A Living Wage for Wales

This week Welsh children, working with Save the Children, launch a national campaign to secure a Living Wage of £7.20 an hour for Welsh workers.

You can sign our young campaigners petition here and I…

Mind the Pay Gap Myth

That there is gap of 18 per cent between pay in the public and private sectors in Wales has been repeated often and by such respected authorities as the Treasury and Institute for Fiscal Studies.  Yet the…

In Memoriam – for all those who have been killed at work

Saturday 28th April was International Workers’ Memorial Day.  Yet most people remained blissfully unaware of the day, or the number of workers in Wales that lose their lives because of their jobs.

Last year,…

Is unemployment here to stay?

Yesterday’s unemployment figures make sobering reading. The fact that the numbers have gone up, or down, on the previous month is neither here nor there. What is so disturbing is that the number of people out of…

Solving the Merthyr Problem

“How do you solve a problem like Merthyr Tydfil?” asked Ciaran Jenkins on last night’s Channel 4 news.  His report rightly highlighted that not…

Swedish model threatens agency workers

New rules designed to stop employers undercutting the pay and conditions of their permanent staff are being systematically undermined by some of Wales’s and the UK’s leading businesses.

The Agency Workers Regulations (AWR) came into force on…

What’s wrong with regional pay?

“Regional pay” threatens to be another blow to Wales’s public sector workers, following a pay freeze, cuts in spending and threats to pensions. It could also affect public sector workers’ families and the economies of towns and…

GDP: 6 uncomfortable truths and 5 priorities

The latest GDP figures for West Wales and the Valleys has generated much debate. But there are some truths about the use of EU funds that are somewhat uncomfortable. And far from being unclear, the way forward…

Remploy: right principle, wrong time

The UK Government’s decision to close 5 out of 7 of Wales’s Remploy plants is the right principle, being implemented at the wrong time. For decades, equality groups have argued that disabled people who can work should…

The case for Work Programme volunteering

In the last few weeks the opportunity to encourage young people to get back to work has been a hot topic of conversation in the media. As a Volunteer Development Manager at Tenovus, I wanted to…