Talks over living wage for care workers go to the wire

IF you are one of Scotland’s thousands of frontline care workers, will you be paid a living wage of £8.25 from this Saturday as the Government promised? It is hard to be sure. If you work in a care home, you will. Charities and care home bosses struck a deal weeks ago, with a well established system in place for negotiating the rates at which councils buy care. But if you work providing care at home, or housing support to vulnerable or elderly people, the picture is less clear.

Yesterday there were alarming warnings from some in the sector that firms were preparing to close down. I’ve heard of owners in tears over the potential collapse of companies they have built up from scratch, and the loss of jobs for local people. There are plenty of small family-run firms providing care at home, as well as the larger “corporate” providers.

An insider told me “This is the most serious state the sector has been in in a generation. It doesn’t get more negative than this.”

The umbrella body Scottish Care was among those warning that a majority of providers would not be in a position to pay the Scottish Living Wage (SLW) to their staff from October 1st. While agreements had been reached in Highlands, Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders, for instance, other authorities had not even managed to make an offer, four days from the deadline. Meanwhile rates on offer in East Lothian were disputed, while in Midlothian providers were still waiting.

The problem is, as Geoff Huggins, the Government’s director of health and social care Integration told the Health and Sport Committee, different companies in different areas had varying terms and conditions and pay rates. And raising pay for frontline staff has a knock on effect for staff paid a little more, as managers for example.

Muddying the picture further is the fact health and social care integration boards now commission care at home services, but councils procure them. Mr Huggins said this meant hundreds of local negotiations taking place, calling the situation complex.

Some might say the Scottish Government should have realised this before it introduced the arbitrary deadline and handed over the £125 million health secretary Shona Robison believes should be enough to allow for paying the SLW. The cash was given to councils who were then left to sort it out with their providers.

By last night it appeared knocking heads together might put the policy back on track but there is still a lack of optimism about reaching a deal in time in Glasgow, for instance. Scottish Care has rowed back from a briefing it passed to MSPs on Tuesday morning, which said the majority of firms would be unable to pay the SLW from Saturday, but there is still a degree of brinkmanship on all sides.

It doesn’t seem a smart way to deliver the fairer pay for workers which Ms Robison believes will encourage workers to stay in the profession and encourage others to join.

At the very least the fact that all parties are scrabbling around attempting to patch up a deal, four days before the final deadline is a dismal failure of the government’s much vaunted “partnership working”.

‘‘ I’ve heard of owners in tears over the potential collapse of companies they’ve built from scratch, andthelossofjobs