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.