnership that make union and management leaders fearful that evaluations may reveal shortcomings in programs. The end result is that there are fewagreed upon metrics to evaluate the effectiveness ofjoint programs (Bloom & Campbell, 2002). A systematic research agenda is hampered by the lack of a validatedset of descriptive variables that can be used to compare one program to another (Ferman, et al., 1990).

In a review of the literature on joint training programs from 1990-2009 we observed that, except for a few evaluations of specific courses and initiatives sponsored by joint training programs, the literature has largely focused on set of principles and practices that closely resemble those first articulated in the 1990s, which the authors claim contribute to the effectiveness of joint training programs. These claims are backed up with anecdotal evidence gleaned mainly from the authors’ experience or through interviews with program leaders. The endurance of an anecdotal set of principlesin the literature on joint programs to us is evidence of a shared body of knowledge cultivated by a community of practitioners who govern and operate joint training programs. We argue that this community and its knowledge of effective worker education and training is a valuable resource which should be tapped by the broader workforce development system.

The Practice of Joint Training (1990-2009)

Fivefeatures of joint training programs emerged in the review of the literature published between 1990 and 2009. Though built upon the basic principles first outlined in 1990 (Ferman, et al., 1990; Sarmiento & Kay, 1990) these features have been extended, distributed, and institutionalized in the structure and operations of joint training programs by a community of practitioners who share common values for promoting economic and educational equity. These institutionalized featuresinclude: 1) reliance on a pedagogy of worker-centered learning; 2) a wide array of services and programs; 3) delivery of services to multiple population groups; 4) development of multiple labor market capacities and functions; and 5) a partnership organizational structure in which labor and management share in the governance and balance multiple interests in workplace training.

Worker-Centered Pedagogy

Worker-centered learning is a functional, contextualized learning experience in which workers engage and come to know more about real workplace issues and performance problems as they develop new knowledge and skills. General education and skills training are contextualized in the functional aims of workers who voluntarily enroll in training to improve job performance, advance in their careers, or to develop and grow as a person. Educators and participants often construct the curriculum together by drawing upon workplace, union, or political-economic issues to contextualize the learning program. Box 1, an example of a worker-centered program for nursing home workers sponsored by the SEIU 1199 Education and Upgrading Fund, shows how the pedagogy is part of a broader process of individual empowerment and economic development. It is a systematic approach to workplace learning that builds new learning structures and relationships into the daily experience of workers, which supports the application of new skill and knowledge on the job.

Worker-centered pedagogyplaces the learner at the center of the educational program, engaging them directly in the entire learning process. According to Schied(1994)this is accomplished through the active role of the union in the education program.

Worker centered learning recognizes that workers, through their unions, play a central role in developing their own educational programs. A worker-centered approach makes the worker, in context of his/her union, the cornerstone of the educational program.....the learner and union educational staffare actively involved in the development of the curriculum (p. 9).

Kemble (2002)argues that union involvement adds value to workplace education and training in two ways. First, unions negotiate training funds that serve to address a major gap in human capital investments in U.S. industries because they extend training to the front-line, active workforce, a population that is often overlooked by employer training and public workforce development programs. Secondly, the involvement of the union in program design tends to mitigate the power differential that exists between workers and managers in the training needs assessment process. Workers who work though their unions are often more candid when talking about performance problems and this candor results in a more accurate training needs assessment and a better, more relevant program design.

Though joint programs have an institutionalized pedagogy that places the worker at the center of the learning process, programs will contextualizethe training in the workplace to ensure that the education and training takes production issues and goals into account. The dual focus of joint training programs ensures that all stakeholder interests are considered and in the design and delivery of training.