With no cosy access to PM, zero-hours Edel is fighting for carer wages at bus stop
WHAT happens when you want to change government policy and you don’t have the Prime Minister’s mobile number?
Edel Anabwani, a care worker in Cardiff, was facing this problem.
After contracting Covid at work, Edel had been seriously ill and off work for six weeks. On a zero-hour contract, her pay had stopped.
One of the heroes of the pandemic, she had ended up having to survive on food parcels from a local charity.
“I just thought – this is not fair,” Edel says. “I wanted to change things so that all care workers could have a Real Living Wage, and things like sick pay. But also, our dignity.”
Just before the pandemic hit, Edel had become involved with Citizens Cymru Wales’ campaign for a Real Living Wage for care workers. But now, during Covid, it was difficult to organise people.
“I thought, I know where workers will be,” she says.
“They were some of the only people going to work at that time. The early morning bus stops were full of them.
“Others were just walking to work in the rain because they couldn’t afford the bus fare. I was walking to work to save money for rent, so I chatted to them while I was walking.
“They would tell me: ‘At my place of work, everyone is dying’. One woman told me she and her husband were both care workers and couldn’t work because of Covid-19.
“Her son, who had cancer, had taken his own life because he was so care worried about being a burden to them. These were terrible stories. Coming from Africa, these stories of poverty shocked me.”
Edel gradually gathered names for a petition, organised school workshops, led summits, and met First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford.
“I asked him ‘how can we care for the vulnerable when we are not able to take care of ourselves?’,” Edel says.
“I’d just come from a 12-hour nightshift, I was tired, I told him, this is very unfair, the way careworkers are treated.
“It’s not just the money. It’s the way people put you down.
“Careworkers need to be uplifted to feel like we are human beings. In the next few years, we will all need careworkers. Do you want someone looking after you who is thinking ‘how am I going to feed my kids’?”
She laughs drily. “I know that when I care for people, I can put a smile on their face. But a smile on their face won’t pay my bills.”
Originally from Kenya, Edel came to the UK to study at Cardiff University. She became a care worker to support herself. “When I caught Covid at work, I was so ill, I didn’t have enough breath to speak,” she says.
“I looked like someone in the grave. I spoke to my work to say I have no money. They told me: ‘you have to come back to work if you want to be paid’. I went in and they took one look at me – ‘Just go home!’ they said.
“I was looking like death itself. So, again I couldn’t work. My friend signed me up for charity food. I wasn’t happy with her, but I started eating again. Now, I think it was the best thing she could have done.”
Edel’s dogged campaigning alongside other Citizens leaders has won manifesto commitments from all the major parties fighting the election in Wales in two weeks’ time.
Welsh Labour has pledged to introduce the Real Living Wage for people working in social care in Wales if they win. Plaid Cymru has committed to a minimum £10 wage for care workers, and the Conservative Party has pledged a “Welsh Minimum Care Wage of £10 per hour”.
As she speaks to me, her attempts to influence politics by campaigning in bus stops sit in stark contrast to the lobbying scandal in Downing Street.
Community organising is the moral opposite of lobbying, special favours, elite networking and paid access to politicians. It’s the work of bringing people together to take action around common concerns to overcome social injustice. A model used by all kinds of grassroots groups who want to make society fairer – and it’s at the heart of Citizens UK.
“Edel has been a leading voice in negotiations on behalf of care workers – demanding not just warm words, but action to increase their wages,” says Fiona Meldrum, community organiser at Citizens Cymru Wales.
“Over that time, we have been actively organising to work out a plan for what a revolution in social care in Wales could look like and to build a cross-party consensus in favour of it.”
Over the next few days, Edel and other care workers will be leading delegations to meet the leaders of the main political parties in Wales.
They want to see a commitment to implement the Real Living Wage in the first two years of the Senedd, and for parties to follow Labour and commit to the Real Living Wage rather than £10 per hour.
“I tell my fellow careworkers, we have to change our own attitudes too,” Edel says. “Don’t say you are ‘just’ a carer! It starts from you.
“Own it. It’s your career. Stand upright like a peacock.”
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I caught Covid but they said I had to come back to work to get paid