Salford city branch wins £19m pay rise for care workers across England

After several years of campaigning from UNISON’s Salford City  branch and local care workers, Anchor Hanover – the largest provider of specialist housing and care for older people in England – have announced that they will be paying care workers the real living wage from this month (December). This means that employees will be paid at least £9.90, almost £1 an hour more than the current national minimum wage rate of £8.91 which many Anchor Hanover care workers were on. The huge uplift is thought to be worth up to £19m a year for employees of the company. One relieved care worker said: “This will help me pay my bills because prices have gone up so much. Hopefully it will help me go on holiday and enjoy life.” Last year, the campaign led to an agreement with Salford City council, dubbed ‘The Salford offer’, which gave care providers extra funding to guarantee full pay to care workers who were self-isolating or shielding as well as extra money to give local care workers a pay rise. However, Anchor Hanover was one of the few social care providers operating in Salford which refused to pass the funding on to its care workers, despite it costing them nothing. In response, Salford City UNISON organised a protest outside one of Anchor’s local care homes and launched a petition and wrote to the council. The campaign culminated in a community action which took place in Living Wage Week, last month, outside of one of the provider’s care homes in Salford. Suppor...
Source: UNISON Health care news - Category: UK Health Authors: Tags: Article care North West real living wage Source Type: news