New Statesman: Everybody out…for training! Unions can play a special role in filling Britain's

The UK's national skills deficit is well documented -- our lagging productivity compared with Germany, France and the US can partly be explained by it. It causes recruitment headaches for business and makes the job prospects of those without the skills employers need much less secure.

Raising skill levels in the UK is therefore in the interests of individuals, employers and the economy. This coincidence of interests provides the union movement with an opportunity to reassert itself: unions that can deliver skills solutions will gain stronger bargaining positions, wider influence and greater relevance to new members.

More than 30 per cent of the UK's top directors identify skills shortages as the most important problem facing their company. The number of firms reporting difficulties in recruiting skilled labour has risen sharply. Moreover, low skills levels have a devastating effect on individuals: people with poor skills are five times more likely to be unemployed (or totally out of the labour market), and twice as likely to be sacked or made redundant. Low skills lead to low pay; low pay to poor health and poorer quality of life.

At the same time, unions need new members. Only a third of the working population is in a union and new employment sectors are emerging without any union tradition. Members of the younger generation often cannot see the point of joining a union. Whatever the reasons -- a hostile national media and the decline in manufacturing are among those suggested -- the inescapable conclusion is that unions need to broaden their appeal and widen their sphere of influence.

When the Trades Union Congress was first established nearly 140 years ago, one of its founding principles was to increase the level of technical education for workers. Now, unions should reclaim the skills and learning agenda.

More than 4,500 union learning representatives are active in union-organised workplaces, identifying the skills needs of their colleagues, and liaising with employers and learning providers. Unions can reach people in ways that others can't, because many of those who know they lack skills do not like to ask their managers for help. Employers welcome the positive impact on productivity and profit margins: HSBC, working with the financial sector union Unifi, has calculated that investment in training and skills is providing returns of tens of millions of pounds of extra profit each year. Non-members see a professional and personal benefit from union membership, and sign up in droves.

The Royal College of Nursing has recently launched its web-based Learning Zone for both personal and professional development. Nurses can brush up or update their skills, or train in related areas such as communications. After less than a year, as many as 1,500 are enrolling every month and new members are joining the RCN to get access to the Learning Zone.

But union learning reps, by definition, are confined to larger, unionised workplaces. Smaller businesses are harder to reach, less likely to have any union organisation, and more difficult to convince--yet world also benefit a great deal from investment in workforce skills.

Through the training of union learning reps, unions have acquired an expertise that business and the UK economy needs. American unions have gone one step further with the establishment of academies of excellence. The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, for example, in partnership with hotel and casino employers in Las Vegas, opened the Culinary and Hospitality Academy almost a decade ago. The academy chiefly trains those who are trying to find work in Las Vegas, although some students, already at work, use it to brush up or build on specific skills. The prospective employers contribute a proportion of the training cost to the union-run academy to teach basic skills such as reading, writing and numeracy (as well as English for non-English speakers), and "soft skills" such as punctuality and personal hygiene.

Key to the academy's success is the recognition by both parties of the coincidence of interest: the individual receives the training needed to become employable, the union has a certain membership before the student has even entered the labour market, and the employer has a regular and constant stream of skilled and qualified workers.

The lessons are clear: learning leads to better prospects for individuals, improved competitiveness for business and higher productivity for the economy as a whole. Unions have the potential to play a unique role in helping to realise these aims.

John Healey MP is Economic Secretary to the Treasury; Natascha Engel is a graduate of the TUC Organising Academy. Their pamphlet Learning to Organise is available at www.tuc.org.uk/publications