Building Traditions of Inquiry and Transforming Labour-Academic Collaboration at the Union Local: Case Studies of Workers' Research and Education‪.‬

A MAJOR GAP in education and training scholarship exists regarding the links between academic institutions and organized labour at the level of the union local. More specifically, there is a lack of scholarship that looks at the ways in which union locals can (and do) develop their own traditions of educational research, and the possible role--if any--for academic "fellow travellers" in this development. In this brief space, I want to focus on the role of the union local in the development of educational research with an emphasis on the following: the position of educational research within the organizational structures of unions past and present; the connection between unions and academics; case study examples of educational research with three union locals; and finally, some general lessons to be taken from these reflections. Through this we will see how the position of educational research within the organizational structure of the labour movement tends to prevent the full development and use of research by workers and for workers. This organizational positioning serves an important defensive function that protects workers and their unions from exploitation and helps maintain control over information and the development of knowledge. However in the case studies we will see how shifts in research practice involving a type of "Union Sponsorship" can contribute to a different research dynamic that benefits the workers at the local level by bringing research closer to the union rank-and-file. This alternative approach brings activism and real world struggles much closer to the conception and production of social research in a tradition that, as sociologist Dorothy Smith has recently suggested, stretches at least as far back as the theoretical but action-oriented (i.e. praxis) conceptions of Marx's original scholarship. (1) While academic scholarship certainly benefits, this is obviously not among the most important outcomes. While this article focuses on the research processes and collaboration between academic researchers and organized labour, it is based on educational research which had as its original goal to investigate working-class informal learning practices. Briefly, the category of informal learning, refers to the learning that is done outside of schools and organized courses of any kind. What both educational research and our own good sense confirm is that we do the vast majority of our learning in this informal way amongst work-mates, family members, friends or on our own. (2) The original projects sought to develop a better understanding of how the informal learning of working-class people takes place in an effort to offer strategic information on its further development for and by workers. Relying principally on in-depth interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic observation, the research was carried out in a variety of unionized workplaces throughout Ontario, the case studies I report on in this article being three of them. As we shift our focus from informal learning to the research process itself, we see that the case studies show how specific contexts, processes and products in research can make contributions to general rank-and-file union education, local mobilization in response to management initiatives, and the development of a type of local activism that includes a tradition of social research.