This week is “Living Wage Week“, an annual opportunity to promote the work of the Living Wage Foundation and to encourage employers to seek Foundation accreditation: Accredit | Living Wage Foundation.
The government announced recently that it is increasing the “National” Living Wage rates from £11.44 to £12.21 an hour for 21 year olds and over, with a separate minimum wage rate for those aged 18-20 of £10 an hour. These rates come into effect from April 1st 2025.
This is welcome news, but it is important to remember that the National Living Wage is just the Minimum Wage rebranded – the legal minimum employers must pay. It is not the same as the “real” Living Wage, which is currently £12.60 an hour (£13.85 in London).
There are differing views as to what should be the minimum amount that people are paid. Since 2022 the Trades Union Congress has argued for a Minimum Wage of £15.00p an hour. The “real Living Wage” is less ambitious than that, but it is at least based on calculations that take the cost of living into account, alongside allowing for small discretionary expenses – for example, a meal out for a child’s birthday.
The Trades Council has supported Living Wage Week this year by writing to companies who are contracted by Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council to provide Adult Social Care, to ask them to commit to both paying the real Living Wage and seeking Living Wage Foundation accreditation.
A Report to the Council’s Executive Board in March 2024 – “Adult Social Care Provider Fee Uplifts for 2024/25” – said that fees for some services would be uplifted from 01/04/2024 “in line with the Real Living Wage increase”, and so we thought it would be opportune to raise the issue with these local social care providers.
We see privatised adult social care sector jobs as being prone to inadequate terms and conditions when compared with the public sector jobs they have often supplanted. They may not be universal, but think of issues such as unpaid travel time between “jobs”, “sleep in” shifts that are not counted as part of the basic working week, lack of unsocial hours payments, and exclusion from the NHS or Local Authority Pension Schemes. So pay rates are not the be all and end all of the problems in this sector. Applying Living Wage Foundation rates would, nevertheless, be a big start.
It is widely recognised that adult social care work is low paid. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation the median pay for care workers is in the bottom 20th percentile of all jobs, meaning 80% of other jobs in the UK pay more. Trade Union GMB has argued that they have also lost out in real terms over recent years. ONS figures showed that in April 2010 the average annual salary for care workers and home carers was £12,879, with half of workers paid even less. This salary was worth £21,549 in April 2023 in real terms, yet only rose to £17,851 – a real-terms pay cut of £3,698.
Earlier this year a MENCAP Report, Why We Care: the reality of working in a social care system in crisis”, found that a third (34%) of staff surveyed took on the role because they wanted to give back to society and improve the lives of those they supported. However, two-fifths (39%) said they were facing financial difficulty as a result of pay in the sector and almost a third (28%) said the long hours affected their work/life balance with one in six (14%) saying their mental health was affected. Some support workers were skipping meals, having to use foodbanks and working long hours to make ends meet.
A Report published this June by the Living Wage Foundation, in association with the IPPR – The Real Living Wage in Social Care – estimated that 43% of adult social care workers in England are paid below the real Living Wage. The Foundation recognises that a significant barrier to better pay in the care sector is the funding superstructure, but it must be of little solace to care workers to be in the middle of people pointing the finger at each other. The Foundation says that despite everything, there are already over 650 care providers who have voluntarily accredited with the Living Wage Foundation.
The long term sustainable solution for social care is a national fair pay agreement and the establishment of a national care service. Meanwhile, however, Living Wage accreditation is a good short-term mitigation.
Low pay is, of course, a problem for us in more than just the care sector. We shall continue to campaign for local employers across the board to take the Living Wage Foundation pledge.