The role of learning and education in trade union efforts to organise young and precarious workers

Due to increasing precarisation, trade unions face challenges of organising young and precarious workers. Although research informs of innovative union strategies in this regard, there is a gap in understanding the role of learning and education in trade union efforts to organise young and precarious workers. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on industrial relations and adult education scholarship to examine a case study of innovative strategies of the Trade Union Youth Plus (TUYP) that has since 2011 operated in Slovenia. Findings show that dialogical approaches to education played a crucial role in the establishment and development of TUYP and its innovative proactive fieldwork and communication tactics, which increased unions’ dialogical capacity to engage with, organise and unionise young and precarious workers, and ultimately also led to the transfer of knowledge from TUYP to the wider trade union movement. The article shows that dialogical approaches to education are a necessary prerequisite for organising and unionising young and precarious workers and for revitalising trade union organisations.