Vocational education and training (VET) in Australia has been widely deregulated as the country has moved to an employer-led VET system. This deregulated system has seen a growing emphasis on more job-specific and firm-specific forms of training. This article explores these developments by examining the training of frontline team leaders in Australia’s automotive industry. The article finds that the automotive companies in Australia have pulled back on their commitment to broad-based skill development at work and that the training they provide is tending to become more job-specific and firm-specific, as they seek to implement standardized global production systems.
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