ABSTRACT
During the 1980s and 1990s many industrialised countries undertook extensive programmes of workplace restructuring and training reform as strategies to address the massive changes occurring worldwide in the organisation and conduct of post-industrial work. In Australia, following a tripartite accord between the trade union movement, employers and government, an array of measures designed to restructure workplaces and training procedures was enacted. As in other countries, strong emphasis was placed on ‘work-place communications’ and the communications ‘needs’ of workers. One consequence of this was the emergence of workplace literacy and numeracy programmes, together with attempts to generate measures and scales of literacy and numeracy ‘competence’. A great deal of activity ensued, with professional associations, colleges of technical and further education (TAFEs), universities, private providers and consultants, jockeying for opportunities to provide workplace programmes and ‘packages’ out of the considerable funding ‘pot’ provided under the national training reform agenda.
