ILPC 2026

Employment in the steel industry – industrial, standardised, large scale and largely male – is being transformed in a variety of ways by, among other things, technological innovation, more varied recruitment of workforces, and changing forms of work organisation (e.g. Stroud, 2011). The industry in Europe is also asked to fall into line with European policy aims of sustainable economic growth and the cultivation of a green economy (European Commission, 2010). Part of the latter focuses on the development of a ‘green skills agenda’; both in terms of the ‘greening’ of existing occupations, as well as the emergence of new environmental sectors and occupations (CEDEFOP, 2010a). However, endeavours to ‘green’ work and employment across the European Union (EU) are taking place at varying degrees of intensity. In this paper, we employ data on efforts to ‘green’ work and skills in the steel industry in Germany and the UK, and discuss what this means for the ‘greening’ of the (steel) labour process.

The demand for, and supply of, green skills and green skills training provision is at different stages of development across the EU. In the co-ordinated market economy context of Germany (Hall and Soskice, 2001), where the array of ‘thick’ institutions (Streeck, 1992) cultivates collaborative relationships between parties as well as longer-term, developmental orientations, environmental protection per se has been at the centre of public policy development for decades (CEDEFOP, 2010b). The aim of greening the German economy has entailed the modification of the vast majority of existing occupations, so as to take account of environmental considerations and such adjustments have been concomitant with relevant adjustments in occupational competency frameworks and vocational training curricula.  The situation differs markedly in the liberal market economy context of the UK, where endemic short-termism, fluid labour markets and emphasis on profit-maximisation, perpetuated by the structure of financial institutions and systems of corporate governance, combine to produce disincentives for employers to invest in human capital development (e.g. Keep and Rainbird, 2000).  This is reflected in the ‘voluntarist’ training system and the lack of status accorded to vocational training provision (e.g. Bosch and Charest, 2008). Successive UK governments have refocused on skills and training policy in an attempt to stimulate employer demand/training activity, but the green skills agenda seems not to be a particularly high priority – despite a growing raft of environmental and climate change legislation (ECORYS, 2009).

Drawing on case-study evidence from a project on the European steel industry, Greening Technical Vocational Education and Training, this paper examines how, and to what extent, such varying institutional contexts impact upon company-level environmental policy and initiatives and training policy and practice. The analysis focuses on steel company environmental strategies of compliance and innovation and the way they intersect with the green skills agenda (and technical vocational training programmes) and thus the ‘greening’ of work and employment in the steel industry. It is from this analysis that the paper comments on what the implications might be for the greening of the (steel industry) labour process.

References

Bosch, G. and Charest, J. (2008) ‘Vocational training and the labour market in liberal and coordinated economies.’ Industrial Relations Journal, 39(5): 428-77.

CEDEFOP (2010a) Skills for Green Jobs – European Synthesis Report. Luxembourg: Publications Office.

CEDEFOP (2010b) Skills for Green Jobs Country Report – Germany.  Luxembourg: Publications Office.

ECORYS (2009) Programmes to Promote Environmental Skills: Final Report. Report prepared for the DG Environment, European Commission. Rotterdam: ECORYS Nederland BV.

European Commission (2010) ‘A new impetus for European cooperation in Vocational Education and Training to support the Europe 2020 strategy.’ Brussels: European Commission, 9 June 2010.

Keep, E. and Rainbird, H. (2000) ‘Towards the learning organisation?’ in S. Bach and K. Sisson (eds) Personnel Management: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice. (3^rd edn) Oxford: Blackwell, pp.173-94.

Hall, P. A. and Soskice, D. (2001) ‘An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism’ in P. A. Hall and D. Soskice (eds.) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-68.

Streeck, W. (1992) Social Institutions and Economic Performance: Studies of Industrial Relations in Advanced Capitalist Economies, London: Sage.

Stroud, D. (2011) ‘Organising Training for Union Renewal: A case study analysis of the European Union steel industry’ Economic and Industrial Democracy first published on June 22, 2011 as doi:10.1177/0143831X11404577