OCCUPATIONAL LICENSING VERSUS COMPANY-LED TRAINING

ABSTRACT

The paper provides an analysis of the major controversy which occurred between national aviation authorities during their work on the European harmonization of the aircraft technicians’ competence. The debate focused on the institutional method to assure the high skills level required for that profession: should Europe introduce a system of personnel licensing or a system of company-led training? Should competence assurance and monitoring be assigned to the aviation authority or should these responsibilities be delegated to approved companies? A series of 20 extensive interviews with aviation stakeholders in France, Germany and the United Kingdom showed: (i) the company training option highlights the fact that ‘organization’ is a traditional strategy for competence assurance in high-reliability contexts (like aircraft maintenance), the other main alternatives being occupational regulation and sorting by well-informed markets. (ii) The quality recognition required for the international outsourcing of safety-critical services favours the licensing system. In contrast to licensing, the design of the company training system fails to generate the transparency and trust necessary to reassure foreign customers. (iii) Both systems of competence assurance are densely intertwined with specific industrial relation patterns and vested interests. The distortion of these – national or local – equilibriums by European harmonization encounters strong opposition from the industry and/or unions.

Keywords:

• equivalence of certificates
• education systems
• labour relations
• trade unions
• air transport

Notes

¹My thanks go out to Maurice Ourtau from LIRHE, Université de Toulouse 1, with whom I conducted this research.

²Contract No. C04000047. Ministère de la Jeunesse, de l'Education et de la Recherche, Direction Générale de l'Enseignement Scolaire (DGESCO).

³The database is currently under construction.

⁴Between 2000 and 2006, existing company models were replaced by European licences in the fields of light aviation, flight operation management, air traffic controlling and merchant shipping. The company models for flight attendants and train drivers are currently being challenged by European licensing initiatives launched in the mid-2000s.

⁵In our view, the same interpretation applies to the acceptance problems, mentioned above, of the diploma recognition Directive 92/51 EEC.