Current reports estimate 27 million American adults are functionally illiterate and 45 million adults are marginally literate (Jurmo, 1989). Unfortunately, no universally applicable definition of "literacy" and "workplace literacy" exists and most educational researchers have concluded that these terms must be defined within the context of a specific business' skill needs to be relevant.

During the past 10 years, three blue ribbon panels have suggested multidimensional skill sets they believe workers must have to be effective in today's work environment. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), a research project established by Congress, defined literacy in a 1985 report as "...using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential" (National Assessment of Education Progress, 1985). In Workplace Basics: The Skills Employers Want, (Carnevale, Gainer, & Meltzer, 1988), the American Society for Training and Development proposed that workers needed communication skills, decision making capabilities, and internal motivations as well as strong basic skills to be effective. The United States Department of Labor Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, in What Work Requires of Schools (United States Department of Labor, 1991), suggested effective workers needed advanced personal management, group communication, and information management skills in addition to being able to read, write, compute, listen, and speak at effective levels. This report also stated that decision Inmaking would be an important skill and that effective workers must be able to reason through a problem and apply creative solutions.

Resourceful companies establish their own "contextual" workplace literacy definition based on their specific needs and work with their unions to develop appropriate programs. Unfortunately, most companies have provided only limited assistance according to a 1989 study by the Commission on Workforce Quality and Labor Market Efficiency. Employers invested only 1S% of their total payroll in formal worker training courses. Though this $30 billion investment seems formidable, it represents only $278 per employee and is spread unevenly among employee classifications. Production and assembly workers benefited from only 14% of the formal, employer sponsored training courses during this period. A vast majority of employer investment was made in higher wage clerical, sales, marketing, or management employees (Commission on Workforce Quality and Labor Market Efficiency, 1989). A study conducted during the same period by the Society For Human Resource Management showed only one in four companies was offering remedial reading, writing, or arithmetic courses for workers. Most companies contended they did not have the expertise or funds for offering such courses indicating, suggests the Society, that most firms did not see 'the basic skills crisis' as their problem yet (Labor Notes, 1989).

Union sponsored education and training programs can be key parts of a broad union agenda for responding to change in the workplace and can significantly impact union members. Unions are the most natural vehicle for developing the trained, empowered workforce our country needs to regain its productivity and competitiveness for three reasons. First, union members go to their union for help with many different workplace problems. They are comfortable receiving advice from union brethren and have a high trust level. Extending this relationship to include counseling regarding education, training, and career development would be natural. Second, the union is the one organization that unconditionally represents the potential learners' interests and is an organization the workers have elected themselves. They trust it to make decisions on their behalf. Third, unions understand a given job's requirements and can provide qualified answers to questions management must resolve when planning changes. Without union involvement in the planning stages, work rules or process changes may create unsafe, unproductive processes and could demoralize a company's workforce. Fourth, unions are more likely to involve their members in planning, designing, and implementing a program. Through this process, the union can ensure workers develop supportive attitudes. This validation process is helpful in creating members' acceptance and minimizes disruption, reduces productivity losses, limits costly grievances, and smoothes negotiations.

For unions, workplace changes can directly support their fundamental mission of service to their members. Through participation with management, unions can protect their members' employment rights in the face of a changing work environment and, in fact, may improve their job security through additional training or new work rules. This opportunity for additional job security and advancement extends across all three aspects of work--the physical equipment, the content of workers' jobs, and the skills workers use. Management should value unions' eagerness to accept greater responsibility and accountability since most studies clearly indicate productivity increases can be directly linked to workers' perceived involvement levels.

Workplace literacy programs, as part of a broad education and training effort, can further a union's local objectives as well as serve it's members. A union sponsored education or training program that includes basic literacy skills can help a union attain six fundamental objectives: protecting union members' employment security by providing skills to help them pass licensing or certification tests; increasing members' job advancement opportunities with their current employer by negotiating new career opportunities that allow their members to use their newly acquired skills to take advantage of the job restructuring that is occurring at many companies; increasing members' basic wage levels and security like those union members studied by Rand Corporation who found that on-the-job training participants earned 16.9% more than their counterparts and were less vulnerable to layoffs; helping members qualify for new jobs while protecting their occupational health by diversifying their skills through advocating high quality education public education to guarantee all citizens achieve a literacy level that ensures they will have equal opportunity for gainful employment; and recruiting new members and retaining current members by establishing educational benefits and training programs that meet union members' diverse career and personal development needs (Indiana AFL- CIO, 1990, pp. 2-5; Sarmiento, 1990, p. 2-6).

Recent national attention on the value of increased worker skills may give unions a stronger position for leveraging employer support for new or broader programs. Edward Denison, in a 1987 worker productivity study, concluded that advances in knowledge enhanced productivity by 54% while worker education resulted in a 26% increase. By comparison, increases in machinery, plant, and equipment investments yielded only 15% productivity growth (Cunningham, 1988). Ideally, management and unions can both "win" if they coordinate their training efforts and increase workers' knowledge and skills.

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