The Fair Work Wales report: a manifesto for all of us

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12275
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Author: Keith Sisson
• Date: 01 November 2019

The Fair Work Wales report: a manifesto

for all of us

Keith Sisson

ABSTRACT

Fair Work Wales, the report of the Wales Fair Work Commission, details the charac-

teristics of fair work and recommends how to promote them. Its wider significance is

that it offers a blueprint for what the UK should be doing—a challenge that could

hardly be more fundamental.It is a timely reminder for employment relations

teachers and researchers that the world of work may be changing but what they do

and how they go about it really do matter.

1 INTRODUCTION

Throughout the post-Second World War period, one of the overriding concerns of

policy makers has been with maximising the quantity of employment. In recent years,

however, the emphasis has switched to promoting its quality.

1

This is above all true of

the UK, where it is something widely agreed to be essential in tackling the UK’s

chronic problem of low pay, low skill and low productivity.

2

The Scottish Government was in the vanguard. In 2014, it set up a tripartite

Working Together Committee under the chairmanship of the Scottish National

Party’s Jim Mather. The Committee, in turn, proposed the establishment of a Fair

Work Convention (Mather, 2014). Endorsed by the government, the Convention’s

first output was a Fair work framework published in 2016.

In the wider UK, 2018 saw the publication of three reports dealing with job

quality:

❒Keith Sisson, Industrial Relations Research Unit, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick.

Correspondence: Keith Sisson, Emeritus Professor, Industrial Relations Research Unit, Warwick

Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.

Email: keithsisson@hotmail.co.uk

1

For example, the OECD’s main concern, historically, was with the supply side of the labour market—for

which read deregulation and getting people into work. A Ministerial meeting in January 2016, however,

emphasised the importance of ‘promoting better quality jobs …since the quality of working life is one of

the most powerful determinants of well-being in our societies. We also note that there does not have to

be a tradeoff between the quality and quantity of employment opportunities in the advanced countries:

job quantity and the different dimensions of job quality tend to be positively related across OECD countries

…better jobs can promote other policy goals such as promoting higher labour force participation and in-

creasing the supply of skilled labour, worker commitment and, ultimately, strong and sustainable economic

performance’(OECD, 2018).

2

For further background, see Sisson, (2018) ‘Shaping the world of work—time for a UK jobs strategy’

Warwick Papers in Industrial Relations Series no. 105, Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of

Warwick.In December 2018, the UK government published its Good Work Plan in response to the Taylor

review report. On p. 7, it emphasises that ‘This is the first time that the Government has placed equal im-

portance on both quantity and quality of work’.

Industrial Relations Journal

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

50:5

–6, 564

–579

•The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD’s)

Understanding and measuring job quality (Parts 1 & 2)

3

;

•Good work: the Taylor review of modern working practices;

•The Carnegie Trust’sMeasuring good work. The final report of the measuring

Job Quality Working Group.

In the summer of the same year, the Welsh Government (WG) appointed Professor

Linda Dickens to help establish and chair an independent Fair Work Commission

4

and recommend how to make Wales a ‘fair work’nation. She presented the Commis-

sion’s Report Fair Work Wales (FWW) in March 2019, and it was published in May

2019 (www.gov.wales/fair-work-wales).

The reason for singling out FWW for attention here is that its exposition of the

characteristics of fair work is difficult to improve on. Its recommendations for pro-

moting fair work are immensely practical as well as comprehensive. The FWW Re-

port is indeed a manifesto for all of us. It is not only something that policymakers

and practitioners ACROSS the UK can and should take on board, but also a not-

to-be-missed opportunity for teachers and researchers in employment studies to stress

that what they do and how they go about it really do matter.

2 WHY ‘FAIR WORK’MATTERS

There are good reasons to focus on fair work rather than ‘good work’or ‘job quality’.

To begin with, fairness has strong resonance in the world of work. It is more than

forty years since Hyman and Brough (1975: p. 1) observed ‘the arguments of those in-

volved in industrial relations are shot through with essentially moral terminology …

In particular appeals to the idea of fairness abound’. The authors remind us that ‘fair-

ness’has also ‘entered the terminology of labour law on both sides of the Atlantic,

specific acts by employers or trade unionists being defined as “unfair practices”.

The resonance of fairness is more than historical. Fair work has become especially

meaningful since the financial crisis of 2008. As individual case studies from Citizens’

Advice (2017) highlight, for many employees, getting the basic legal entitlements is

what good work is all about. For others, it is the inequality of pay levels and job in-

security—the ‘dark-side of labour flexibility’in the words of the Bank of England’s

Chief Economist (Haldane, 2016)—that rankle. A sizeable fraction of households

have seen little or no recovery in their disposable incomes in recent years. In the

meantime, there has been a considerable growth in self-employment and resorting

to temporary and 0-hour contracts—much of which is involuntary.

5

Fair Work Wales is very much alive to its context. The Commission’s work was in-

formed by evidence from a number of sources: responses to its call for evidence, wide

ranging consultation and engagement meetings, existing research and analysis and the

considerable expertise and experience from within the Commission (FWW 2019: p.

124). Regular meetings also were held with the main social partners who, prior to

3

The CIPD also publishes an annual UK working lives report based on a representative survey of UK

workers, the first of which was in 2018.

4

Other members of the commission were Sharanne Basham-Pyke (Director of Shad Consultancy Ltd),

Professor Edmund Heery of Cardiff University and Sarah Veale CBE (former Head of Equality and Em-

ployment Rights, TUC). Cardiff University’s Professor Alan Felstead was Independent Expert Advisor.

5

See, for example, TUC (2018) Living on the edge. Experiencing workplace insecurity in the UK.

The Fair Work Wales report: a manifesto for all of us 565

© 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd