Union Learning: Canadian Labour Education in the Twentieth Century, and: Trade Union Education in Europe (review)

Anyone wanting to study labor education would probably be surprised how little is actually written about what we do as labor educators. Both of these books represent a "first"—Taylor's book is the first ever account of the development of union education in Canada, and the Bridgford and Stirling collection is the first ever survey of European labor education. Both provide a basis for comparison with developments in the US.

Jeff Taylor's Union Learning: Canadian Labour Education in the Twentieth Century fills a gaping hole in our knowledge of the development of Canadian labor education. Over a three-year period, Taylor used his skills as a social and labor historian to tease out an understanding of the previously untold history of Canadian labor education. The result is a book that sets the development of labor education against the history of unionization and the economic and social conditions of the later part of the 20th century, an account that also acknowledges parallel developments in adult education.

Labor education is the most important contemporary form of non-vocational adult education available to working Canadians, with 120,000 union members undertaking some form of labor education each year in Canada. Just because unions provide most of this themselves, without relying on outside educational institutions, scholars should not overlook it.

Taylor maps out the central role played by the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) from 1918 to 1946, charting the relations between the WEA, central union bodies and the emerging industrial unions. The union's role in the workplace and society was contextualized in a non-sectarian fashion that retained the support of communist and non-communist unions alike. The WEA's influence only waned, Taylor asserts, when individual unions began developing their own education capacity post-war, and when the cold war anti-communist hysteria linked anyone who had worked with communists or communist-led unions as fellow travelers.

The book documents the growth in unions' internal educational capacity and the consolidation of a training approach to union learning. It also looks at developments in universities and colleges and helps us understand why it was (in contrast to the US) that they played such a minor role in the provision of basic union education.

Taylor outlines the union and union education responses to new issues, including feminization and diversity of the workforce and of unions, and charts the development of new initiatives such as the important United Automobile Workers (UAW) paid educational leave thrust. In the final chapters he argues that labor education has contributed to a rebuilding of a "movement" consciousness within unions and has begun addressing questions posed by the workplace learning agenda. He concludes with a quick review of international developments and some pointers for future development.

Given the scarcity of literature available, this is an amazingly comprehensive account of the key developments of Canadian labor education, pieced together as it is from diverse archival material.

Bridgford and Stirling's edited collection provides us with an overview of European union education in 15 countries. Each chapter follows the same format: an introduction providing background or context is followed by sections on access, funding, the role of central labor bodies, a case study of metalworking unions, and in some cases comments on European dimensions and current developments.

This format allows us to make comparisons between countries with very different labor movements and hence very different labor education traditions. Bridgford and Stirling do a good job helping the reader make sense of this diversity in their introductory chapter on European systems of trade union education. North American readers in particular will be surprised to find how much of European union education attracts employer-paid time off work...