Living wage Wales: Exploring the drivers to and barriers against the growth of the living wage standard in Wales

"In the same way that work is no longer a guaranteed route out of poverty (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2004), long-term employment and job security can no longer be assumed at managerial level (Hassard and Morris, 2018). There is a growing perception that despite economies having grown and new jobs generated to decrease unemployment, job quality has at best "stagnated" (Green, F., 2006). The balance of fairness seems to have tipped in the direction of the employer and their business priorities (Taylor, 2017). Causes attributed to this phenomena include neo-liberalist business strategies which prioritise shareholder return (Hassard and Morris, 2018) or symptoms endemic of the knowledge economy (Green, 2006).
The sense of growing "unfairness" has led to calls to action for an increase in the quality of work and in particular, work security in reports such as Taylor Report (2017) and the Welsh Government Economic Action Plan (2015). However, despite a growing discussion on insecurity, there is not universal agreement that the UK labour market has become more insecure (CIPD, 2019) and that perceptions of insecurity of the worker rather than indicative of the UK labour as a whole."