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 today (Monday).
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.”
Notes to editors:
- Seizing the Opportunity – A Fair Pay Agreement for Social Careis being published and launched today (Monday 19 May) and can be accessed here. It was written by Joe Dromey and Ben Cooper.
- The report will be launched at the Fabian Society’s ‘health and care mission summit’. It will look at all aspects of health and care policy. Speakers at the event, which takes place at Congress House, 23-28 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS from 10am to 5pm, include care minister Stephen Kinnock and Christina McAnea.
- *Seizing the Opportunity has calculated that providing the funding to pay for a higher minimum wage in care, which matches the rate that NHS healthcare assistants doing clinical tasks should be paid, would cost the government £1.5bn a year. This would deliver a pay rise for 603,000 care workers. Improving sick pay and pensions for all care workers in England would add another £460m to that cost.
- Healthcare assistants employed in the NHS whose work involves clinical tasks should be on band 3 of the Agenda for Change salary scale. The top of band 3 is currently £13.17 an hour. NHS workers are still waiting to learn what their 2025/26 wage rise will be.
- Seizing the Opportunity says that more than four in ten (46%) care workers in England are paid below the real living wage (£12.60 outside London) despite doing extremely skilled jobs.
- This is the second report on social care published bythe Fabian Society with the backing of UNISON. The first Support Guaranteed provided a blueprint for a national care service in England. This set out in detail how a care service would work for everyone.
- The Fabian Society is Britain’s oldest political think tank. Founded in 1884, the society is at the forefront of developing political ideas and public policy on the left. The society is alone among think tanks in being a democratically constituted membership organisation, with around 7,000 members. It is constitutionally affiliated to the Labour party.
- UNISON is the UK’s largest union with more than 1.3 million members providing public services in education, local government, the NHS, police service and energy. They are employed in the public, voluntary and private sectors.
- UNISON’s position statement on the union’s broader approach to the fair pay agreement, also covering issues such as travel time, sleep-in shifts and training is here. This includes a call for ‘a significant increase in pay rates for care workers, moving towards a minimum £15 an hour.’
About UNISON:
– UNISON is the UK’s largest union with more than 1.3 million members providing public services in education, local government, the NHS, police service and energy. They are employed in the public, voluntary and private sectors.
Media contacts:
Emma Burnell M: 07851 941111 E:emma.burnell@fabians.org.uk
Fatima Ayad M:07508 080383 E: press@unison.co.uk
The article Give care workers a £2,000 pay rise to help tackle workforce crisis first appeared on the UNISON National site.
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