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Inside the Workplace: Findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey, by Barbara Kersley, Carmen Alpin, John Forth, Alex Bryson, Helen Bewley, Gill Dix and Sarah Oxenbridge, London: Routledge, 2006, 408 pp., ISBN-10: 0-4153-7812-5 and ISBN-13: 978-0-41-537812-3

This thesis evaluates the Union Learning Agenda (ULA) in Wales using Behrens, Hamann and Hurd’s (2004) model of trade union revitalisation. The political, economic, membership and institutional spheres of union learning activity were explored through a mixed-method study that utilised a quantitative survey of 246 ULRs in Wales, alongside interview, observation and documentary research methods. The examination showed that within a political social partnership environment unions extracted resources from government and gained policy influence. The evaluation of workplace activity showed that ULRs were organising broadly defined learning for colleagues, and developing bargaining and consultation with employers over vocational and educational training (VET). Procedural mechanisms were more common where there was employer support for ULR activity and substantive outcomes were greater where procedural mechanisms were in place. Further, ULRs were engaging members through broad rather than narrow definitions of learning, and supporting the development of union-commitment behaviours (Snape and Redman 2004). The ULA was increasing the infrastructural resources, internal solidarity and network embeddedness of trade union institutional capacity (Levesque and Murray 2010), thereby contributing to trade union revitalisation processes. The thesis contributes to empirical knowledge on the ULA by providing the first analysis of activity in Wales. Secondly, it assessed the content and importance of multi-union and multi-actor activity in ULA networks. The thesis argues that in a context where government and employer support for union involvement is strong, a partnership approach to the ULA can aid union revitalisation not only at the workplace but beyond it.

The Union Learning Agenda and Trade Union Revitalisation in Wales

Facilitative reforms, democratic accountability, social accounting and learning representative initiatives

Increasing professional human capital and making full use of the foreign capital is China's important action about industrial structure adjustment and upgrade. This paper, based on the unstructured vector auto-regression model, analyzed the professional human capital and use foreign capital impact on upgrading the industrial structure in China. The results suggest that increased professional human capital and strengthen the use of foreign capital has the strong positive role in China's upgrading of the industrial structure, and the long-term role is even more significant and stable. Therefore, to increase the professional human capital and make full use of foreign capital should be a long-term strategy.

Research on the professional human capital and use foreign capital's impact on the industrial structure upgrading

When decision-making power about what happens in a classroom is rarely shared with students, hierarchies are reinforced, knowledge is static, and learning becomes passive. Learning agreements and learning contracts can undercut these dynamics, modeling democracy while promoting cooperation. Analyzing collective learning agreements in undergraduate conflict management courses, this article explores what students perceive to be productive learning methods and argues that collective learning agreements facilitate active learning, self and class governance, and shared responsibility for individual and collective success. Jointly constructing collective learning agreements disrupts traditional power relations while engendering creativity in students and professors alike.

Collective Learning Agreements as Democratic Practice and Joint Empowerment

This article draws upon original qualitative data to present an initial assessment of the significance of learning agreements for the development of socially responsible approaches to professional and human resource development within the workplace. The article suggests that the adoption of a partnership‐based approach to learning is more important for the advancement of social responsibility in relation to professional and human resource development than formal learning agreements, but that such agreements contribute to the sustainability of learning partnerships when they establish or strengthen mechanisms for social dialogue. The paper also argues that the most socially responsible approaches to professional and human resource development are associated with learning partnerships in which there is a relatively even balance of power between employers and unions.

Emma Wallis

Papers

Learning Agreements and Socially Responsible Approaches to Professional and Human Resource Development in the United Kingdom.