Unions still drive Welsh political debate

While not agreeing with Dylan Jones Evans comments on the IOD and TaxPayers Alliance report or the report itself, today's article in the Western Mail has reinforced Welsh Labour’s view that it now has a big stick to beat the Tories with and proved a useful distraction to the fact that under Labour cuts are also planned.

Further confirmation of this view was highlighted by Wales’s largest Trade Union, Unison, who have been very visible in the Welsh press this weekend ahead of the expected General Election announcement tomorrow highlighting the impact on its members of large scale cuts.

First we had Unison Regional Secretary Paul O Shea over at WalesHome tells us that Wales can afford the cuts coming down the line whoever wins the General Election. Well affordable or not WAG and Local Authorities will have less money to spend in the future and ignoring the problems won’t make them go away, its better to face up to reality than bury your heads in the sand.

And secondly in today’s Western Mail we also had Dominic MacAskill, the head of local government at Unison Wales, said: “Vital services are being cut by councils across Wales, yet millions continue to be spent on expensive private consultants. This is nothing short of a scandal.

“Unison demands a cut to this level of financial waste, so that essential public services are protected during this period of financial crisis.

That will be the same Local Authorities that most of his members are employed in I assume because there is very little employment in the Welsh Private sector because Unison and their political masters refuse the space for the sector to grow. The irony being that if it was allowed to grow it could take some of the strain of massive redundancies that will follow when the public sector is squeezed and provide the Union with opportunities to grown in the private sector.

There is role for Unions in Welsh society to campaign for their members and the right to strike after all Wales still has its fair share of bad employers and those willing to exploit staff, but it also proves how little has really changed since Devolution and the birth of the National Assembly power has remained with Unions and Labour eleven years on despite the perceived decline and rise of other parties.

It’s also the reason why no Labour, Plaid Cymru or possibly Lib Dems politicians will comment on either of these stories.Any source