3.3 Privatization

"In the computer age, the economic performance of firms depends, more than ever, on a well-trained work force. Canadian companies must recognize that training is not a cost but an investment. While many establishments in this country do carry out some retraining when introducing technological change, much of this activity is unstructured and of short duration. It is quite possible that Canadian employers, as a whole, are underestimating the skills required by the new technologies and are under-investing in training as a result."

(28)

"I'm in the private sector and I run a good program. I hope you're going to
talk about that . . . "

(interviewee)

CCLOW's perspective on issues related to privatization is considerably less well-developed than it is with respect to access issues. This is not surprising, given the relatively recent emergence of privatization of training and education as a public policy issue and the lack of distinction in government documents among phrases like 'on-the-job training, 'market- driven training' and 'privatized training'. CCLOW's current position on privatization is based on the idea that 'on-the-job' training is good, when it can be shown that trainees are indeed learning new skills on the job. On the other hand, CCLOW is concerned that 'privatized training' is highly likely to be bad, especially for disadvantaged women. CCLOW's central concern has been most clearly expressed by ACTEW:

"What is profitable for a company may not be in the best interests of training. To minimize costs, employers may be tempted to exclude those most in need of training in favor of more educated, experienced women ..." (29)

A related concern was raised by one of our interviews, who works with employers on training:

"They're not training women in non-traditional areas. They say this is what the women want -- clerical jobs, entry-level service jobs -- and this is where the jobs are. It's true, but you know, there's no future in those jobs ... I think that there's a bigger and bigger gap between women who might go into non-traditional areas and the ways of getting there "

(interviewee)

An analysis of Re-Entry programs sponsored under Canadian Jobs Strategy funding, done by Terry Dance and Susan Witter (30) seems to support our interviewee's opinion. It showed that 87% of trainee positions were in traditional 'non-high-quality' areas, while 58% of Job Development projects were classified as traditional (Table 6).

Privatized training seems to encompass at least two distinct approaches to training: in-service or apprenticeship-type programs sponsored by employers for employees or potential employees; and privately-sponsored educational programs which operate on a contract or individual fee-paying basis. Public policy at the regional level is shifting to place an emphasis on training already-employed workers (31). At the federal level, more training money is moving into the hands of private sponsors and less to community colleges and other traditional sources of technical and continuing education. The result is that increased emphasis is being placed on privatized training generally.


Back Contents Next