General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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Give us a real national care service
Unison Scotland gathers for its Scottish council today. Regional secretary LILIAN MACER outlines the union’s alternative to the Scottish government’s failing national care service legislation
Health Secretary Humza Yousaf meets Agnes Taylor, 93, during a visit to Victoria Manor Care home in Edinburgh to launch the winter vaccine programme. Picture date: Monday September 5, 2022.
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CRITICISING the Scottish government’s national care service Bill is easy. Everyone does it. Including these days even the Scottish government, which has announced that it is abandoning key principles of its own legislation. The real challenge is in outlining an alternative. This is what Unison Scotland has done in commissioning our new report Towards A Real National Care Service.
We’ve called the report A Real National Care Service to make a clear distinction from the Scottish government’s plans, which more resemble — as one delegate to STUC Congress put it — “ a press release that’s grown out of control.”
The Scottish government intended removing all of social work and social care and an unspecified set of health services from local government and the NHS, to be given to ministerially appointed quangos. These wouldn’t deliver services but instead commission and procure services in a market.
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Despite several inquiries and reviews, conditions for social care workers in Scotland are stagnating instead of improving — we need state intervention to deliver the long overdue improvements, writes LILIAN MACER
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STEPHEN LOW details how the Scottish Greens’ retreat from full opposition to the Bill gives the SNP the opportunity to revive this toxic legislation and push through privatisation under the cover of popular reforms
KATE RAMSDEN calls out the SNP’s political choices, citing STUC research showing billions could be raised through progressive taxation to fund vital social work and care — instead, we’re being threatened with more cuts
Despite several inquiries and reviews, conditions for social care workers in Scotland are stagnating instead of improving — we need state intervention to deliver the long overdue improvements, writes LILIAN MACER