The essential steps in IAL’s history and changes completed in a period of remarkable changes in our country.
Giulio Pastore, in relation to the 1st National CGIL’s Congress (Rome, 4-7November 1949) put a new question to the assembly of delegates and to the Italian trade union about professional training, qualification and specialization of adult workers and apprentices.
He described this as "a field in which the union must be able to say his word and also to exercise an explicit function of initiative, as it’s already the case in countries where the union has more developed. "

This "explicit function of initiative" started in 1955 during the constitution of the IAL, a CISL’s body for training, qualification and upgrading Professional, Culture and Social workers.
Since the beginning there was a strong need to "get in this field in specific situations, also to stem the alarming impoverishment of qualification in our workforce, and at the same time to allow the reopening of an important market for worker’s children" .
Those can happen through a professional training aimed specifically at objectives of "first training, qualification, specialization and advanced [...] in favour of apprentices and adult workers" and even then assumed to level "business, intercompany and outside the company."

From these steps completed in an extraordinary historical period full of transformations, the IAL’s structure emerges clearly in its distinctive features that still characterize the journey:

• Work and quality are and remain the centre of our action in its values of independence, dignity and freedom. They constitute the major challenge for the trade union through the contractual and concerted action it reasserts the irreplaceable function of vehicle of citizenship and participation as the basis of our constitutional pact.

• The Good training is the one focused on the person, the one who speaks the language of the promotion, protection, citizenship, trying to translate constraints into opportunities. The one which contrasts "poverty" by supporting individual talents in a larger project of helping people to try to be protagonists of their own destiny. In this sense it’s necessary to use all the resources to make effective choices and being aware of the possible consequences that may result for themselves and for the society.

The IAL’s original mission through the years has been adapt to the evolution of the economy and society, with the rhythm and character of industrial development, the changing world of knowledge and work, to the demands of younger workers. There was a shift from a standardized, sectored, centralized type of market to another specialized, flexible, decentralized and unstructured.

In this direction also the needs and desires of workers and younger people are changing. Those are Real needs that need realistic and personalized answers.
All guidance services, vocational training and matching supply and demand, of training courses about work, qualification, requalification and retraining, updating profiles and skills, even at an high level, are all available through an e –learning procedure.

Since the beginning our mission has been an effective, open and quality training for people. Facing the current challenges our main object is to start from the people and from work finding a stronger ability to act with the logic of innovation, to set up a network of services for training and work following the efficiency and effectiveness of the "market". At the same time this project requires a real commitment to the values of solidarity and attention to the social cohesion.

Today we’re starting over as a social enterprise, delivering our mission through our name - Innovation, Learning, Work - proud of our history and of the professionalism matured In time . Thanks to the widespread presence throughout the country and in major areas of 'Europe, the qualified partnerships with the business community, university and research system even at the international level.