4. Statement by the First Minister: Social Partnership

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:13 pm on 9 July 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 4:13, 9 July 2019

Dirprwy Lywydd, thank you very much to Vikki Howells for those questions. She is a member of the fastest growing trade union in the United Kingdom, if she is a member of USDAW. And that's very important, isn't it, because we are used in Wales to having high densities of trade union membership in public services and public sector settings, but USDAW is a trade union that operates in the sector that she mentioned, in the retail sector, in shops where the Oxfam report focused its attention. I've been very pleased with many others here to be part of campaigns that USDAW has run, both locally in constituencies and nationally, and it's succeeded in being a growing trade union because it goes about its business in a new way. It relies on persuading people of the direct benefits that trade union membership brings to them and then the collective advantages that they get from working together. I know that there are some important lessons for the wider trade union movement, which the TUC nationally has been keen to draw on.

And, of course, there are many other ways in which, as a Government and as individuals, we are able to support that effort. I know many colleagues here will have taken part in the young workers campaign, run by Unison, which was here in the Assembly only a week or two ago and which aims to do the same thing for new workers—young people coming into industry and into public services—and again to explain to them and to recruit them into the advantages that union membership brings.

As far as the directorate we are establishing is concerned, I was keen that it should be in the First Minister's office for the reasons I outlined earlier, that it should have sufficient seniority at its head, but that it should operate as well with a significant number of secondees who come into its work directly from the trade union movement and directly from employers as well. If this is a directorate about social partnership, it needs to operate on a social partnership basis, and that means having the Welsh Government there, but it also means having the direct participation of people from that wider world. We're already talking to both the Wales TUC and to employer organisations about them finding the right people to come and work with us on this agenda.

And, finally, Dirprwy Lywydd, I didn't mention the well-being of future generations Act in the statement itself, but I did mention making sure that what we do fits into the wider legislative landscape. It was the well-being of future generations Act I had in mind, and I had it in mind in the way that I responded to Alun Davies—that at the heart of the Act is, as one of its seven goals, that creation of a more equal Wales. That is the ambition that drives social partnership here in Wales and drives our ambition to bring forward a Bill for this Assembly's consideration.