News and Blog

Rhys Davies reveals how official figures have under-estimated the presence of trade unions within UK workplaces over many years. This morning, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published its latest estimates for trade union membership in the UK based upon data from the Labour Force Survey.  Today’s figures reveal that 6.2 million…

Most of us are used to seeing crazy bargains when we go into the local supermarket, with items such as baked beans, bananas or milk being sold at a price that seems far below what they must cost to grow/make and sell. It’s a well-tried method – “loss leaders” are used to draw us into…

WISERD researcher Dr Helen Blakely is working with UNI Global Union to identify trade unions’ responses to the changing world of work from around the world. This work is being presented at UNI Global Union’s World Congress in June 2018, the largest single global union gathering in the UK in 2018. Here they outline some…

Continuing with research into current trade union activity, WISERD researcher Wil Chivers reports from a day spent in London last Friday, as TGI Friday’s staff go on strike for the first time in Covent Garden and Milton Keynes. Another week, another strike. There is definitely something growing here. Hot on the heels of the UK’s…

In ageing societies, promoting active ageing and intergenerational solidarity has been a key aim of policy at national as well as European level. Governments have promoted these policies as a response to concerns over the social exclusion of older people; critics have suggested that such policies merely serve to ease the economic and financial burden…

Christala Sophocleous reflects on the experience of co-writing with WISERD colleagues. What did we learn from the Communities First programme? This question was at the heart of many conversations and (often fierce) debates that took place in the months following the announcement in February 2017 that the programme would end in 2018. Across Wales, in…

Disability, that is, the presence of a long-term limiting health condition, is associated with substantial economic disadvantage, as illustrated by the low rates of employment and high rates of poverty among disabled people. Yet becoming disabled during the life course, which is experienced by more than 80% of disabled people of working age, can potentially…

For the last six years, WISERD Education have been giving surveys about their lives to over a thousand children (8-18) across Wales every year. Here are some of our most interesting findings about children in Wales: 1. Girls are better than boys at school, but are less happy While girls tend to do better academically,…

Dr Fox’s funding is for an Understanding Society Policy Fellowship, which will fund a one year research project called ‘Social action as a route to the ballot box: can volunteering reduce inequalities in turnout?’ The funding is for an Understanding Society Policy Fellowship, which will fund a one year research project called ‘Social action as…

Dr Pearce’s successful research grant will fund the WISERD-based research project ‘Youth unemployment and civil society under devolution: a comparative analysis of sub-state welfare regimes’.  The £211,000 grant from the Economic and Social Research Council will fund a two-year project examining divergences in civil society responses to youth unemployment (policy) in the four, devolved nations…