Future of Devolution and Work in Wales Report: Home Truths and Next Steps

When we tasked Professor Jean Jenkins with considering the interplay between devolution and employment rights in Wales, we did not quite appreciate the scale of the challenge we had set her.

A few things quickly became apparent.

The devolved state has a significant degree of power over workers’ lives despite employment rights and industrial relations being reserved to Westminster.

There has also been very little consideration within Wales of what it would mean to actually devolve employment rights and industrial relations law, and therefore little debate about the risks and advantages of this. 

And industrial relations can feel impossible to pin down, spanning national boundaries with little regard for devolution in some cases and absolutely reshaped by them in others.

Our movement owes Professor Jenkins huge thanks for taking on this enormous task.

This final paper makes for fascinating reading, especially in terms of where we find ourselves now. Our labour market is broken. It is failing hundreds of thousands of workers. Their rights are not being respected and their expectations could not be lower.

The Wales TUC has been – and continues to be – a proud and vocal supporter of devolution in Wales. We campaigned for a Welsh Parliament and we have seen first-hand the difference having our own government in Cardiff can make – not least during the financial crisis, during the Covid pandemic and in the establishing of the social partnership structures that give workers in Wales a voice at the highest levels. Our starting position is therefore that control of work in Wales should lie as close to workers in Wales as possible.

Professor Jenkins’s report establishes the complex and challenging realities that we must address when looking at the question of devolving employment rights.

There is significant support for the devolution of employment rights among workers in Wales. But not currently majority support. Many of those who may want to see any such devolution happen swiftly do so from a good place – they want to see a Welsh Government that has sought to protect workers from the extremes of successive UK government attacks take the reins.

But, as Professor Jenkins deftly sets out, the government of the day is far from the only relevant actor in the labour market.

The Commission has focussed to a significant extent on how the devolved settlement and existing legislation that is going unenforced can be fully harnessed to create the sort of conditions where workers are then able to determine the right pathway for them. It sets out how Wales’s labour market can begin to be strengthened and rebuilt.

By exploring the core themes of labour rights, institutions and enforcement it looks at what is necessary to ensure that any outcome – including further or full devolution – does not reinforce existing labour market failures. 

And this needs to be the starting point for our movement.  

We need to approach these issues with our eyes wide-open about what those risks could be, with careful consideration given to how to mitigate these, whilst protecting what workers have already won and secured.

Doing so will offer us a chance to create a distinct, more progressive and equitable labour market in Wales.

We also need to be ready to take advantage of the potential opportunities to in-source workers into the public sector in Wales. The move towards privatisation and the outsourcing of workers has been a major factor in undermining workers’ rights and accountability over the last 40 years. With the UK Labour party committed to the “biggest wave of insourcing in a generation” we need to consider how we can seize this opportunity in Wales.

Professor Jenkins’s recommendations focus on radically reshaping labour market institutions within Wales, by investment in enforcement and pivoting the devolved state towards rebuilding the conditions necessary for workers to access their basic labour rights. I also make note of her recommendation on how the Wales TUC should be building its own capacity to look at the practicalities of potential further devolution.  

I speak for all our affiliates when I offer our sincere thanks to Professor Jenkins for her commitment and work in considering these issues and writing this report.

It will now be for the Wales TUC to consider these recommendations and agree our next steps as a movement to make work fairer for all.