COLIN CAMPBELL: What would happen if scandalously low-paid care workers just walked off the job?
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Care home staff in Inverness are still being paid as little as £10.50 an hour. There is no way to describe this other than to brand it shocking, a disgrace and a scandal.
People looking after the vulnerable elderly, doing one of the most important, challenging and sometimes stomach-churning jobs in society are being treated miserably and paid a pittance for the work they do.
How long can that go on?
In a previous column I said amid the wave of strike action and industrial unrest, you won’t see picket lines or protests outside care homes.
Given these pay levels, the next question that has to be asked is: why?
Teachers and other workers earning far more than care workers have had no hesitation in taking strike action, regardless of the consequences for children and others affected. The teachers have finally agreed a settlement.
In their dispute they were facing a “cost-of-living crisis”. And when it came to walking out of classrooms they said: “We have no choice.”
Striking workers are being backed by some politicians and media elements oozing sympathy for their supposed plight, and claim to enjoy a high level of public support as well.
But care workers never receive a mention. It’s as if they don’t exist other than to look after old folk after when their offspring decide they can’t do it or can’t cope.
In this perverse situation the bills, as always, rapidly mount up for care home residents.
But many of the people doing the dirty work – all too literally – aren’t seeing any more than the small change in their pay
packets.
Hotel workers, bar staff, just about anyone and everyone can earn more than £10.50 an hour these days.
You really have to wonder how long the deplorable underpayment of care home staff can continue.
I’d never advocate any action that would put the most vulnerable elderly at risk.
But what would happen if care workers got organised among themselves and gave notice that they were just walking off the job.
Who’d be called upon to look after the frail and elderly residents? Their relatives? The emergency services? The army?
Already care staff numbers are thinning out and there are staffing shortages everywhere. It’s not a job many people want to do. It may be the last many would take on. It can be rewarding in terms of kindness and goodness but some of the work, for very obvious reasons, is far from pleasant.
Many of those currently in disputes over pay can withdraw their labour and no one much notices. Even strike action by teachers could to some extent be written off as an inconvenience.
But care home staff, along with nurses and paramedics, are by stark contrast utterly essential 24/7 workers.
Society at large should hope, if not pray, that the strained and creaking care system holds together. But with pay rates at scandalously low levels there can be no guarantee that it will, and that the vulnerable elderly won’t suffer as a dire result.
