This paper explores some common political dynamics and conflicting interests underlying the rise of neo-liberal skills training policies across the OECD throughout the decade of the 1990s. It focuses primarily on recent debates and policy developments in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, drawing on related literature from Canada and Britain. In these and other countries influenced by the OECD, policy makers have forged an apparent consensus across social groups—business, labour, equity seeking groups, individuals—with diverse and sometimes conflicting interests in the structure and purposes of skills training. Such a ‘unitarist’ approach is built on the presumption of mutual benefit. Yet the resulting reforms have had a remarkably unilateral effect: they move control over and benefits from skill training away from individuals and unions and into the hands of private capital. Where skills development was once seen as a chance for individuals to gain bargaining power in the labour market, in the last decade it has become a means for employers to gain workers whose knowledge and skill is already tightly harnessed to the ‘bottom line’. © 2000, © 2000 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
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