A recent Financial Times column on the Iran war exemplifies how the Western elite worldview is more concerned with strategy and power than legality or human life, writes ANDREW MURRAY
Care workers need action now
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
An elderly person at a charity tea party in London, February 23, 2014
STEVE BISHOP considers the prospects for a settlement of the conflict and how the demands of both sides are being viewed
The PM is drawing cautious distance from Donald Trump over Iran – but history suggests Britain’s support may run deeper than it appears, just as it did during the Vietnam war, says KEITH FLETT
Years of austerity and political failure have left classrooms overcrowded and staff overstretched – now educators are organising across roles to demand change, says ED HARLOW
While US restrictions tighten economic and social pressures on Cuba, international allies and grassroots campaigns are stepping in to support the island’s resilience, writes BERNARD REGAN, secretary of Cuba Solidarity Campaign
Labour’s approach to Scotland reveals a long-running tension between rhetoric and reality, warns PAULINE BRYAN
IT HAS been five years since the Fair Work Convention’s (FWC) inquiry into social care on behalf of the STUC and the findings were published. Since then we have had a pandemic, the Scottish government’s own independent review into adult social care chaired by Derek Feeley (2021), and three years of working groups, but little or no progress for the workers.
Both the FWC and Feeley report agreed the gains made in 2016 and 2017 in implementing the Scottish living wage as a minimum for care workers across Scotland in adult social care, then ensuring the implementation of that across even the most reluctant of employers was a significant achievement.
However, both inquiries collected powerful testimony from the workers that paying the living wage alone would not solve the systemic issues facing the social care workforce of insecure contracts, poor shift notice, short staffing, and undervaluation of the work of care. Pay and the terms and conditions of care workers must change.
Similar stories
Tackling poverty in Scotland cannot happen without properly funded public services. Unison is leading the debate
As Reform UK threatens to capitalise on public anger, our Establishment politicians simply refuse to acknowledge their role in creating the very alienation that gives succour to Farage, writes CRAIG ANDERSON
Congress can chart a bold course that will force meaningful transformation for the people of Scotland
Following the historic ban on companies profiting from children’s care, Unison Cymru calls for transparency in implementing the changes and extending the reform to create a truly national, profit-free care service, says MARK TURNER