Council adopts Welsh at Work charter to promote language use and rights

Dale Spridgeon, Local Democracy Reporter

A north Wales council has shown a united commitment to grow the use of the Welsh language by adopting a special charter.

Cyngor Gwynedd’s cabinet agreed to adopt Twf – The Welsh Language at Work Charter – at its meeting on Tuesday, December 16.

The charter aims to boost Welsh language rights, and to promote and enable more opportunities for employees to use, learn and develop their Welsh.

Currently 99.1% of the council’s staff have Welsh language skills.

The scheme aims to ensure that all employees are aware of, and understand, their right to use the Welsh language at work and other organisations that are under the duties of the Welsh Language Standards.

At the meeting, the cabinet was formally asked to decide on behalf of the council as an employer to adopt Twf in conjunction with local representatives of the Unison, GMB and Unite unions. This was unanimously agreed in a vote.

The council will now proceed to formally adopt the Charter in conjunction with the Welsh Trade Union Congress (Wales TUC) and local representatives from Unison, GMB and Unite unions.

The Wales TUC has developed and adopted the Twf Charter to support workers, their trade unions and employers to work together to create bilingual workplaces.

It has a specific emphasis on ensuring an increase in the Welsh language at work, to ensure that workers also have access to representation by trade unions in their chosen language.

Councillor Llio Elenid Owen, Cyngor Gwynedd’s cabinet member with responsibility for the Welsh Language, who presented the report, said in a statement: “Cyngor Gwynedd has a long and proud history of promoting the Welsh language in all aspects of life and agreeing to adopt Twf, the Welsh Language at Work Charter, is another step on this journey.

“We welcome that the Wales TUC has decided to adopt this charter as a means of conveying the importance of the Welsh language to the economic future of Wales and to ensure that employers are representative of society.

“We hope that other organisations will follow Cyngor Gwynedd in adopting the charter.

“It is very good news that Cyngor Gwynedd is able to work with the trade unions to ensure that workers are represented through the Welsh language.

“These principles demonstrate the commitment to working in partnership in providing an inclusive bilingual workplace and to promote and enable growth in the use of the Welsh language at work.”

The council’s chief executive Dafydd Gibbard also said: “I am pleased that the unions see this as important, in the middle of all their work pressures and priorities, that they wanted to give time to this.

“We have very good relationships with the unions and the fact that we are able to work in an open partnership leads to very good things such as this.”