Care Workers Rally At Holyrood Fighting For £15 Per Hour

24th October 2021

Care workers rally at Holyrood to "Fight for Fifteen" as pay campaign ramps-up ahead of national care service consultation close

Care workers rallied at the Scottish Parliament this weekend (Saturday 23 October) as they stepped up their fight for £15 an hour social care minimum wage.

GMB invited the media, public and politicians to come and listen to the testimonies of members from across the care industry, detailing their experiences and struggles of care delivery before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need for substantial pay increases.

Pre-pandemic the Fair Work Convention's Social Care Report established that over 200,000 staff were employed in the social care sector, four-fifths of which were women, but revealed a billion-pound industry mired in precarious work, excessive hours, and chronic low pay - facts reinforced by testimonies of GMB members in social care in our ‘Show You Care' Report (see Notes to Editors).

The Scottish Government consultation on the future of a National Care Service will close on Tuesday 2 November.

GMB Scotland Secretary Louise Gilmour said:"We can make work better for hundreds of thousands of care workers now and in future if we substantially improve their pay, and that should be all the motivation needed to deliver a £15 an hour social care minimum as the centrepiece of a National Care Service.

"COVID-19 has exposed all the underlying problems facing workers in care, problems that were well understood by employers and political leaders pre-pandemic but left unchallenged, and contributed towards care becoming the ‘crisis within a crisis'.

"Let's learn the lessons. If we want to tackle the current understaffing crisis, end exploitative employment practices, and ultimately improve standards for everyone, then we must start paying people properly for the essential work they do.

“That’s why the prospect of wages amounting to little more than £10 an hour in the years to come simply won’t stand, and it’s why GMB members across Scotland’s social care sector are ‘fighting for fifteen’.

Comment
In Caithness - Time for a pay rise
One employer is already advertising posts at £12 per hour and as shortages continue that looks to be the current target for care workers locally. Meantime perhaps all care workers should ask for a pay rise to that level and with agreement to further increases to £15 per hour over the next year or two. Added to this it has been revealed that their has been a big rise in Home care manager resigning in Scotland. £10 an hour or less is no longer viable for people to live on with rising food and energy prices. Add to that the coming rise in National insurance from April 2022. Others areas of employment are seeing increase just to keep and attract staff. With over one million vacancies nationwide the ball is now in employees hands.