By Barbara Byers

I first thought of getting involved with literacy in 1989, when I was the newly elected President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL). A Southam News survey had recently reported that 25 per cent of adult Canadians lacked the literacy skills they needed to function properly in the various aspects of their lives. This was a clarion call to action that we have heard right up to the present day.

In the late ’80s, literacy programs were in a fledgling state, though I had heard of BEST (Basic Education for Skills Training), a program newly launched by the Ontario Federation of Labour. BEST was training co-worker instructors to set up classes in their own workplaces to help fellow union members upgrade their skills. I thought Saskatchewan workers could benefit from such a program, and wondered whether we had members who could become more active in their unions if they had the chance to improve their skills.

Thanks to initial funding from the National Literacy Secretariat in Ottawa, we started WEST (Workers’ Education for Skills Training), borrowing many of the tenets of BEST. In the beginning, we had to work hard to convince unions it was in the best interests of their members to get involved.

When I look back on those early years, I think some of our instincts were good. We started, for example, where we knew we had some of the essential ingredients to get a program going, like having good support from both union and employer. This is still fundamental today. Our bottom line, always, was that the learning had to meet the needs of the workers and help them build skills to participate in the workplace, at home, in the community and, we hoped, in the union, too. Employers often came to the table with different goals, but we could usually come up with a plan that worked for both sides.

When I was elected Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in 2002, I was delighted to be assigned responsibility for the CLC Workplace Literacy Program, in place since 1996. The CLC coordinates labour’s literacy activity at the national level, promoting awareness, building capacity, creating resources and bringing unions and provincial and territorial federations of labour together to share ideas, resources and strategies. This has led to our work in the need to communicate about clear language, recognizing that literacy has to be a two-way street if our programs and communications are going to be accessible to our members. Like equality, literacy and clear language need to be entrenched in everything we do.

Canada has an abysmal record in workplace training, and it is in our collective interest to turn the situation around. As stacks of reports provide mounting evidence of the need for adult literacy upgrading—and of the social and economic benefits that ensue—the argument for taking action is more compelling than ever. The answer to skills shortages in the workplace is staring us in the face: there is a large pool of adults ready and willing to learn, if we give them the chance to build a foundation for further learning.

There are a few glimmers of hope. Quebec’s training levy requires employers to spend one per cent of their payroll on training. As articles in these pages demonstrate, cooperation between private and public employers and unions has reaped some impressive rewards for all concerned. As a board member of ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation, an organization forged by labour, business and education leaders with the mandate to champion adult literacy and literacy in the workplace, I applaud the efforts and the vision of the people profiled here. In addition, partnerships in several provinces have brought employers, labour and provincial governments together to promote and deliver workplace literacy. But there are other and new challenges, including rounds of cuts to federal support for the infrastructure to promote literacy.

Along with other national literacy organizations, ABC CANADA has played an important advocacy role in promoting a Canadian strategy for literacy and, through this publication, showcasing the good work being done. On the labour side, we are committed to working with employers, all levels of government, public-education and literacy organizations to create learning opportunities for workers and their families in the workplace and in the community. We know that the pay-off is huge: that an increase in adult literacy will return our collective investment in spades, bolstering the economy, health, and social cohesion. It could be a win-win formula if the political will on all sides is there.

Barbara Byers is Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress and a board member of ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation.