Revitalizing Union Representation through Labor Education Initiatives: A Close Examination of Two Trade Unions in Quebec

Introduction: The Difficult Interface between Young Workers and Trade Unionism

The message has been hammered home repeatedly over the last decade, always the same refrain, the same lament: union organizations are facing serious challenges, from both within and without, leaving them no choice but to reconfigure their representational capacity (Lévesque and Murray 2010). Many studies have sought to better understand the factors that support union renewal (Lakh, Kuruvilla, and Hickey 2010; Lévesque and Murray 2010; Yates and Fairbrother 2003). Union renewal is a multifaceted phenomenon that refers to both innovative union organizing strategies aimed at increasing union density and the construction of homogeneous or heterogeneous coalitions at the local, national, and international levels (Dufour-Poirier and Hennebert 2015; Heery 2003; Silva 2013). These studies argue that, to consolidate their power and remain legitimate social and societal actors, unions must forge stronger ties with their activist bases and review their internal democracy practices, within the ranks.

More specifically, this article focuses on a particular group of union members, that is, young members, known to pose several challenges for union organizations. On the one hand, young workers are difficult to unionize (Hodder and Kretsos 2015; Sukarieh and Tannock 2015; Usalcas and Bowlby 2011). On the other hand, even when young workers are unionized, trade union organizations have to make a significant effort to encourage them to get actively involved in internal union activities and union life (Durand-Allard, Dufour-Poirier, and Laroche 2016; Sukarieh and Tannock 2015; Tannock 2001). In this regard, Paquet (2005) showed that young members perceive the services provided by unions as somewhat irrelevant and that union membership is reduced, in their eyes, to the cost of obtaining these services. Moreover, precarious employment often ends up unfavorably coloring their opinion of unions, even though young workers are often more vulnerable to exploitation and intimidation than older workers (Hodder and Kretsos 2015; Peetz 2010). Last, those responsible for disseminating union messages are often from an older generation, leaving little room for youth representatives to express young members’ concerns. Overall, these challenges are prompting unions to diversify their agenda and practices to encourage young members to get more involved (Durand-Allard, Dufour-Poirier, and Laroche 2016).

Some studies (Kumar and Murray 2006; Peetz and Alexander 2011, 2013) have identified the education and training programs ¹ implemented by union organizations as being key to the revitalization of internal union life. By fostering skills development among members and giving them the confidence needed to encourage them to participate in the decision-making bodies of their unions (Brown 2007; Conrow and Delp 1999), these programs help transform these workers from passive members into active agents of change within their unions (Durand-Allard, Dufour-Poirier, and Laroche 2016; Laroche and Dufour-Poirier 2013). This article fits into this perspective. It aims to explain whether and to what extent formal and informal labor education and training initiatives help increase union participation among young members.

In particular, we examine various labor education programs that specifically targeted union members under the age of thirty in the two trade union organizations under study. While these organizations chose to offer specific skills development programs to members who wished to hold specific positions within the union structure (e.g., training in collective bargaining or grievance arbitration), they both opted for different strategies regarding their young activist bases. In fact, they developed broad-based labor education programs aimed at helping their young members understand the major economic, political, and social issues and participate more actively in internal debates and democratic union life. Our study, thus, aimed to determine the extent to which these education programs represented tools for union renewal—in our case, tools that would encourage young members to get involved in union life.

On a theoretical level, young members’ participation in union structures can be explained in terms of three concepts: identity, modes of socialization, and democracy. We consider these three concepts to be motivating factors and to be mutually reinforcing, conceptually and empirically (Dufour-Poirier and Laroche 2015). More specifically, and regardless of the strategy used, our general contention is that improving young members’ feeling of belonging to the community, enhancing internal network density through frequent interactions, and implementing more participatory forms of democracy are crucial when it comes to increasing young members’ participation in trade union organizations. Based on this conceptualization of union participation, we consider education and training activities to be key to renewal strategies, for three reasons. First, these activities can help young members develop a sense of identity that can lead them to get more involved in union life. Second, they can help young members understand how the decision-making bodies operate so that they can make the most of the socialization and learning opportunities that these bodies provide. Third, education and training activities can help young members become more critical and enable them to actively contribute to bringing about the kinds of changes young members are calling for.

This article specifically focuses on the points of convergence between the two union organizations in terms of labor education and training. In this sense, it is not a comparative study. Rather, we chose to use the pool of available data to illustrate the ideas we are proposing regarding the relevance of focusing on training as a tool for union renewal. Our study was, thus, guided by a qualitative approach, and by the following question: what is the potential of education initiatives to foster young members’ participation in their unions? The research design allowed us to bring out the main findings related to the identity shared by the young members of the trade union organizations under study, as well as the modes of socialization and the forms of union democracy favored internally. We will, thus, present the elements on which a broad consensus emerged among the study participants. In total, we carried out fifty-three focus group discussions with more than four hundred thirty young members, and conducted twenty-two interviews with ten national union leaders and twelve young leaders in two trade union organizations operating in the public and private sectors in Quebec.

This article is divided into three parts. The first part sets out the theoretical basis of our exploration. The second part explains the context and methodological considerations of our study. We present the two trade union organizations studied and their respective strategies regarding labor education and training for their young activist bases. Moreover, although these activities could have been offered to all members, based on their success internally, both trade union organizations under study chose to target these programs at young members only. We also present the data collection and analysis strategies used in our study. The third part presents the main study findings. We discuss the potential of these labor education and training initiatives in terms of (1) developing a sense of identity among young members, paving the way to greater participation and activism; (2) helping young members better understand how the internal decision-making bodies operate, which can, in turn, help them socialize and get more involved in the union; and (3) the capacity of young members, with training, to become active agents of change within their union organizations.

Labor Education Programs and Participation of Young Members in Union Life: Theoretical Considerations

Previous studies have tended to focus on the bleak prospects regarding the unionization of young workers (Haynes, Vowles, Boxall 2005). More recently, Hodder and Kretsos (2015) explored young workers’ involvement in trade unions once they are unionized. Nevertheless, very few studies have examined the potential or the impact of labor education programs on young members’ participation in union life and the union’s internal activities (Dufour-Poirier and Laroche 2015). Much of the existing research (Hodder 2014; Tailby and Pollert 2011) discusses the relevance of creating separate structures dedicated solely to representing marginalized groups (e.g., women, immigrants, young people). Two explanations have been put forward regarding the low involvement of young workers in union life and structures in general. The first refers to systemic or structural factors. The position of young workers in the labor market explains the low density of union representation, and, hence, union participation among them. Indeed, young workers often find themselves in industry sectors in which it is particularly difficult to organize workers and where working conditions tend to be quite poor (e.g., service industries; Sukarieh and Tannock 2015; Tannock 2001). Moreover, the low rate of unionization stems from a higher turnover rate among these workers, who are often still students (Usalcas and Bowlby 2011). Once unionized, it is easier for these workers to resort to the “exit” strategy than to attempt to resolve problems at work through collective means and union solutions. In other cases, due to their instability, young workers may question the relevance of solidarity, which also may not be something to which they attach great importance (Hansen 2004). However, as we discuss later on, Sukarieh and Tannock’s (2015) recent study qualified this assertion, criticizing the “often exaggerated celebration of individual agency and subjectivity among young people.”

Moreover, precarious employment, to which young workers often fall prey, colors their opinion of unions and makes them doubt their usefulness. Precarious wage work is said to isolate workers and to affect young workers in particular (Tannock 2001). It strips work of its role as a spontaneous and privileged vector for socialization (Ulysse 2009), thus, breaking with the traditional routes to knowledge about unions (Waddington and Kerr 2002). Moreover, recent studies (Vandaele 2012) have revealed that youth representatives across Europe find their confederations’ responsiveness and commitment to organizing young workers inadequate, confirming their dissatisfaction and unfulfilled desire for unionization and empowerment in union structures. In sum, this low exposure to union membership and to union members in their personal lives (Bielski Boris et al. 2013) is mostly related to a frustrated demand for union representation.

The second explanation refers to so-called systematic obstacles. Previous important studies, such as those by Giddens (1990), Inglehart (1997), and Bentley and Oakley (1999), suggested that the low propensity of young workers to participate in union life is due to their inherent characteristics, which involve a political ideology that conveys a rather negative opinion of unions, a multiplicity of senses of belonging, new social causes that are not necessarily connected to the workplace, and general disengagement from any form of political participation, including union action, making the functions and services provided by unions somewhat irrelevant. According to Paquet (2005), young workers are more inclined to seek immediate results than to endorse social or societal demands, giving less importance to job security and employee benefits than older workers—a finding that was, however, recently contradicted by Bielski Boris et al. (2013). In fact, as shown by recent studies such as those by Tannock (2001), Vandaele (2012), and Sukarieh and Tannock (2015), these assertions need to be qualified because it is not abundantly clear that young workers are no longer interested in traditional organizations such as trade unions. The idea that they are increasingly individualistic is even less well established (Dufour-Poirier and Laroche 2015; Peetz 2010). In Quebec, for instance, recent student protests during the Maple Spring ² demonstrated precisely the opposite (Laroche and Dufour-Poirier 2013). Nevertheless, the lack of diversity, namely, the underrepresentation of young members in internal union structures, especially at the decision-making level, may in fact have a negative impact on young members’ views on unions (Durand-Allard, Dufour-Poirier, and Laroche 2016).

Last, the union officers in charge of delivering messages often belong to older generations and give low priority to the needs of young workers. This lack of diversity among union organizers and leaders, reputed to alienate young workers and referred to as the age deficit (Pulignano and Doerflinger 2014), also makes unions reluctant to abandon established routines and old habits. To promote union participation among young members and address these challenges, young members should ideally be recruited early in their working lives to help them develop better knowledge and a favorable opinion of unions, as early as possible. To this end, there is a need to increase the number and frequency of regular socialization and education activities offered by unions (e.g., mentoring, training; Gomez, Gunderson, and Meltz 2002), which would foster the development of shared standards and behaviors among union members and a sense of belonging to the group that the union represents (Durand-Allard, Dufour-Poirier, and Laroche 2016). This could, in turn, lead to union participation. Overall, these pressures are prompting unions to diversify their practices to be more in touch with young workers and transform them into more politicized and militant members.

More specifically, according to Hansen (2004), education strategies can effectively create new common perspectives dedicated to boosting the participation of union members, notably young members. Indeed, several studies have underlined the importance of education and training activities for members (Carter and Cooper 2002; Cooper 2001; Griffin and Moors 2004; Kumar and Murray 2006; Peetz and Alexander 2011, 2013). Based on these studies, young members’ participation in union organizations is largely conditional on activities that encourage them to reflect on and gain awareness of the meaning and importance of their action.

In practical terms, two complementary education strategies can help encourage member participation. The first, the normalization strategy, mainly a top–down strategy, aims to educate leaders so that they, in turn, can ensure that other members learn how to participate in union life, activities, and policy making. The second, the transformative strategy, a grassroots strategy, focuses on mobilization from below. It aims to educate rank-and-file workers and empower them to change internal union structures, life, and activities and help establish new ways of addressing union action and policy (Hansen 2004, 130). Similarly, Peetz and Alexander (2011) emphasize the need to integrate both formal and informal (i.e., top–down and bottom–up) education and training strategies, thus, increasing the chances of boosting workers’ confidence and raising their level of activism.

Thus, based on the literature, increasing young members’ participation in union life and structures first requires committing effort and energy to educating both rank-and-file workers and leaders, ideally at the same time. Second, implementing both bottom–up and top–down educational initiatives can help enhance young members’ feeling of belonging to the union, increase internal network density through frequent interactions among better informed and more conscious members, and encourage young members to help implement more participatory forms of democracy in trade union organizations. These three outcomes refer, respectively, to three powerful concepts: identity (Colgan and Ledwith 2002), socialization (Bielski Boris et al. 2013), and democracy (Hansen 2004). First, identity refers to a mutual understanding of the world and a sense of community within a group, in this case, the union (Johnson and Jarley 2005). It evokes the creation of an emotional bond between workers and the union leadership, and involves building personal relationships with all members to encourage participation in union life and activities. It refers to the extent to which members, in this case young members, feel they belong to the union and endorse its agenda (Colgan and Ledwith 2002). Expanding and reinforcing labor education programs can help generate this feeling of belonging (Durand-Allard, Dufour-Poirier, and Laroche 2016).

Second, socialization evokes the construction of a reflexive project, of day-to-day community building through formal and informal mechanisms through which unions can increase their network density, inside and outside of work, and build their mobilization capacity (Johnson and Jarley 2005). Through ongoing dialogue and every day, face-to-face interactions, young workers can get to know more experienced union members, share information, and develop common goals, values, and points of view (Durand-Allard, Dufour-Poirier, and Laroche 2016). As pointed out by Johnson and Jarley (2005), knowledge—which is intimately linked to education—is associated with higher levels of union participation and union participation with greater political engagement and activism.

Third, democracy refers to

the opportunity for all union members to develop and to express informed opinions regarding [the] union’s goals, agenda and activities, and to access the means to put these new views in place so that the organisation is later on governed by the will of the majority. (Rosen and Rosen 1944, cited in Hansen 2004)

As Hansen (2004) points out, “people do not only look for solidarity in the content of shared views and ongoing exchanges, but also in the way these are established.” Several authors (such as Bielski Boris et al. 2013) maintain that furthering democracy is a decisive factor when it comes to raising young members’ union consciousness and boosting their union participation. In parallel, education also has the power to transform workers into politically alert union members who can play more than a purely supportive role in established labor bodies. Thus, democracy infers that better informed and educated union members will know how to access strategic information and positions, and maneuver to have a say in determining the content of the union’s agenda and future orientations, and not be solely confined to tokenistic, symbolic, or parallel structures (Roholt et al. 2013) such as youth committees (Laroche and Dufour-Poirier 2013, 2015).

These ideas have been put forward by several authors, who have established a strong correlation between education and union democracy (e.g., Peetz and Alexander 2011). This finding was also reported by Moody (1999) and Newman (1993), who observed higher activist engagement among union members who had real control over their union organizations’ tactics and strategic orientations. Such control was made possible because, through labor education and training initiatives, these members had developed the skills and motivation needed to take action and felt they could significantly influence the union’s strategic orientations. Lévesque and Murray (2003) argued that labor education programs can foster the development of a more compelling and even sexier union agenda, provided that these programs grow out of a synergy between discussion forums and socialization activities with an educational focus and the union organization’s research activities. These findings confirm the analytical and conceptual proximity between identity, modes of socialization, and democracy, which, in our view, act as communicating vessels with regard to the union participation of young union members (Dufour-Poirier and Laroche 2015).

Exploring these three concepts, we empirically documented, through numerous examples, the potential of education initiatives to foster young members’ participation in their union organizations. This phenomenon has rarely been explored from this analytical perspective (Hodder 2014). However, the little research available relating specifically to young workers, who are rarely addressed in the literature (Vandaele 2013), especially in unionized sectors (Hodder 2014), documents the willingness of trade unions to give these members the space to develop new feelings of belonging, cultivate and disseminate new ideas through new relationships, and learn from their own mistakes to become dynamic leaders (Bielski Boris et al. 2013). We, thus, aimed to determine whether or not top–down and/or bottom–up education initiatives help unions achieve these three objectives and propel a new transformative strategy (Hansen 2004).

Context of the Research, Data Analyses, and Method

Our study was based on a qualitative and comparative methodology, and was conducted over a period of five years (2009-2014). The depth of the analysis and the search for fertile explanations were favored rather than the number of cases to better account for the potential of the educational programs dedicated to young members to encourage their participation in their union. As mentioned above, few studies to date have investigated the participation of young workers in internal union structures. The impact of education and training initiatives on union participation among young members has received even less attention. We, thus, determined that a qualitative study was needed to document this phenomenon in Quebec, based on an in-depth analysis of the data through intra-case and inter-case analyses. Through these analyses, we hoped to demonstrate the points of convergence between these two very different union organizations. Thus, our goal was not to focus on the differences, but rather to illustrate the strength of our findings. This decision was guided by Flyvbjerg’s (2011, 426) recommendations regarding the use of case selection, or what he refers to as a maximum variation cases approach, meant to gather as much information as possible to maximize the significance of circumstances for case process.

Moreover, this study addresses a need that was identified by the union organizations with which we regularly interacted during our research on the importance of training for increasing young members’ participation in internal union structures. Our results follow up on the main trends emerging from all the comments collected in the two union organizations under study. In this sense, they express the point of view of the majority of respondents. In other words, all our findings and quotes presented in this paper are deep-set trends that emerge from our results and are, therefore, very widely shared by respondents. It should also be pointed out that all of the data presented here were de-identified. Due to confidentiality and ethical concerns, we were unable to provide more detailed information on the respondents or the union organizations under study, as doing so would have made them too easily identifiable in the Quebec context.

Our first case (Union Organization A [UOA]) involved a midsized trade union federation (seventy thousand members) in Quebec’s public sector. Approximately 15 percent of UOA’s total membership was under the age of thirty. To better address the needs of its young members, UOA introduced various labor education and training initiatives including youth committees at various levels (local, regional, and national). The central or “national” (Quebec-wide) youth committee was formed in 2003 and included five elected union leaders under the age of thirty. Our second case (Union Organization B, UOB) involved a large trade union confederation (three hundred thousand members) in Quebec representing both the public and private sectors. UOB had also introduced youth committees into its structure at various levels (local, regional, and national). UOB’s “national” youth committee was formed in 1986 and included six elected union leaders under the age of thirty. Approximately 25 percent of UOB’s members were under the age of thirty. UOB also promoted various labor education and training initiatives aimed at young members, which also included youth committees at several levels (local, regional, and national).

Our individual interviews and focus group discussions addressed three main themes based on which we divided our data into semantic units: (1) what factors foster young workers’ participation in union life and activities; (2) how is it possible to better connect with young workers to identify their interests and needs and boost their participation, notably in the union’s decision-making bodies; and (3) what is the potential of education to encourage young members’ participation? We held twenty-two in-depth individual interviews, lasting ninety minutes each, with ten national union leaders and twelve youth leaders in the two organizations combined (A and B). To complement these data, we also held fifty-three focus group discussions between 2012 and 2014, lasting two hours each, to investigate the points of view of approximately four hundred thirty members under the age of thirty in the two organizations (case A: n = 180; case B: n = 250). These focus group participants were chosen by local executive representatives. They presented various levels of union experience, formal education, and “professionalization.” Some of them served on their union’s local executive committee. However, most were not involved in the union structure. The focus groups ranged in size from eight to twelve participants. A discussion facilitator and a secretary were chosen in each group. The discussion facilitator was either one of the two researchers leading the research project or a member of UOA and UOB’s national youth committees (hereafter referred to as NYCA and NYCB). The secretary was chosen from among the focus group participants. He or she was tasked with writing up a summary of the group discussions. The discussions explored the three themes addressed with the union leaders during the individual interviews.

Furthermore, in both organizations, the focus group participants were selected by representatives of the various local unions affiliated with UOA and UOB. Thus, on these occasions, confirmed and already known young activists (some elected local and national representatives), but also green members, with no previous experience in the labor movement whatsoever, were given the chance to attend these events to share their opinions and increase their knowledge on the union’s structures and internal functioning. These discussion groups, thus, gave us access to a great variety of viewpoints that were representative of the prevailing opinions of younger members in each of the organizations under study. Nevertheless, all participants were confirmed members of one of the two union organizations, UOA or UOB. That said, no particular effort was made to overrepresent activists. On the contrary, efforts were made in both organizations to ensure that inexperienced young members would be part of these events, which aimed to encourage the participation of all young members, whether they were (locally or nationally) elected leaders, activists or, ideally, potential and soon-to-become union representatives. In fact, although the focus groups involved young members chosen by local union leaders, which could constitute a research bias, these young members did not necessarily have a great deal of union experience. As such, they were not inclined to repeat or necessarily endorse the union views of their local or national leaders. Moreover, the fact that they were often not familiar with the tools put in place by the trade union organizations under study (and, thus, not well informed regarding what worked or did not work internally, especially with regard to labor education and training initiatives) allowed us to explore what these young members really thought about such initiatives, the procedures for integrating new members and the union apparatus itself. It can, thus, be asserted that the conclusions of this paper do not display the realities and points of view of overtly overrepresented young activists.

Finally, by triangulating the data from these different sources and methods of data collection, we were able to compare the various respondents’ opinions, thus, further validating the findings of our analyses (Yin 2003). As for the analyses, we compiled the verbatim transcripts of the individual interviews and focus group discussions. Using these transcripts, which were divided into semantic units and coded based on the three themes presented above, we compared the various respondents’ points of view. We also analyzed the notes taken by the secretaries in each focus group. After each focus group discussion, the researchers wrote down, on the spot, a preliminary summary of their observations. These notes were counted as part of the body of research data. Last, we examined documents dealing with the participation of young workers in both organizations (e.g., union newsletters, private and public reports, Internet sites). Rather than partially transforming our primary qualitative data into quantitative data, the data analysis strategy favored allowed us to identify observations that were shared by an overwhelming majority of the study participants, regardless of their being selected beforehand by the executive members of the local trade unions. We, thus, aimed to highlight the meaning of the data collected in the study’s theoretical context. The derived findings make a considerable contribution to the literature on youth and unionism

Findings: Labor Education and Training Programs for Young Members as Essential Tools for Integration

The preferred labor education strategy of UOA and its NYC did not focus solely on young leaders but aimed to reach union members more broadly. Nevertheless, two 2-day gatherings were held every year, bringing together, exclusively, some two hundred young union members under the age of thirty (Interview A2-1). These gatherings were often these participants’ first contact with their union organization. More specifically, for UOA, these gatherings acted as both recruitment and loyalty-building activities, as 40 percent of participants had never had any contact with their union beforehand, while the other 60 percent had regularly participated in these gatherings, with some having held union positions at the local level (Interview A2-1). These gatherings aimed to transmit the knowledge needed to help these young members better understand the structure of UOA and its decision-making bodies. They also represented an opportunity to reflect together on major sociopolitical issues, often tied to unionism or their specific industry sector. For example, the young members were asked to discuss austerity and its impacts on workers’ quality of life, various political ideologies, alternative models of economic development to that proposed by the Right, and actions to be implemented to foster real union renewal. They were also introduced to the structure of their union organization and the various channels in place through which they could exercise their right to voice their opinions.

The education program designed by UOA and its NYC aimed to link more formal training sessions with more informal discussion forums and learning activities. With the help of UOA’s policy advisor and sociopolitical advisor, NYCA developed a training program, identified the themes that would be addressed and planned all the activities that would be offered to participants. Following the gatherings, newsletters were produced and distributed within the organization. Young members, thus, used various tools to share the knowledge they had gained at these gatherings with colleagues under the age of thirty in their local unions.

Training for young union members also involved making the union message accessible in all contacts with them and, especially, avoiding the union jargon usually used to explain the issues. Given that internal UOA focus groups had shown that young members generally prefer less formal means such as social activities organized by other young members or social media to learn about the major issues of the day or their labor rights, NYCA sought to circulate information to young members through social media rather than through traditional means such as billboards or union newspapers.

UOA’s various national bodies also represented a prime opportunity to train young members. These training activities, often less formal activities such as happy hours or luncheon seminars, aimed to enhance the young members’ knowledge of sociopolitical issues (Interview A2-1). The elected members of NYCA—engaged activists who held union positions—also received training so that they, in turn, could pass on their knowledge to the activist base.

In UOB, the education strategy for its young activist base was more diverse and also aimed to reach new members of the various local unions. Education and training initiatives included both formal and informal activities through which UOB aimed to maximize the young members’ capacity to participate in decision-making and other bodies. To this end, UOB and its NYC developed a three-day program aimed at training the next generation of union leaders. This training was offered twice a year and reached between forty and fifty members under the age of thirty every year. The program included more formal information sessions where the various bodies of the organization and the roles and responsibilities of the local union were presented. These meetings also included structured discussions on what unionization means to young members, the various areas of union struggle, and, certainly, the role of young members in the union movement. The training program also dealt with contemporary issues of unionism and current political issues. Moreover, it included less formal activities wherein young members could discuss with other members of the organization.

When you bring people together who share the same interest, in unionism, because they’re there for training, in the evening, they talk about it. And it encourages them. They can share information. I think that in [these training sessions for members under the age of thirty], the informal activities are more important than what is taught in class because they create ties between people, they create networks. (Interview B-2)

As was the case for UOA, a large gathering of young members was also organized, in this case, once every three years. This large-scale activity brought together more than a hundred young members, for whom this was often their first encounter with UOB and with unionized workers from other workplaces. This gathering certainly represented a prime opportunity to transmit information to them on their union organization, but also on unionism more generally and on relevant current issues. While the themes addressed were generally chosen by NYCB representatives, in collaboration with UOB’s policy advisors, young members were given significant space to express their views. The debates held at these gatherings usually resulted in a statement that clearly indicated the position of UOB’s young members on various themes (e.g., climate change). This statement was subsequently presented to several of the organization’s bodies to make all members aware of the young members’ views. UOB, thus, gave a voice to young members and ensured that their views were transmitted to other union bodies so that they could be incorporated into the respective agendas.

In addition to this large triennial national gathering, similar events were organized at other levels of the UOB structure. These events often brought together young members who shared a strong common interest based on their work, or young members from the same region. These gatherings also created opportunities for young members to get involved in the organization. For example, at one of these gatherings, members under the age of thirty came up with a resolution that was later debated at a national conference, giving the young members concerned a significant opportunity to influence UOB’s positions and orientations.

In the regions and at the different levels of UOB, several less formal discussion and networking activities were also organized for young members, such as happy hours or supper meetings. NYCB members also toured the regions to meet and discuss with the young activist base. They also provided training in some local unions on how to form local youth committees. UOB also created a body to coordinate the youth committees at the various levels of its structure to better support their efforts related to training and education, disseminating information to young members through emulation. NYCB was also very active in terms of sharing information with the young activist base. lt used social media and strove to make its communication attractive to young members. NYCB leaders also received training to help them take up their role and transmit their union fervor to other young UOB members.

In both organizations studied, there emerged a strong desire to prepare the next generation of union leaders. In both cases, significant resources were invested in this endeavor, not only to train young leaders, but also to equip the young activist base to take up positions within the internal union structures. The more formal events organized every year by the trade unions required a budget ranging from $50,000 to $60,000, not including the sums invested in operating the youth committees, which varied between $30,000 and $100,000 yearly. Because the strategies mobilized involved multilevel actions, we must also consider the sums invested in the federations or regions, as well as at the local level.

Although the training strategies used by the two organizations differed, both relied on a transformative strategy to equip young members and encourage them to take up positions within the union and initiate changes to help the organization better respond to their interests. The next sections of this article will critically examine these training initiatives for young members and assess the extent to which they led to greater participation among these members in the organizations studied. To capture young members’ participation in union life, we examined the potential of education programs for young members in light of the three dimensions of the conceptual model developed in this study: identity, socialization, and democracy (Dufour-Poirier and Laroche 2015). An analysis of the criticisms expressed by the young members regarding their union organizations brought out the challenges facing these unions with regard to each of these dimensions in terms of improving the education programs offered and, thus, maximizing their positive impact on young members’ participation.

Labor Education: Favoring the Development of a Sense of Identity that Could Spark Union Activism

While unions strive, through education and training, to develop their members’ capacity to strategically analyze issues having an impact on workers, the ability to look critically at the information they will have to process, and the specific skills they will need to carry out their mandates, we maintain that it is crucial that these investments also lead to greater participation in union life. We will now analyze the extent to which the efforts invested in educating and training members under the age of thirty led them to get more actively involved in their union organization and its endeavors.

In both organizations studied, the age-based label designating young members (i.e., being under the age of thirty) did not unite them to the extent hoped for, particularly in the context of youth committee activities. In UOA, the young workers in the interviews and focus groups self-identified with the precarious conditions they experienced at work. The early years of their working lives were often characterized by precarious (nonpermanent) and part-time employment, unstable working hours (e.g., evening, night, or weekend shifts), or the obligation to work overtime, which could also make it difficult for them to participate in union activities, especially as they often had to juggle demanding family responsibilities at the same time. This may explain why many of the young members interviewed said they felt that their union did not adequately defend their interests as precarious workers, preventing them from developing a strong feeling of belonging to their local union. Moreover, because of the time and energy required by their line of work on a day-to-day basis, they tended to see union involvement as just an extra burden to bear:

Just working in the public sector, I find is already pretty demanding. I put a lot of time and energy into my work and I represent UOA just by working in this field. I don’t really feel like getting involved in anything else . . . . (Discussion group A-7, Speaker 3, trans.)

As for UOB, while job insecurity, precarious working conditions, and injustice appeared to strongly structure the identity of the young members, other referents also guided their actions. In fact, several of them identified with the working class and defined themselves as “representatives of the middle or minority class” (Discussion group B-1, Speaker 3, trans.). The class consciousness illustrated by this self-definition prompted them to become activists, either within the ranks of UOB or outside of it.

To sum up, in both organizations, for young members at the local level, the main rationale for union participation was the possibility of improving their precarious working conditions. Some specifics in each organization sometimes led to a different conception of the means to be used or the battles to be fought to achieve this.

In UOA, the young members said they were mainly concerned with quickly and concretely improving their employment experience and working conditions. In UOB, the young members were pressing their union leaders to address the disparities in treatment set out in the collective agreements (e.g., employment status), which represented a sensitive issue for them. In their view, the seniority-based practices currently deployed by the local union executives led to significant tension and inequality with regard, for example, to the choice of vacation time, work schedules, or work-family balance. They said that the current practices “forced young workers to accept whatever was left over after workers with more seniority got their pick” (Discussion group B-9, Speaker 12, trans.).

Seniority causes intergenerational tension. I think it’s hard to get young members involved when unionism is essentially based on seniority. Why get involved when it takes ten years to get decent working conditions? As soon as we want to touch seniority, it causes friction but, at the same time, addressing this issue could encourage young members to get involved! (Interview B-2, trans.)

In both organizations, we, thus, observed a worrying degree of cynicism regarding the real intention of local elected representatives to improve the situation for young members.

The union won’t improve things for young workers, it just wants to keep what’s already been gained. . . . And young members aren’t even asking them to! . . . (Discussion group A-4, Speaker 4, trans.)

At the national level, in line with their concerns at the local level, young members of UOA were asking that the union’s demands be linked to the realities of their working lives rather than to broader societal causes:

As for international solidarity . . . well, here in the workplace, that doesn’t affect us. If we defend international solidarity, it doesn’t affect me personally. Or my co-workers either. When it’s reported from the Confederal Council that the UOA has defended [international causes], does it change something on my pay slip? Does it help improve my working conditions? Unfortunately, the answer is no. (Discussion group A-3, Speaker 4, trans.)

The young members of UOB, however, deemed it necessary to act outside the workplace. Several of the young members interviewed said that such sociopolitical action was made necessary by a number of factors, in particular, the negative impact on public opinion of the rather dark picture of unionism that is often conveyed by the mass media, the antiunion strategies used by employers, and the neoliberal ideology guiding government action. Many expressed a desire to see cross-sectional protests that would bring progressive forces from Quebec society together around common goals.

Thus, a question emerges: can education programs for young members help foster the development of an identity that will encourage them to participate in union life? A first clear finding of the research highlighted the potential of these training and education programs for young members in the two organizations studied. However, for various reasons, as will be seen below, this potential was not sufficiently exploited at the local level.

First, our study confirmed the importance of youth committees in terms of identity-building. Youth committees were seen by many young members in both organizations as important awareness-raising, mobilization, and sociopolitical education and training tools. These committees appeared to infuse young members with trade union consciousness and renewed activism. The positive impacts of education and training programs for young members were also highlighted, as seen in these comments by a UOA participant:

Some young people who didn’t know what the union was all about came away from [the large gathering] very mobilized and when they got back to their local team [following their contact with the youth committee at the national level], they asked to be in the local executive committee. (Interview A-4, trans.)

A young representative from UOB added:

After the [training for young activists in UOB], I watched the televised political debate like never before, on the edge of my seat, like it was a hockey game. I was like. . . . [Laughter.] No, really, it got me involved politically. (Discussion group B-9, Speaker 11, trans.)

These education and training programs allowed young members from both organizations to discuss their situation, which often turned out to be similar. These members, thus, became aware of the issues they had in common—often the precariousness of their working conditions—and the fact that they had the means to remedy this situation. In short, in our view, education and training programs, such as those provided by the two organizations studied, have the potential to create a strong sense of identity among this group of “new activists” and a keen desire to get involved, as long as these programs, rather than focusing on age per se, address issues that directly affect young members, such as the precarious employment experienced by them.

However, young members still tended not to participate in most local executive committees or even union meetings. How can it be explained that, after investing such considerable resources in training and educating young members, the latter were still not involved in the local structures? There are no easy answers to this question, which points to the first challenge for union organizations. When it comes to fostering participation among new activists, union organizations need to ensure that the principles for internal representation are not based exclusively on age but also address considerations related to the precarious employment experienced by young members. Moreover, to really address this issue, it is also necessary to address the other dimensions that influence youth participation, namely, the modes of socialization and democratic practices favored internally. For each of these dimensions, the problems encountered will be brought out to explain why the union organizations studied did not always draw the maximum benefit from education and training programs for young members, even though they had invested significant resources in these programs.

Training Young Members to Foster Their Participation Internally and Their Integration in the Union Structure

Ideally, the modes of socialization favored by a union organization should allow its members to jointly construct a project, through both formal and informal activities. In our study, we analyzed the extent to which these activities led young members to actively participate in such a project. The hopes expressed by the young members were the same in both organizations and focused mainly on two challenges: making the union message accessible and increasing the number of delegates at the local level.

To increase participation among young members, there was a need to use everyday language in contacts with them and increase the opportunities for such contact in a flexible and informal way, ideally with activists their own age, particularly through social media. Education and training activities were seen as practices that needed to be increased internally to foster greater activism among young members. Making union processes and practices accessible to them was seen to be an essential element of these activities.

Moreover, to encourage youth participation, the young members interviewed said that local and national union representatives should be visible, well known, and active in their local contexts. The young members, thus, expressed a desire for more frequent contact with their union representatives, even between periods of collective bargaining. They stressed that peer mentoring, both within and especially outside union meetings, as well as unofficial and informal, private or even “hand-in-hand” contacts, that is, one-on-one relationships, were essential for cultivating the kind of proximity called for by young members. This would help make union life attractive and encourage them to get involved in their unions. It, thus, appears to be necessary to include some informal activities among more formal ones:

Between conferences, between the meetings where decisions have to be made, there need to be some social spaces where we can be more in party mode, where we can talk to other union members and discuss things. (Discussion group B-10, Speaker 8, trans.)

Similarly, many young members said that they wished to break with tradition, protocol, (often unintelligible) union jargon, and the very official and pompous nature of union meetings. The idea was to make these events more accessible at all levels and ensure that “the procedural wrangling doesn’t weigh them down, preventing young members from getting involved and also to make them feel confident enough to say what they think” (Interview B-2, trans.). However, in both organizations, the modes of socialization favored to date in the local units were rather distant and aloof, that is, quite impersonal and formal. The General Assembly remained a good place to come into contact with other members. However, the heavy protocol and vocabulary used at these meetings made this contact difficult, even to the point of inhibiting young members from getting involved internally:

When you go to your first General Assembly, there’s the content itself but there’s also the way it’s delivered. There’s so much protocol, it’s hard to get your bearings. We should try to just use ordinary language to talk about things, keep things simpler. In my experience, it’s during the activities that you can really talk about things, when you’re on solid ground, without all the union jargon. Otherwise, you can’t understand a thing! (Discussion group A-2, Speaker 3, trans.)

Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the education and training programs for young members aimed to address the difficulties expressed by them. Indeed, these programs sought to help young members understand the structures and various procedures used locally, in particular, during General Assemblies. Certainly, in line with Kelly (1998), to effectively develop a collective project, members must be able to talk about the injustices they have experienced, define the collective interest, mobilize their energies, find ways to legitimize their actions, and address the strategies used by the employer. Thus, labor education and training initiatives must provide young members with the skills needed to undertake such action. In the two organizations studied, education and training programs were developed to help young members gain broad skills, challenge the traditional ways of doing things, and get more actively involved in their own union organizations. However, in both organizations, maintaining such a broad-based strategy emerged as a second challenge. More specifically, the question of union leave appeared to constitute a significant obstacle to union participation among young members. As one sociopolitical advisor reported,

When the local executives can’t even get enough leave to take care of their own files, because the amount of leave granted is so limited, you can understand why they can’t allow any leave to be used so a young member can participate in [the meeting organized by NYCA]. (Interview A2-1, trans.)

A third challenge for the two organizations studied was to provide post-training follow-up and assess how well the training had been integrated by the young members. In this regard, Peetz and Alexander (2011, 2013) argue that the usefulness of formal labor education and training programs is limited if these programs are not followed up. Moreover, union involvement and activism tend to develop over time and to be higher when follow-up measures are put in place. Such measures involve frequent and regular contact with members who have received training. Furthermore, these authors maintain that more theoretical or formal classroom-based education and training programs that are not followed up with practical application in less formal settings inevitably lose their effects over the long term.

These follow-up measures can be difficult to implement due to structural problems inherent in union organizations. For example, when training is entrusted to specialized trainers or organizations or, as in the two organizations studied, national youth committees, the person responsible for delivering the formal part of the training is not the same person who will follow up the training in a long-term informal relationship with the trainee. Thus, trainers cannot devise an effective action plan to address the various problems encountered by the trainee and can, therefore, not ensure that the keen interest created by the initial training will not peter out.

Sure, I can organize a good training session but I’m not there afterwards to see how things are going in the local union. I won’t see if a young member is kicked out of the union and I can’t advise them on the strategies they should use to promote their point. But I can, for example, go see the local elected representative to make sure the young trainee has been properly integrated and try to see with them what kind of follow up they should do with that young member. But we’re not there yet. (Interview B2-1, trans.)

To participate, the young members said they needed to be supported by more experienced union colleagues so that they could learn how to maneuver in the local and national structures. Without this mentoring and when the protocol and procedures were not accessible, young members did not feel they had the knowledge needed to understand the rationale behind the union movement and to grasp the importance of asserting their rights as workers and helping to bring about change. In practical terms, this means not only that it is necessary to implement an education program with popular appeal and make union activities more accessible to young members, but also that union leaders need to be close to young members and available at all times on the ground, meeting with them to discuss their issues and demonstrating what unionism involves on a day-to-day basis. This will enable them to transfer their knowledge to young members and spark union activism internally.

A fourth challenge involves revisiting internal communication strategies and even training strategies, which, in the organizations studied, were mainly top down. Moreover, the youth gatherings in both organizations were organized according to a top–down logic, with the education and training programs being shaped by youth committees and policy advisors. However, many informal spaces were provided for during these training sessions. These spaces allowed the young members to address the issues or themes that directly concerned them. There were also activities that gave a significant place to the voice of young members. For example, the young members of UOB discussed the elements to be included in a statement or proposal to be debated at the national conference. The young members of UOA, for their part, were asked to give their opinion on the best ways to adapt internal practices to make these practices more attractive to them.

At the time of our study, in the two organizations investigated, labor education and training programs for young members did not yet include the measures needed to allow these members’ knowledge to be integrated into their immediate workplaces. As pointed out by the representatives interviewed, much work remained to be done to develop a comprehensive labor education and training strategy that would give young members real influence internally. In this regard, union training is necessarily tied to democracy, which we analyze in the next section.

Training Young Members to Help Them Understand How the Decision-Making Bodies Operate So They Can Become Agents of Change within Their Union Organizations

To foster youth participation, according to the young members of UOA, the union organization’s strategic orientations, as well as its agenda, values, and practices, including at the local level, needed to better reflect their interests and aspirations. These young members wished to have better access to positions and decision-making channels within UOA and its strategic partners to exert more influence and, thus, help bring about concrete change within the organization. In UOB, the young members appeared to be more aware of their capacity to be heard within the internal structures and to bring about change through labor education and training. In the words of one participant, “we have to take up our place and take the bull by the horns if we really want to change things!” (Discussion group B-15, Speaker 4, trans.). Rotating positions in the local union executive committees and reserving a position for young leaders would help in this regard.

In practice, however, young members in both organizations appeared to face a significant problem, namely, resistance to change related to practices and traditional repertoires of action at the level of the local executive committees. These obstacles were frustrating for the young members and ultimately discouraged several of them from getting more actively involved in union activities. Their desire to change their organization, at the decision-making and democratic levels, thus, remained unfulfilled. This situation even caused some young activists, in both organizations, to revise their initial intention to pursue their involvement in the union over the long term, even in committees that they themselves had formed, as expressed by a member of UOA:

We formed a youth committee in our workplace and we did all kinds of activities. . . . We looked for ideas, we set something up and then, “Oh, well, no, not right now. We’re busy with something else.” The executive committee welcomed us with open arms. But time and time again, they put obstacles in our path. You have new ideas, innovative ideas, but when it doesn’t suit them, it’s not possible and it doesn’t get their approval. (Discussion group A-5, Speaker 5, trans.)

At the time of the study, the young members of both UOB and UOA were, thus, demanding that union practices be changed to bring them more in step with their activist bases. They also showed a strong desire to create spaces for bilateral debate, allowing members to influence the decisions and strategic orientations of their unions:

It takes more than just rubber stamping! We need to bring the General Assembly back to its truly democratic role with debates and discussions. I think this doesn’t only affect young members, but it could create a space for young members. We’ve sort of lost the habit to debate things, discuss, exchange ideas and do things outside the box a bit. We really need to reinvent ourselves! (Discussion group B-10, Speaker 1, trans.)

These findings suggest that union organizations need to take up a fifth challenge, of a democratic nature. The young members interviewed confirmed over and over again the desire to express their ideas and opinions and bring about change internally. The young members were able to challenge some local union practices, and, thus, initiate some changes internally. In this sense, the education and training programs for young members appear to have taught them how and where to pass their ideas along. The outcome of their protests often remained contingent on the degree of openness of the union leaders to the ideas they put forward, which shows how difficult it can be to maximize the benefits of these programs. While our interviews showed that integrating young members was a priority for the national leaders of these union organizations, and that these national leaders did not hesitate to allocate significant resources to educating young members, the reality at the local level appeared to be quite different. In fact, many of the young members interviewed clearly indicated that their participation at the local level, while promoted as desirable, should not greatly disrupt the usual ways of doing things or traditional union practices. Our interviews also revealed a strong desire on the part of these union organizations to control what they considered the political risk (Blondiaux 2008) inherent in young members’ participation in the union movement, which will be discussed in greater detail in the section “Conclusion.” Indeed, several of our respondents expressed frustration regarding the real intentions of labor education programs, which, they felt, sought more to compel young members to integrate into the existing union structure and adopt the prevailing union views rather than to foster the development of new skills and enable young members to challenge the traditional practices and push for change internally. However, where union structures truly made room for young members, the latter were able to quickly take up strategic roles and actively participate in union life.

Conclusion

Our study aimed to answer the following question: what is the potential of education initiatives to foster young members’ participation in their unions? First of all, our findings confirm the analytical power of the three concepts of identity, modes of socialization, and democracy in terms of gaining a better understanding of union participation among young union members. Exploring these concepts, which act as communicating vessels, shed light on the importance that preparing the next generation of union leaders and union activism held for the two organizations studied. The considerable resources that these two organizations had invested in education and training programs for union members under the age of thirty attest to this fact. Moreover, no other group of members in either organization benefited from an education and training program designed especially for them. Past the age of thirty, members only had access to training if they held union positions.

These two cases bring out important findings regarding the potential of education programs for young members in the organizations under study when it comes to encouraging greater participation in union life. Despite the criticisms expressed by the young activist base and the challenges facing union organizations with regard to improving these programs, the latter, nevertheless, have the potential to create stronger feelings of belonging among young members vis-à-vis their own unions and the labor movement as a whole, foster socialization among members internally, increase these members’ integration into union structures, and improve democratic practices internally.

More specifically, our results also highlight two important ideas that emerged from our analysis. First, to boost participation among young members internally, union organizations could develop education and training programs that provide more informal spaces for discussion among members. Indeed, young members prefer to discuss and debate the issues informally rather than simply following the usual procedures, which are deemed to be too rigid to allow for the amendment of proposals and are often imposed top down, by the leaders. Second, we observed a marked desire on the part of the young members to strengthen the democratic practices in their unions. Broad-based education programs for young members have the potential to help the latter better understand internal practices and procedures and, thus, encourage their participation in decision-making. In light of these findings, which demonstrate the usefulness of such education programs when it comes to fostering union involvement among young members, it appears that union organizations would gain from offering such programs not only to members under the age of thirty, but to all members, who would then be likely to make a greater contribution to union life.

In line with the above and with our previously published studies (Dufour-Poirier and Laroche 2015), these findings show that allowing for the democratic expression of opinions and a spirit of strategic openness means truly admitting new actors into the decision-making processes (Blondiaux 2008), which, as mentioned above, are not free of political risks. It also brings up the debates raised by Hyman (1994) regarding the inherent opposition between representative democracy and participatory democracy. While the former is often said to be ineffective, due to its inability to represent diverse points of view within an organization, the latter is often criticized for the heavy decision-making mechanisms involved. In the two organizations studied, youth committees appeared to have arrived at a crossroads in this regard as young members could not easily access decision-making positions, locally or nationally. At this stage, to make sure their voice was heard, these minorities had to coalesce with other marginalized groups to convince the rest of the membership of the relevance of eventually adapting existing policies and propel other expected changes in both organizations.

Our findings are in line with studies arguing that new forms of participatory democracy, which are often decentralized (Gall and Fiorito 2016; Hyman 1994; Voss 2010), are essential to truly encourage young members to participate in their union organizations. Our findings also contribute to the studies that seek to link labor education and training initiatives with internal union democracy. Union organizations need to reflect on strategies to help young members integrate into the discussion channels but also, and especially, bring a wave of creativity into the ranks that will lead to change in the agenda, strategic orientations, and practices of the organizations concerned. At the moment, although these programs are helping to pave the way, other union structures need to join in and capitalize on the enrichment of these young activists’ skills. Once this openness is shown to them, it will be up to young members to “dare” to participate and become agents of change within their union organizations, leading their organizations to challenge themselves and even to reinvent themselves.

Surprise us, challenge us, push our boundaries.

Make us laugh, make us cry, it’s important!

Make us think, it’s essential!

Make us dream, it’s crucial!

Suggest new and different ways of seeing the world . . .

—Excerpt from a speech by André Melançon, March 15, 2015, trans.