In this article, we compare trade union training for European Works Council members in Ireland, in Germany and at EU level. The programmes have only limited success in fostering transnational union action. We conclude that the limited transformative impact of unions’ training programmes is not for the most part due to lack of resources. Rather, their narrow pedagogical focus on technical knowledge and skills crowds out the development of knowledge about social mobilization and the construction of attitudes of solidarity between unions.
In the literature on cross-border labor action, labor education is seen as an important factor to improving it. This article therefore first reconstructs an innovative pedagogic concept, transformative Transnational Competence, to advance transnational labor education and action. Although initially developed for multinational firms and international organizations, this pedagogical concept is promising for labor, as it also focuses on emotional issues that are central to collective action. Subsequently, we use our reconstructed concept as a yardstick to assess labor education programs of public and private sector unions in Ireland and Germany. Our study shows that all unions face similar difficulties leading to rather little attention to transnational labor education, regardless of the very different labor relations landscapes in which they are operating. Hence, unions’ difficulties in relation to transnational labor education and action cannot be due to distinct national or sectorial factors, such as labor relations systems and different amounts of resources allocated to labor education. Instead, transnational labor education is facing challenges that are common in all cases, notably the tension between utilitarian and emancipatory orientations of union leaders, educators, and members involved in labor education programs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.