CARWYN’S FAREWELL TO WELSH TUC
CARWYN Jones wants to be remembered as a First Minister who defended the rights of working people and fought for improved public services.
In a speech to a supportive audience at the Wales TUC’s annual conference in Llandudno, Mr Jones made it clear that he sees the Welsh Government’s partnership with the trade union movement as crucial to his legacy.
He said: “When I took over in 2009 we were in the midst of one of the worst financial crises the world has ever seen.
“Just a few short months later we saw elected at Westminster a Conservative government intent on the biggest squeeze on public spending in more than a century.
“Those times were tough. They tested the bonds of our social partnership. Difficult public spending decisions had to be made as a result.
“But we made them from a position of power – and I’m proud of that.”
Mr Jones said Wales has a government willing to stand up for working people. “When the Tories scrapped NHS bursaries in England it was health unions working with our Welsh Labour Government that kept them in Wales.
“When Tory ministers in England scrapped the educational maintenance allowance it was the National Union of Students in Wales, working with Labour ministers in Wales, that kept them for our students.
“Perhaps what I am most proud of is when the Tories diluted workers’ rights in England it was the work we did together as a Welsh Labour Government and a trade union movement that protected them through the Trade Union Act.”
The Future Generations Act passed in 2015 enshrined his administration’s commitment to building a country that people would be proud of for our children and our grandchildren to grow up in, he said.
And the NHS, which this year celebrates the 70th anniversary of its foundation, embodies the principles of fairness, social justice and equality that say something about Wales as a nation.
Mr Jones said it was “our collective responsibility to prepare the Welsh NHS for future generations, to ensure it can go on being the engine of social justice it has been for seven decades”.
He told delegates: “In Wales we’re integrating health and social care, we’ve made the NHS a Living Wage employer, and we’ve taken action on zero-hours contracts in the care sector.
“We’ve done this because that’s the way to make it fit for the future.
“Only by paying those who work in it a fair wage; only by easing pressures on acute services by investing in preventative services and only by keeping funding in the service, not leaching out through private dividend, can we build a foundation for the NHS for another 70 years.”
The First Minister said: “I may be leaving but those difficult decisions need to go on being made.
“Wales is changing rapidly – in part because of the success of the NHS itself and the longer lives we are leading. One in four children born in Wales today will live to over 100 years old.
“In the next few weeks we will be launching our long-term plan for health and social care in Wales and it’s important we face those challenges together.”
Turning to the economy, Mr Jones said: “Accelerating technological change, climate change, insecure employment, sit alongside the deep structural challenges we have in Wales of long-term deindustrialisation, economic inactivity and productivity that lags behind the rest of the UK.
“In 2017 I made a commitment to make Wales a Fair Work nation. A place where nobody has their lives or their opportunities truncated by poverty or circumstance.
“Over the last year we have made important progress identifying the ways the Welsh Government can put Fair Work at the heart of our economy. The Fair Work board we have established has set out the underpinning values of Fair Work, which include a right to be heard, fair and guaranteed hourly earnings, job security and career progression, job quality and working time quality.
“I recently announced a Fair Work Commission will be established over the coming weeks. The commission will report in spring 2019 and will build on the foundations established by the board and its partners by testing the evidence and in making recommendations on the ways in which we can support fair work in Wales.”
He said: “Just this week we launched the new Economic Contract, which demonstrates a new approach to supporting businesses in Wales. The contract sets down new conditions on support from Welsh Government, ensuring firms are preparing their businesses for the future by reducing their carbon footprint and demonstrating their growth potential.
“And it means that from this month onwards all companies applying for direct business grant support from the Welsh Government will need to demonstrate that they are committed to Fair Work and promoting health in the workplace.”
This week’s announcement of a new rail franchise will, said Mr Jones, lead to “a railway that we can hold up as an example across the UK and say to others that there is a way to run a modern, successful network that works in social partnership with trade unions”.
Mr Jones said the efforts to save the Welsh steel industry had delivered important results: “When Tata put their UK steel operations up for sale in March 2016 the future looked bleak for Port Talbot, Shotton, Trostre and Llanwern, as well as the thousands of supply chain jobs downstream. The way we worked together and the strength of the partnership we developed showed Wales at its best.
“Utilising the £60m we immediately made available to support the industry and harnessing steel unions’ understanding of the longterm changes needed to be made to put the industry onto a more sustainable footing, I’m proud that we’ve kept steel jobs and steel production here in Wales.”
He said steel was not an industry of the past but an industry of the future: “We don’t just want it to survive, we want to see it thrive.”
Mr Jones said Leader of the House Julie James had been working with the Wales TUC to use public-sector levers “more intelligently” to realise the ambition of better jobs closer to home: “We have now developed four commercial pilots that use procurement legislation to reserve key contracts and enable us to develop supported employment hubs that can create good-quality work and training opportunities for the most disadvantaged people in the Valleys Taskforce area.
“If these pilots prove a success we want to take the learning from that work, and through our new Economic Contract seek to apply it to other parts of public-sector spend.”
Mr Jones said he was proud of his government’s achievements in education: “Our reforms to schools in Wales haven’t been easy but they have delivered results for young people. GCSE and A-level results have improved and our support for the Wales Union Learning Fund continues to help around 15,000 people every year.”
He concluded: “I’m proud of what we’ve done. Proud of what we’ve achieved together. And proud of how we’ve worked together.
“It’s been a partnership that hasn’t ducked the tough conversations or sidestepped the big calls. It’s been a genuine social partnership helping Wales, its economy and its public services to prepare for future generations.
“The foundations of that work are in place but the work to realise our ambitions will go on long after December (when he is due to stand down as First Minister).”