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Learning from activism, usually informal and unrecognised, is an important component of industrial relations and a major learning source for individuals, organisations and society. Young workers who lack support from existing employee organisations may create their own. Based on studies of social movement organisations in highly diverse industrial relations systems (Austria, Spain’s Basque Region, Slovakia), this chapter presents a framework for analysing and comparing novel social movement organisations’ position within industrial relations systems. Each was founded because its national system did not adequately address challenges. Activism enables young people employed in workplaces unfavourable to learning, or unemployed, to compensate for what better workplaces offer. Youth-led social movement organisations generate important knowledge and practical skills, challenging established organisations, including trade unions, and renewing industrial relations structures.

Workplace learning opportunities are closely linked to the type of job an individual has, and people’s use of available opportunities differs. Learning opportunities do not translate automatically into learning: individuals need to take advantage of them. This chapter presents a novel approach to investigating individual agency in workplace learning, studying early career employees in three sectors (Retail, Metals and Adult Education) across nine countries. It develops accounts of 71 workers’ learning across 17 organisations, thereby investigating workplace learning as embedded both in contexts of work and individuals’ wider life structures. When individuals’ agency in workplace learning is considered in isolation from its context, it cannot be properly explained; other areas of life add to and/or limit individuals’ learning opportunities. Employment interacts with other parts of life.

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