News and Blog

Dr Wil Chivers, recently appointed as a social science lecturer at Cardiff University, has presented findings from his WISERD research exploring the nature of work as a cycle courier in the gig/platform economy, at the Work, Employment and Society Conference 2021. The paper, On your bike: exploring the geography and leisure of work as a…

  Professor Jean Jenkins, WISERD Co-Director and Professor of Employment Relations at Cardiff Business School, has been appointed to lead an independent commission into the future of employment rights and devolution in Wales. The Future of Devolution and Work Commission, established by the Wales TUC, will be tasked with considering the impact that the current…

The WISERD report on Homeworking in the UK: Before and During the 2020 Lockdown has been cited in a government consultation on Making flexible working the default. The open consultation seeks views from individuals and businesses on proposals to reform flexible working regulations (The Flexible Working Regulations 2014). The report, by Alan Felstead of Cardiff…

In this third and final part of my blog series exploring the recent election of new Unite leader, Sharon Graham, I’ll be focusing on leverage campaigns and how they work. As a highly contentious topic, they form a key part of Graham’s strategy for organising Unite into a union of “strike ready workplaces”, but are…

In the second part of this three-post blog series exploring the recent election of new Unite leader, Sharon Graham, I’ll explain a bit more about her priorities and approach. I’ll focus more on one particular aspect of her strategy in the final part of the series: Leverage campaigns and how they work. I interviewed her…

With both the TUC and Labour holding annual conferences one after the other, much attention was on the unions’ newest leader, Sharon Graham. Her election as general secretary of the UK and Ireland’s most important union, Unite, came as a shock to most of the commentariat. In this, the first part of a three-post blog…

The 1984-85 miners’ strike has once again hit the headlines, despite ending 36 years ago. This time what has grabbed the media’s attention is a claim by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that Margaret Thatcher’s closure of the pits after the strike was part of a green, eco-strategy of the Conservative government. On a visit to…

We are delighted to announce the winner of our annual WISERD PhD Poster Competition 2021. Muhao Du from Cardiff University has won the prize for his poster – ‘Finding Harmony in Hardship: experiences of expatriates in subsidiaries of Chinese MNCs in the high technology sector’. Emma Reardon from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David…

Dr Wil Chivers presented his WISERD research on job quality in low paid sectors at a seminar to the Wales Cooperative. His presentation, with Dr Sarah Jenkins from Cardiff Business School, asked: “Can cooperatives/employee-owned businesses improve ‘bad jobs’?” Job quality has received increased attention from academics and policymakers across industrialised countries. Yet, there has been…

Within England and Wales, March 21st, 2021 is census day. Taking place every 10 years, the census provides the most accurate estimate of the population and a detailed account about people and the households in which they live. The data is vital to understanding our society and in providing information that is necessary to support the…