Please do not quote or copy before discussion with authors. Addressing Employability through Workplace Learning: Questions for Trade Unions

This paper is concerned with the relationship between trade unions and learning in the workplace, particularly with regard to how that relationship might enhance worker employability profiles. With the restructuring and modernising of the European steel industry as its context, the paper argues that the organisational and structural features of a sector have a profound influence on the way workplace learning is organised. The particular implications of this for trade unions, is that their involvement in skill formation and workplace learning is marginal. The result is that union bargaining positions are weakened and steel workforce employability profiles inadequately developed