Scottish Labour leadership candidate Joe Fagan MSP has made a minimum £15-an-hour rate for social care workers his second test for the Scottish Government’s Budget.
Mr Fagan is also calling for the £15 minimum to be backed by improved sick pay and maternity and paternity provision, which have previously been promised but not delivered, with the aim of moving social care workers towards parity with colleagues doing comparable work in the public sector.
The demand forms part of Mr Fagan’s pledge to judge the coming Scottish Budget against clear tests of whether it delivers practical improvements for working people.
His first Budget test called for the Scottish Government to give communities the powers and funding needed to bring bus services back under public control.
Mr Fagan, who as Leader of South Lanarkshire Council delivered the best-paid home care workforce in the country, said years of warm words about Fair Work had failed to deliver the change Scotland’s social care workforce deserves.
Candidate for Scottish Labour Leader Joe Fagan MSP said:
“We all agree that social care workers do some of the most important work in Scotland. But saying that is not enough.
“When we talk about social care, we should remember that this is not only about care for older people.
“Social care workers support children and families too. They care for children, parents and grandparents, support people to live with dignity and hold families together when they need help most.
“The people doing that work should not be expected to subsidise our care system through low pay and second-class terms and conditions.
“For years the SNP has talked about Fair Work while social care workers have been strung along with broken promises and endless speeches.
“That has to end.
“My second test for the Scottish Budget is simple.
“Finally deliver fair pay and conditions for social care workers, starting with a minimum rate of £15 an hour.
“But Fair Work is about more than the hourly rate.
“It means proper sick pay. It means decent maternity and paternity provision. And it means a clear ambition to end the gap in conditions between social care workers and people doing comparable work elsewhere in the public sector.
“Care is essential public infrastructure. We would never accept building our NHS or our schools on the assumption that the people delivering them should simply put up with poor conditions. We should not accept it in social care either.
“I know better pay can be delivered because I have done it.
“In South Lanarkshire we made choices that delivered the best-paid home care workforce in the country because we understood that valuing care means valuing the people who provide it.
“The SNP has talked the language of Fair Work for years. Social care workers now need them to deliver it.
“Scottish Labour cannot simply comment from the sidelines while working people wait for change. We should use the power we have to win better outcomes.
“So my message to the Scottish Government is clear.
“Put £15-an-hour social care pay and better conditions into the Budget and show Scotland’s care workers and their families that Fair Work is more than empty rhetoric.
“This is what being bold should mean. Back work, value workers and use power to change lives.”
Photo by Age Cymru on Unsplash