Give Care Workers A £2,000 Pay Rise To Help Tackle Workforce Crisis
The government must set aside £1.5bn* so more than half a million care staff in England receive a £2,000 pay rise and more workers can be recruited to this under-pressure sector, says a report published by the Fabian Society earlier this week.
Negotiations are currently under way between ministers, employers and unions to establish a fair pay agreement in adult social care in England. This aims to improve pay and conditions to tackle the growing workforce crisis.
The report, Seizing the Opportunity, has been supported by UNISON, the largest union in social care. It calls for a higher minimum wage in care to be set at a rate that most healthcare assistants doing clinical tasks should be paid at in the NHS (currently £13.17 an hour*). This would deliver a pay rise for more than 600,000 low-paid care staff.
Low pay rates mean care jobs aren’t sufficiently attractive to many jobseekers, so employers are struggling to recruit staff to fill the 120,000 vacancies in care homes and other support services in England.
Changes being introduced in the government’s immigration white paper mean care companies will no longer be able to recruit from overseas. This makes it all the more urgent that the care sector increases its appeal as a career destination for UK workers.
Seizing the Opportunity sets out the advantages a fully funded fair pay agreement could bring to care employers, staff, people needing support, their families and the public purse.
The report suggests there would be many advantages to establishing a higher minimum wage for care workers. For a start, it would mean a pay rise averaging £2,050 for over 600,000 care staff.
If care jobs attracted similar salaries to those of healthcare assistants, it’s likely an extra 90,000 workers could be attracted to the sector and around 27,000 fewer care staff would leave their jobs each year.
This could save employers around £163m a year in recruitment costs, according to figures in the report. Currently, one in ten care worker roles is vacant and three in ten staff left their positions in the past 12 months.
With fewer workers leaving care, and more recruits joining, the quality of care would improve, and more care packages become available, making a huge difference to the lives of so many families.
But the report shows that neither the local authorities commissioning care, nor employers in the sector, can afford to absorb the cost of the increased wages that will result from the fair pay agreement.
The Treasury would have to find the £1.5bn for funding the wage increases. But, says the report, the public purse would be better off to the tune of £600m because of a higher tax take and lower spending on benefits.
There would also be a positive impact on the NHS. More care staff and better social care support would mean fewer people admitted to hospital and quicker discharges, freeing up beds and lifting pressure on the service.
The extra wage costs could be funded by increasing tax on private health insurance to match the rate of VAT and by reducing the tax-free pensions lump sum.
These measures combined would raise between £1.8bn and £2.8bn per year, with the additional revenue coming largely from the wealthiest in society, says the research.
Joe Dromey, general secretary of the Fabian Society and co-author of the report, said:
“The treatment of the social care workforce is a national scandal. Care workers deliver vital support, yet they face poverty pay, chronic insecurity, and have few opportunities for progression.
“The fair pay agreement has the capacity to transform social care. Through delivering a much-deserved pay rise, it would tackle the workforce crisis, improve the quality of care, and narrow inequalities.
“The ambition of the fair pay agreement must meet the scale of the workforce crisis in social care. The government must seize this opportunity and deliver a bold and fully funded fair pay agreement.”
Christina McAnea, UNISON general secretary, said:
“Raising wages in care is the first step to turning around this beleaguered sector.
“Care work is highly skilled, as anyone with a relative in care knows only too well. But it’s paid as if it’s a low-skilled job. That’s why too few people want to work in the sector and employers have become so dependent on staff from overseas.
“Raising wages in care is going to cost money, but it’s a price well worth paying. For too long, governments have got away with funding care on the cheap. This has helped create the current crisis, which is harming the NHS, failing the people who need care and leaving many families struggling to cope.
“Until care wages rise, the sector will never be able to recruit the staff needed and those gaps in the workforce will increase as the UK’s population ages. Care work is tough, and people can earn more delivering parcels or making coffee on the high street.
“But by finding the cash to fund wage rises in care, the government will be showing it’s serious about transforming the sector. This will go down well with the public and help create the promised national care service the country needs so desperately.”
