News and Blog

  Jean Jenkins, Reader in Employment Relations at Cardiff University is to present at this year’s Hay Festival on Tuesday 28th May. Jean is working on a UK government-funded Global Challenges Research Fund project with WISERD, which investigates the availability of access to remedy for garment workers in today’s garment supply chain. Her presentation, Still…

Three WISERD researchers – Constantino Dumangane, Wil Chivers and Ian Thomas – have successfully secured places on the 2019 GW4 Crucible. The GW4 Crucible is a competitive annual programme that seeks to promote interdisciplinary collaboration between early career researchers from Cardiff, Bristol, Bath and Exeter universities. This year’s programme comprises three two-day residential labs. 30…

  The first lab of the 2019 Crucible took place at Bailbrook House in Bath on the 6th and 7th February. On day one – inspired by Simon Sinek’s ‘Start With Why’ – we were encouraged to start by thinking about why we do the research we do and following on from that, why digital…

From sharing our latest research findings and hosting expert panel discussions, to providing practical workshops and networking opportunities, WISERD ran four events as part of this year’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Sciences. We began the week by visiting a local secondary school and sharing some of the latest findings from…

This year WISERD celebrates a decade of influencing policy and debate. To mark this important anniversary, a variety of external stakeholders were invited to join WISERD colleagues, old and new, for WISERD at 10, at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay. The event marked the launch of Changing Wales: WISERD at 10, a new publication showcasing…

The importance of a new report Trade Union Responses to the Changing World of Work, written by Dr Helen Blakely and Dr Steve Davies, which looks at the trade union responses to the changing world of work around the world, has been recognised by UNI Global Union. In a letter from UNI Global Union’s General Secretary,…

The gender pay gap has narrowed since it was first measured in the UK in the early 1970s, however since 2010 this trend has stalled and the gap currently remains at about 25%. With the recent implementation of new legislation requiring UK companies with more than 250 employees to publish their gender pay gaps this…

The Sheffield Needs A Payrise (SNAP) research project follows the campaign of the same name and builds on the WISERD Spaces of New Localism Civil Society research project. It looks primarily into forms of grassroots, civil society and trade union working together to address issues of low pay and precariousness in work in Sheffield. SNAP…

Strikes have taken place at McDonald’s and TGI Friday’s restaurants across the UK in recent months. These strikes are the first of their kind in the UK, instigated by a new generation of trade union members fighting for better pay and fairer working conditions.  At the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and…

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…