Care workers would have been singing and dancing on April Fools Day with the great news that many of them were receiving a pay rise of 6.2%, over three times the current rate of inflation. Doutbless, upon hearing this news many of them were ordering that new car and booking that luxury holiday in the Maldives. “We’re in the money”, they were all singing. And they were. An extra 51p an hour.
In truth, I suspect that they were grateful for small mercies. £8.72 is a pitiful hourly rate but it’s better than £8.21 an hour. Just. Why do they do it?
Having worked part time in the third sector for over four years now, I have a pretty good idea. Care workers love what they do. No, they don’t literally enjoy carrying all the requirements involved in domiciliary care, such as the bed baths, preparing meals, assisting bathroom visits and all the rest of it. That is what they do. They are utterly committed to those they serve. They care. They are consummate professionals but they are paid like amateurs.
In my experience, they mostly don’t complain about their paltry wages, at least not in public. They don’t complain about not being paid for the time between visits, either. They don’t complain at working monster long days, starting early in the morning and ending at night, including weekends, because social care doesn’t end at weekends. They really are the best of us. But we treat them like the worst of us.
Now, with the country in the grip of Covid-19, social care workers are all the most vulnerable people in the land actually have. Many never have a single visitor, many live in grotesque multi-storey flats, or poxy flats in converted houses. Their care worker is the only person they see day in, day out. Being in their world, it has opened my eyes, as the eyes of the rest of society remain firmly closed.
What would things be like without the large army of poorly paid social care staff? Well, we’re about to find out next year because large numbers of them are not wanted by the Great British Public. We have decided to stop these wretched foreign care workers coming here by ending free movement and by demanding that they earn over £30,000 a year if they want to work here. Despite the massive 6.2% increase in the minimum wage, even someone with a poor grasp of basic maths like me can calculate that an hourly rate of £.8.72 will not enable any care worker to earn anything like that. Unless they work upwards of 60 hours a week, of course.
Perhaps, it will not be that difficult to fill the vacancies left by foreign workers given the economic carnage we will be facing in the months and years to come. The Covid-19 epidemic is going to leave carnage in its wake, destroying thousands of businesses and millions of jobs. I am not joking or being in any way sarcastic when I say that many of those displaced workers may find themselves being forced into completely new ways of earning a living, particularly when they become familiar with the Department for Work and Pensions regime of putting people into work, any work.
Over a million people, who never dreamed they would need to claim benefits, now find themselves in an alien world. The tabloid-presented world where everyone on benefits is a scrounger, living a life of luxury beyond the reach of people who work for a living, exposed for what it is: a lie.
These dark times have at least reminded us of the things that matter. That family and friends must be loved and cherished, that health and care workers are far more important than the false idols on TV and in sport. That our lives don’t actually depend on how much money we have, but how we live our lives and how that impacts on others.
And we need to reflect on how we reward those who care for us. We cannot call for a low tax, small state but at the same time demand a health and care sector that is fit for purpose.
We keep saying that things will never be the same once Covid-19 is under control, whenever that is going to be, but going back to business as usual means they will be. At the very least, we need politicians brave enough to say the better world we want will cost. And if we’re not willing to pay a little extra to make it happen, then it won’t. In the end, it’s up to us, as it always is.
