Abstract:
Australian labour set out on a grand attempt to restructure vocational
education and training in the 1980s and 1990S. The reforms were intended
to go beyond the scope of previous worker education by aiming at complete
systemic change by linking skill development to wages through the award
system. This article locates labour's training reform in the wider program of
economic modernization. It argues that unions provided the inspiration for the
new system but by the early 1990S had lost the initiative as enterprise bargaining
was introduced and as employer associations and state education bureaucracies
re-asserted control and established a new training market. That training
reform's original expectations were not delivered demands closer attention and
analysis. Learning the lessons of this experiment is an essential step for labour in
developing a positive agenda for workers' education in the future.
