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This research investigated the potential role of trade unions in contributing to better skills utilisation in workplaces in Scotland. The report presents findings from three case studies in which management, unions and employees have worked together to improve the development and deployment of workers' skills to address business or organisational needs. The initiatives were investigated at different stages of development in order to highlight the challenges that emerge as skills utilisation interventions progress. The report raises awareness of the potential of skills utilisation initiatives to help employers to enhance performance, improve recruitment, selection, retention and progression, improve innovation and extend employee engagement.

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This book proposes the argument that job quality matters, contributing to economic competitiveness, social cohesion and personal well-being. Focusing on ‘bad jobs’, the book outlines debates, developments, issues and trends in job quality whilst asking the question are bad jobs inevitable? The chapters contribute to defining and measuring bad jobs, explaining variation and change in job quality, and identifying workplace practices and broader non-workplace strategies for making bad jobs better. The chapters are as follows: Job quality: scenarios, analysis and interventions / Francoise Carre, Patricia Findlay, Chris Tilly and Chris Warhurst; Part one ‘International overviews and comparative approaches’ includes: Identifying bad jobs across Europe / Jose-Ignacio Anton, Enrique Fernandez-Macias and Rafael Munoz de Bustillo; Job quality in the US: the myths that block action / Paul Osterman; Good jobs, bad jobs and the Australian experience / Barbara Pocock and Natalie Skinner; A framework for international comparative analysis of the determinants of low-wage job quality / Francoise Carre and Chris Tilly; Part two ‘Influences on job quality: sectoral approaches and workplace practices’ includes: At the altar of shareholder value?: corporate governance and conditions for better jobs in Swedish manufacturing / Tony Huzzard; Making bad jobs better: the case of frontline health care workers / Janette S. Dill, Jennifer Craft Morgan and Arne L. Kalleberg; When good jobs go bad: the declining quality of auto work in the global economy / Jeffrey S. Rothstein; Frontline managers matter: labour flexibility practices and sustained employment in US retail jobs / Susan J. Lambert and Julia R. Henly; Good or bad jobs?: contrasting workers’ expectations and jobs in Mexican call centres / Jose Luis Alvarez Galvan; Thirty years of hospital cleaning in England and Scotland: an opportunity for ‘better’ jobs / Anne Munro; Part three ‘Influences on job quality: the role of public policy’ includes: Unpacking the logics of labour standards enforcement: an alternative approach / Janice Fine and Jennifer Gordon; Under the radar: tracking the violation of labour standards in low-wage industries in the US / Nik Theodore, Annette Bernhardt and James DeFilippis with Ruth Milkman, Douglas Heckathorn, Mirabai Auer, Ana Luz Gonzalez, Victor Narro, Jason Perelshteyn, Diana Polson and Michael Spiller; Employment standards ‘modernization’ in Canada / Mark P. Thomas; Are skills the answer to bad jobs?: incentives to learn at the bottom end of the labour market / Ewart Keep and Susan James. Show less

Commissioned by the [Trades Union Congress] TUC, this paper presents original research by the Scottish Centre for Employment Research on union-led workplace learning. The research examines the relationship between learning and trade union organising at workplace level. It assesses how trade union organising contributes to worker learning and how that learning affects trade union organising. Based on qualitative research of three TUC-selected case studies, the research finds that for employees there can be provided additional learning and training previously absent from their employment.

Three types of learning - for personal development, job-related, and to enhance employability - were presented, and there is evidence that union-led workplace learning can enable a 'jobs escalator'. Learners can also progress up a 'learning escalator', starting with learning that is not directly job-related to learning that is. In participating in learning, unions are able to offer an additional service to existing and prospective members, attitudes to unions are positively changed and recruitment is enhanced. Worker participation in learning can act as a graduating experience, providing a 'roles escalator' that encourages members to become union learning representatives (ULRs) who, in turn, graduate to other union representative positions. The establishment of the ULR role can therefore be supportive of, rather than at the expense of, more traditional union representation. Finally, there is evidence that learning can contribute to improved industrial relations. These benefits were not comprehensive across the case studies and there are issues that warrant further investigation.

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