The role of learning and education in trade union efforts to organise young and precarious workers

Barbara Samaluk

doi:10.3384/rela.2000-7426.5859

Authors

Barbara Samaluk University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1686-6047

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3384/rela.2000-7426.5859

Keywords:

workers’ education, radical adult education, dialogical education, trade unions, young and precarious workers

Abstract

Due to increasing precarisation, trade unions face challenges of organising young and precarious workers. Although research informs of innovative union strategies in this regard, there is a gap in understanding the role of learning and education in trade union efforts to organise young and precarious workers. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on industrial relations and adult education scholarship to examine a case study of innovative strategies of the Trade Union Youth Plus (TUYP) that has since 2011 operated in Slovenia. Findings show that dialogical approaches to education played a crucial role in the establishment and development of TUYP and its innovative proactive fieldwork and communication tactics, which increased unions’ dialogical capacity to engage with, organise and unionise young and precarious workers, and ultimately also led to the transfer of knowledge from TUYP to the wider trade union movement. The article shows that dialogical approaches to education are a necessary prerequisite for organising and unionising young and precarious workers and for revitalising trade union organisations.

Author Biography

Barbara Samaluk, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

Barbara Samaluk is an associate professor at the Department of Educational Sciences at the Faculty of Arts in University of Ljubljana. Her research focuses on work-life transitions, transnational mobility and migration and related precarity and intersectional inequalities, as well as critical adult education and (self)organization of precarious workers and wider social groups. She has published in Work, Employment and Society, European Journal of Industrial Relations, Organisation Studies, Studies in Adult Education and Learning and International Journal of Lifelong Education.

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