Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:55 pm on 19 June 2019.
Both zero hours and short weekly or daily guaranteed hours mean that there is no certainty of income on a weekly or monthly basis. This leads to severe financial problems when few or no hours are worked in any weeks. And the one thing is: never be ill, because when you're ill you go back to either your minimum one hour or zero hours, and the food bank is the only hope of food.
Using staff employed via an agency means that most employment responsibilities are then with the agency. After 12 weeks in the same role working for the same employer, agency workers are entitled to the same employment and working conditions as permanent staff. Crucially, however, agency workers are not entitled to benefits such as occupational sick pay, redundancy pay and health insurance, the right to claim for unfair dismissal, and minimum notice of redundancy where they are working. This means that agency staff are much easier to dismiss than directly employed staff because they are employed by the agency, not the company they are working at. And also, the 12 weeks are very important, because after 11 weeks if you move them on and then they come back a fortnight later, the 12 weeks that you have to work for those rights start again at day one.
The renaming of the minimum wage as the living wage has obviously caused some confusion, as there was already a national living wage calculated by the Living Wage Foundation. Almost 6 million workers in the UK are currently paid less than the living wage as defined by the Living Wage Foundation. I believe that the case for everyone to be paid at least the real living wage, as defined by the Living Wage Foundation, is really an overwhelming argument. I don't believe that it makes sense that the Government enforces a minimum wage that is not considered enough to live on, and renaming it the living wage can only lead to confusion with the real living wage, which is why I believe the living wage, as defined by the Living Wage Foundation, is desperately needed for everybody. This is not about having exotic lifestyles; it just means you can live.
One of the biggest problems facing us in Wales today is in-work poverty, which is something the living wage would help address, and one of the Westminster Government’s biggest problems is paying in-work benefits, which, again, paying a living wage would help address. I believe that the Government has a moral duty to ensure a decent standard of living for all.
We also know that we're doing very well on the number of people unemployed, but if you have somebody working 40 hours who's then replaced by two people on 15 hours and one person on 10 hours, you've actually increased the number of people employed by two, which is good on unemployment, but instead of having one relatively well-paid worker, you've got three very low-paid workers, and that affects not just the people, it affects the benefits they're getting, and it also affects the tax take for the Government in Westminster.
There are also benefits for employers, the Living Wage Foundation report says. A living wage employer ensures that all employees are paid at least the living wage; this includes individuals who work on a regular basis at your premises for a contractor or subcontractor, such as cleaners or security staff. Living wage employers report improved morale, lower turnover of staff, reduced absenteeism, increased productivity and improved customer service.
Our ambition for Wales must be to create a high-wage and high-skilled economy, and becoming a living wage country would be one further step along that road. 'We cannot afford it and it will cost jobs' has been the argument used against all progressive change, from the abolition of slavery to the minimum wage. 'No, we can't afford it, it'll bring bankruptcy.' I remember when we were fighting for the minimum wage, one of the great successes of Tony Blair and the Labour Government in 1997, people said, 'Oh, we'll have to make people redundant; we'll have to cut staff', as if employing people was a philanthropic gesture that employers did, and that they would stop doing it because they'd have to pay more. What you actually found was that more people got into employment because you had more money in the local economy, and it pushed up demand.
We won the battle over the minimum wage; the loss of jobs didn't occur. It may have reduced sales of top-of-the-range cars, but it put money in people’s pockets and really helped local economies. If we pay people who are relatively poor more money, they spend it locally. If you pay people who are very rich more money, they tend to spend it in other places. Really, we do need to become a living wage country, but we need more than that. I believe that being a living wage country would make Wales a fairer country, and this is a policy that all of us living in Wales could be proud and one that we as socialists, on our side, should be campaigning for.
Actions that the Welsh Government can take, and I've asked for this before and I'll ask for it again, and I'll keep asking for it: ensure all public sector workers employed by bodies directly funded by the Welsh Government are paid the real living wage; make paying the real living wage a pre-condition for contracting with public sector bodies funded via the Welsh Government, either directly or indirectly; make paying the real living wage a pre-condition of grants and loans to private companies; banning exploitative contracts by Welsh Government-funded bodies and their contractors and subcontractors; making financial support for companies, both grants and loans, dependent on non-exploitative contracts.
This only gets us so far, but it gets us a long way—. We should not be helping and supporting poverty pay. We should not be helping and supporting exploitation.
What we need, however, is more higher paid employment. The Welsh economy is significantly weak. I've told the Welsh Government many times that we are very low on high-paid sectors and when we have the reports coming in on where we are weak, it says things like 'ICT', and it says things like 'banking and insurance', and it says things about professional services—the real, top-of-the-range, high-paid areas.
So, what do we need to do in Wales? I believe that we need to work more closely with the universities: Aarhus, for example, and the business park model, and Manheim has a centre for innovation and entrepreneurship. We know they work in those cities. There's no reason they can't work here. It's easy to say, 'Oh, Cambridge is very successful; it's got a science park.' Swansea, Cardiff and Cambridge? No. But could we be the same as Manheim and Aarhus? There's no reason why we couldn't. Manheim is the second city within its Länder and Aarhus is the second city in Denmark—not dissimilar to Swansea.
Whilst the term 'technium' has become synonymous with failure, the initial idea of using it in Swansea to provide facilities for start-up companies spinning out of the university was a good one, but labelling all advanced factories as techniums was doomed to failure.
There are some simple and quick actions that could be carried out to improve the Welsh economy: provide larger loans through the commercial bank to medium-sized companies. We don't grow companies from medium to large. In fact, the only company I can think of that has done it in recent years is Admiral. We really need to push companies up from medium to large, because far too many medium-sized companies, unfortunately, sell out.
We could provide loans against overseas assets and let Government contracts of such size that medium-sized Welsh companies can bid. We need to make it easier for microcompanies to expand. What we need to do is grow in key economic sectors. Why is Dundee a major producer of computer games? That's another city—I've tried to pick cities that are not the great cities of the world, but cities that we in Wales have cities very similar to.
Computer games can be produced anywhere in the world. Abertay found political and financial backing to establish a new department, offering the world's first computer games degree in 1997. There are now a clutch of related degrees, including games design and production management, and an intriguing BSc course called 'ethical hacking'. Hundreds of games graduates are turned out by Abertay every year, including David Jones, founder of DMA Design. After Lemmings in 1991, it released the first edition of the controversial game Grand Theft Auto in 1997. It sold in the millions, and new versions continue to top the games ratings. Trained games makers are in demand in the games industry worldwide. A significant number of them stay on in the area, creating games and building new companies with teams they met while studying.
The creation of an Aarhus-type business park or Manheim’s centre for innovation and entrepreneurship, or Dundee developing industries in conjunction with the university—these are not difficult things; these are what we have to do if we are going to grow our economy. What we need are policies that work to support the growth of Welsh companies and establish new ones. We in Wales are no less skilled, entrepreneurial and capable than anywhere else in the world. What we have to do is ensure that we can turn these companies out in Wales, and let's get people paid good wages and that would really drive our economy up. Thank you.