IF YOU live in Wales but outside Cardiff then you probably think that the capital city gets more than its fair share of everything. It holds most of the political power, what passes for civil society in Wales is rooted here, it gets a disproportionate amount of investment, and it’s richer than most of the country. 

But step away from the parochial framing and it becomes obvious that Cardiff has been let down by 12 years of Tory rule at Westminster just as much as everywhere else in Wales. 

Whether you’re looking at job quality, incomes, childcare, housing or transport - austerity and the endless squeeze on public budgets have progressively chipped away at the city’s ability to provide the most basic building blocks of a good life. 

It’s far too easy to be tricked by Cardiff. The city is dotted with shiny architecture – the Blair-era landmarks in the Bay, the new BBC headquarters and assorted towering office blocks of Central Square, and the coldly impressive facilities that the universities have ploughed tens of millions of pounds into while simultaneously running their staff’s working conditions into the ground. 

But what’s the reality?

The reality is that workers in Cardiff are earning less in real terms than they were in 2009. And there is no prospect of that situation improving. Even the most optimistic forecaster would now accept that we’re looking at two lost decades when it comes to incomes and living standards.  

The reality is that the city’s own regional economic development quango advertises it to investors on the basis that companies can get away with paying their workers here less than they would have to elsewhere. 

And the reality is that use of Cardiff’s foodbanks has rocketed over the last decade and – as Unison Cymru/Wales’s new research shows — workers here are now turning to second jobs, to pawning possessions and even to gambling in order to try and make ends meet as we head into the winter.  

Cardiff remains a profoundly unequal city where the gaps in life expectancy between the rich and the poor wards are staggering – over a decade difference in some cases. 

This inequality is being compounded by the deeply unhealthy developments in the housing market over the last 30 years. Stagnant wages and fast-rising house prices have locked tens of thousands of young people out of home ownership and have left them at the mercy of landlords and agents in the private rental sector. Unsurprisingly rents are now shooting up and the situation is swiftly moving towards making the city unaffordable for many. 

The dysfunction in housing is matched by the dysfunction in the city’s transport networks. In almost any other similar-sized city in Europe there would be a functioning and efficient mass transport network.  

Instead we have a city that has been starved of proper investment in its infrastructure, that has a barely coherent patchwork of public transport services and whose dependence on the car brings it to a regular standstill.

Ultimately the culpability for this situation rests at Westminster and a UK government that now seems to determined to pursue a Thatcherite agenda to the bitter end – regardless of the cost. 

The public has seen the damage accumulate and they’ve now witnessed the recklessness with which Truss and Kwarteng are setting about their new jobs. 

You can’t rebuild a failing economy by cutting benefits, handing out millions in tax breaks to your donor class, and slashing workers’ rights. 

We need:

• Fair funding for Wales– funding that properly reflects the pressures that our public services are confronting.
• A plan to get pay rising for everyone with a higher minimum wage at £15 per hour and new rights for unions to set minimum pay and conditions across the economy.
• Long overdue fair funding for capital investment in Wales so that we can build the modern, green infrastructure that the country needs to drive up living standards.
• A plan to bring forward the uprating of benefits at least in line with inflation to ensure that people are getting the money they need in their pockets now and not having to wait until April next year.

We’re bringing together trade unionists in Cardiff this week and all over Wales in the coming weeks to send back the clear message that if politicians and bosses won’t respond to the cost of living crisis in front of them then they shouldn’t be surprised when workers take action.