Posted: Thursday, 19 March 2009

Between May and November 2007, six labour roundtables on the topic of work and learning were held across Canada. The sessions were organized by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) with the support of the Work and Learning Knowledge Centre (WLKC), one of five knowledge centres of the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL). The WLKC is jointly led by the CLC and Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME).

This historic partnership is aimed at ensuring that key labour market stakeholders, workers and employers, are jointly involved in setting the direction of the WLKC. The WLKC has a mandate to put information, research and insight about work and learning into the hands of Canadians who want to improve the quality and effectiveness of workplace education and training.

Together with over 150 organizations from across Canada that have become members of the WLKC, the CLC and the CME are committed to fostering dialogue and promoting good practice in workplace learning.

As the largest provider of non-vocational education for workers in Canada, the labour movement has an essential role to play in shaping the future of workplace training and education. The 2007 labour roundtables were a part of this effort.

More than 100 people participated in roundtables held in Vancouver, Regina, Toronto, Moncton, Halifax and St. John’s. In Regina people came together from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. The Moncton meeting included representatives from New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. In all, the discussions included people from nine provinces and one territory.

The participants represented a broad cross-section of the Canadian labour movement, including the skilled trades, public- and private-sector unions, officers and staff, of provincial federations of labour, union staff and labour activists. The participants’ goal going into the sessions was to:

• identify key work and learning issues and challenges
• exchange views on how labour engages employers to promote training
• identify priorities for action by unions
• A common agenda was developed for all of the roundtable discussions, which included discussions about:
• the political and economic context for worker education and training
• presentation and discussion of particular and specific programs developed by Canadian unions which are described in the WLKC-sponsored report, Integrating Equity, Addressing Barriers: Innovative Learning Practices by Unions, prepared by the Labour Education Centre (Toronto) and the Centre for the Study of Education and Work (University of Toronto)
• how to assist in the development of a labour perspective on key work and learning issues and challenges in Canada
• identification of the labour movement’s priorities for improving the present state of work and learning in Canada.

This report includes several sections. First, it briefly examines the national and international context for workplace learning and outlines the provincial and regional contexts which were reported in the sessions. Next, the report examines key work-related learning issues and challenges as identified by roundtable participants and ends with a discussion of the directions that the participants felt need to be taken by governments, employers and unions to improve workplace learning in Canada.

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