Fair Pay, Fair Play

The principal aim of our economic policy is raising standards of living through the creation of fairly paid, high-quality jobs in every part of Wales. We will create sixty thousand new jobs over the course of the Senedd term including:

• New well-paid jobs in the foundational economy expanding employment in people-related jobs less vulnerable to automation, especially in care giving, teaching and the arts.
• Thousands of new jobs through our Welsh Green Deal in construction, engineering, energy, food, built environment and nature.

We would drive down levels of Welsh economic inactivity by:

• Implementing our Welsh Youth Jobs Guarantee Scheme.
• Extending free childcare to all two year-olds.
• Investing in preventative strategies that reduce ill health.
• Developing a strategy, and introducing incentives, to reduce the out-migration of young people, and attract those who have left to return.
• Encourage employers to adopt modern working practices and embrace remote and distributed working which are key to making work more accessible to women, disabled people, and other groups historically underrepresented in the workforce.

As public sector wages often set the ‘wage floor’ in many local economies in Wales, raising the wage levels of the lowest-paid workers is an important means of moving away from a low-wage economy. We would:

• Raise the minimum wage of care workers to £10 an hour and introduce parity of pay between health and care.
• Use Fair Work commitments in public procurement and in return for financial support.

Together with employers and employee representatives, our Government will establish new sector-based social partnership bodies across the economy, with an initial focus on low-pay sectors.

Given the existing devolved settlement, these bodies are likely to be advisory in the first instance. They will work to jointly agree long-term goals for sectors in Wales and set minimum standards for pay and targets for wage growth.

Critical to our vision for the economy is investment in the skills and knowledge of our people which are the bedrock of future prosperity. We will invest in major training programmes, with targets for women and other groups historically under-represented in the workforce in areas where we need new skills such as construction, environment, health and care, and digital.

Over the long-term we need to prepare for a future where work may have a different role in the economy as a result of automation and the application of AI and related technologies. We would seek the powers necessary to introduce a universal basic income as a means of ensuring economic dignity for all and would implement a Welsh pilot for a Universal Basic Income.