This paper aims to assess the trade unions’ alignment with the European Union (EU)’s skills strategy and the priority that trade unions give to the promotion of lifelong learning across all segments of the Belgian (future) workforce. Trade Unions hereby find themselves in competing social dialogues regarding Education, Employment and Social policy-making. The leading research question of this article is: how do trade unions contribute to promoting lifelong learning in Belgium?

For the last two decades scholars and policy-makers, knowledgeable in the disciplines of (Adult) Education and Social Sciences, have addressed the diversity of (adult) learners, and have warned for the risk of creating a dual society, between ‘those who know’ and ‘those who don’t know’ (Boeren, 2009; Desjardins & Ioannidou, 2020). Possessing agency to participate to (adult) learning in the new Information Society, is not an equal challenge for all (Boeren, 2017; Eynon & Malmberg, 2021; Iñiguez-Berrozpe & Boeren, 2020).

The EU’s Pillar of Social Right urges social partners, including trade unions, to put equal access to lifelong learning higher on the collective bargaining agenda (CEC, 2021; CEDEFOP, 2020) while Adult Education Surveys tell that employers distribute investments in adult learning unequally across their groups of employees. Vulnerable employees, are likely to participate less in learning in an unfavourable learning climate (Boyadjieva & Ilieva-Trichkova, 2017; Fugate, Heijden, Vos, Forrier, & Cuyper, 2021; Vansteenkiste, Kimps, Penders, Deschietere, & Van Cauwenberghe, 2022; Vansteenkiste, Verbruggen, Forrier, & Sels, 2014).

Policy-makers and business practitioners introduce upskilling and reskilling measures against the contested paradigms of full employment, and the imperfect matching of skills (de Beer, 2022; B. E. Kaufman, 2010). They blend concepts such as 21^st century skills, STEM education, lifelong learning and employability in contemporary work-of-the-future-narratives, and push educational curricula and teaching methods into reforms to modernise economy on the Industry 4.0 highway (Bughin, Lund, & Hazan, 2018; Federal Government, 2018; Krajcik, Sahin, & Mohr-Schroeder, 2019). The EU’s positioning of adult learning goals in economic competitiveness strategies, and the increased focus on quantitative benchmarking, tend to narrow down lifelong learning to lifelong earning goals (Boeren & Íñiguez-Berrozpe, 2022).

Educators often see their role with a humanistic scope, and fear that the social function of education is crowded out under business needs (Rasmussen & Lolle, 2022) while employers complain that school leavers lack a lifelong learning mentality and skillset to transit smoothly from school to work, and to adapt quickly to changing skill demands in the workplace (De Rick, 2010; Hvinden et al., 2019; K. Kaufman, Sahin, & Mohr-Schroeder, 2019). 

Scholars find that growing effective lifelong learners before they enter the world of work, requires an integrated approach, and diverse learning experiences and diversity interactions from teachers (Loes, Pascarella, & Umbach, 2012). Goodman et al. recommend that instructors obtain training and support to adapt their teaching approach, and integrate diversity in view of improving learning for all students (Goodman & Bowman, 2014). Culver et al. have found -especially for students with lower grades when starting college- that a combination of in-class rigor and intellectually challenging assignments for first-year students benefits their critical thinking skills in the fourth year of college and throughout their careers (Culver, Braxton, & Pascarella, 2019).

Providing diversified education curricula demands considerable efforts from teachers, and leads to teachers’ trade union opposition (Barrett, 2020). Trade unions experience paradoxical tensions between debates of educational modernisation on one hand, and implementation of citizenship education frameworks, boosting equal access to 21^st century skills’ provision on the other hand. This research will describe and explain the pathways and instruments that trade unions in Belgium use to implement emerging lifelong learning legislation. 

This paper takes a qualitative approach. Partially explanatory, it builds on five types of data sources: policy documents by International Organizations (OECD, EU), Belgian legislation, collective labour agreements, a review of academic literature at the intersection of the primary multidisciplinary research fields, and semi-structured interviews with Belgian trade union representatives from all involved governance levels, for four different sectors, which each face similar and different skill challenges, under the influence of digitisation and the EU’s 2030 learning targets and skills strategy (Construction, Food industry, Transport and Logistics, and Education). The document study from the above mentioned sources and the semi-structured interviews critically and empirically analyse how collective labour agreements and employee representation effectively translate the EU’s skills strategy, with a fairness and diversity lens, targeted at an inclusive educative workplace. Mechanisms and measures which contribute to equal access and reduce obstacles to participation are identified as ‘inclusive’. Worker and workplace characteristics that are decisive for the entitlement of training rights are coded as either inclusive or exclusive. In order to be able to assess and explain the complexity and contested contributions of trade unions in the Belgian ecosystem of (adult) learning and education, the paper reverts to Varieties of Capitalism, Corporatism, and Industrial Relations literature, in which the role of the state, institutional complementarities, and the tensions between stakeholders and their competing interests, are central. The findings from the five types of independent data sources are brought together in a discussion section.

Building a learning society all the way to the entire future and current workforce requires many steps of alignment amongst units of advisory, decision-making and executional bodies in their complex setting of subnational, national, sectoral and regional levels with varying competencies, autonomy and narratives. The challenges for the Education sector and its entire workforce are paramount. Teachers are urged to adapt educational curricula and training approaches more rapidly, in order to respond to labour market and business needs. Educational reforms launched by Education Ministries expect from teachers to incorporate ‘diversity’ as a leverage to enable all type of learners to acquire 21st century skills and lifelong learning appetite, and to equip young graduates, regardless of their educational level, with competences to adapt to changing skill demands in the workplace throughout their career and adult life. This huge ambition on the shoulders of teachers will require training and support for teachers, especially for those teachers who experience difficulty themselves to reskill and upskill in their subject fields. Teachers, in fact, are expected to behave as lifelong learners as well. The findings which this research will deliver, aim to describe and explain the pathways and instruments that trade unions in Belgium use to contribute actively -or not- to the effective implementation of European, federal and regional legislation with regard to lifelong learning and educational challenges, more specifically to enhance ‘equal access’ for all learners to lifelong learning. In doing so, this study aims to contribute to the literature of industrial relations and adult learning collective bargaining. It invites scholars, policy-makers and business practitioners, active in the disciplines of adult learning, 21st century skills, labour market effectiveness and trade unionism to further co-construct the adult learning and educational ecosystems and to elaborate on the issues put forward in this work.

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