Over 100,000 Canadian workers participate annually in educational programs conducted by their union or the broader labour organizations to which their union belongs. Union-based education is the most significant nonvocational education available to working people. This activity has been going on for decades, and Jeffery Taylor's Union Learning: Canadian Labour Education in the Twentieth Century is the first comprehensive history of it.

Union Learning chronicles the rise and decline of the Workers' Educational Association, the development of internal union educational programs, the consolidation of the Canadian Labour Congress's educational system after 1956, the origin and growth of the Labour College of Canada, and the patchy history of university and college involvement in labour education. Taylor argues that a new emphasis on broad-based and activist education today promises to rekindle the sense of an educational movement that was present in the labour movement in the 1930s and 1940s.

The book includes a number of illustrative sidebars and photographs. The author has developed a website containing images, video and other materials related to the history of labour education in Canada: http://unionlearning.athabascau.ca.

Author

Jeffery Taylor

Athabasca University in Alberta

1. Introduction

• Basic Concepts

• Historical Background to 1918

2. Building a Movement: 1918–1946

• The WEA and Other Activity in the 1920s and 1930s
• WEA-Centred Labour Education: 1939–1946
• Union-Centred and University-Centred Labour Education: 1939–1946
• Conclusion

3. From a Movement to a System: 1947–1955

• The Marginalization of the WEA
• The Development of Unions’ Internal Educational Capacity
• External Organizations
• Labour Education in Canada Report
• Conclusion

4. Consolidating the System: 1956–1972

• CLC Structures
• Internal Union Structures
• What Was Taught and How
• The Promise and Problems of University-Labour Cooperation
• The Labour College of Canada
• Conclusion

5. New Issues and Old Structures: 1973-1985

• Union Education
• Paid Educational Leave
• The Labour Education and Studies Centre
• The Labour College of Canada
• Community Colleges, Universities and the Labour Movement
• Conclusion

6. Rebuilding a Movement: 1986–2000

• Union Education
• Workplace Training
• Colleges and Universities
• Conclusion

7. Conclusion

• International Context

• Looking Forward

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